Activision Blizzard It’s not just a company dedicated to making great yearly shooters. If the purchase is completed, Microsoft will add sagas ranging from Crash Bandicoot to Diablo, both with very recent releases, and classics like King’s Quest. Some successful licenses were even born on PlayStation, such as Tony Hawk Pro Skater and Spyro. In January 2022 Phil Spencer of Xbox guaranteed Sony the entire Activision catalog until December 31, 2027. Games for consoles, it is understood. As far as we know, as of today Sony has only traded 10 years of Call of Duty on PlayStation.
Despite the fact that the agreement to continue offering Call of Duty on Sony consoles is official, and logically can only be carried out once the purchase is made, This information about Spencer’s proposal for all the Activision sagas on PlayStation, was not revealed until the judicial process in which the blocking of the purchase was at stake. In fact, the intention and the date were provided as evidence in an email.
However, it is also fair to say that the proposal to bring Call of Duty to Playstation for at least 10 years was wielded by Microsoft during all the processes of the commissions of each country and, in addition, got engaged to negotiate the conditions that Sony estimated. However, this was not formalized until the FTC ran out of judicial resources to block the purchase of Activision in the United States. Literally, Sony agreed to sign two days later.
With the war saga secured for PS5 players and what will be its future successor (which does not seem to be as far away as it seems), the logical thing to do is to wonder if that same deal is similar to that reached with Nintendo or is it more similar to that of NVIDIA. which will receive more games from Xbox Game Studios upon completion of the acquisition. The response from Kali Pérez, Xbox communications representative, a The Verge It’s quite clear: “the deal [entre Microsoft y PlayStation] It’s only for Call of Duty“
Microsoft has confirmed to The Verge that Sony’s 10-year Call of Duty deal is limited to Call of Duty. Microsoft originally offered to keep “existing Activision titles from consoles to Sony”, including future versions of current Activision games on PlayStation until the end of 2027.
Because Jim Ryan, The head of PlayStation, you didn’t weigh the value of Microsoft’s original offering in January 2022 against Activision’s brands? According to Ryan himself, during the FTC’s legal process against Microsoft for the acquisition of the company, he was sent an email with the list of games and he did not agree with what he saw.
It was not a meaningful list. This list represented a particular selection of old titles that would remain on PlayStation. For example, Overwatch is there but Overwatch 2 was not listed, which was the current version of the game.
Ryan has maintained in the processes that he has participated, since it affects him both as a company and as a platform that offers Call of Duty,
Almost a year later, on July 16, 2023 and two days after the date set to formalize the acquisition, ensure 10 years of Call of Duty it is a much more position reasonable. Above all, at the brand level for PlayStation when the new installment is about to be announced.
So was the offer of all Activision games on PlayStation until December 31, 2027 really a good deal or did it mean nothing? Except for Nintendo, which works in a parallel dimension to the rest, five years is an eternity in the video game industry. But, in the end we return to the starting square and we find that, for the moment, the purchase has not occurred. Although everything indicates that it will be imminent: Activision Blizzard has withdrawn from the Nasdaqbeing a previous movement to formalize its entry into Microsoft.
Although, the manifest intention of Xbox is to launch its games and those of Activision Blizzard on more platforms (not in less) also is true that Sony had 18 months to negotiate with Microsoft a much more favorable situation for its players, benefiting from the public processes of the CMA in the United Kingdom or the FTC of the United States to try to bring a complacent Microsoft to its ground. That said, Sony’s plans are for PlayStation Studios to continue to expand, including on PCs and in film and television.
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