As expected, today’s lawsuit between the FTC and Microsoft for the purchase of Activision Blizzard leaves a multitude of interesting titles, especially because of its semi-public condition, since its audio is broadcast by Zoom for certain users. selected who got to join the chamber. Yesterday we remembered that only Jim Ryan would attend from Sony and via telematics.
But Jim Ryan, apart from having his head well into this war lately, was also in the news yesterday as it was said that an internal email from him would deny all of Sony’s accusations about the Microsoft’s intention to make the Call of Duty franchise exclusive to Xbox. And the truth is that he practically hits the nail on the head. This is the content of the email:
This is not an exclusive game. Their intentions are bigger than that and they have the money to make moves like this. I spent a fair amount of time with Spencer and Bobby and I’m sure we’ll continue to watch Call of Duty on PlayStation for many years to come.
Sony wasn’t scared for Call of Duty, they just don’t want the purchase to go through
We’ve said it before on occasion, since Sony is still very leery of the idea of publicly revealing these exclusivity agreements with Activision, but there are several keys that also come out, such as Microsoft having to renegotiate the arrival of the Call of Duty saga on Xbox Series X|S because Sony had monopolized the exclusivity of all marketing and additional content, called “PlayStation Advantage”.
It goes to the extreme, as Sarah Bond admitted in court, that this Sony deal specifically prevented Call of Duty from being publicly announced as coming to Xbox. Only by allowing your ad on Xbox platforms or exclusive Xbox channels, which will not condition users on other platforms to opt for anything other than PlayStation. In other words, make invisible to the public that Call of Duty was also coming to Xbox.
