Game news “Sony briefs people in Brussels” for Call of Duty, the fight against Microsoft is intensifying!
Split :
As part of Microsoft’s planned acquisition of Activision-Blizzard, Sony is doing everything it can to keep COD on PS4 and PS5. Jim Ryan would have even gone personally to the European authorities!
While Microsoft’s proposed acquisition of Activision-Blizzard is a long time coming (the tech giant is now facing an FTC lawsuit), another battle taking place in parallel is just as important. Yes, is the license call of Duty stays on PS4 | PS5 if the purchase is validated? That’s a question that has plagued PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan for months.
An important series for Sony
Latest news, Microsoft has offered Sony to keep the famous FPS for another ten years (so until 2023). For its part, the Japanese company has not yet agreed – and has made its way a kind of fight against Xbox. “We want to ensure that PlayStation players continue to enjoy the best quality of Call of Duty in 2022,” said Jim Ryan.
More than just benefiting PS4-PS5 users, the action game above all represents a lot of revenue for Sony… After all, 425 million units have been sold worldwide in twenty years, to which all online transactions (DLC, skins, etc.) are added. 30% of this will be returned to PlayStation via the PS Store. All in all, that’s millions of dollars. In short, you understand why Jim Ryan attaches so much importance to the topic. He would also have shifted up a gear.
Jim Ryan flies to Brussels
As Frank X Shaw, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of communications, wrote on Twitter, the PlayStation CEO reportedly recently: “People in Brussels (where the European bodies responsible for evaluating the Activision Blizzard case are based – ed . Red.) informed that Microsoft has not wanted to give them parity for Call of Duty.” He finishes his first message: “It’s totally wrong”.
I heard that Sony is informing people in Brussels that Microsoft is not willing to offer them parity for Call of Duty if we take over Activision.
Nothing is further from the truth.
1/4
— Frank X Shaw (@fxshaw) January 28, 2023
“We made it clear that we were offering Sony a 10-year deal to give them parity on timing, content, features, quality, gameplay and every other aspect of the game… We also said we’d like to enforce that contractually.” . Regulatory agreements or other means… Sony is the leader in the console market and we would have a hard time excluding PlayStation players from the Call of Duty ecosystem. Our goal is to make Call of Duty and other games – like we did with Minecraft – accessible to as many people as possible around the world, so they can play where and how they want.” – Frank X Shaw, via Twitter (Microsoft)
With this message, Frank X Shaw basically sums up what Phil Spencer (the Xbox CEO) has been keeping up for months! Last year the company deal reporter claimed that Jim Ryan had already made this trip. If Microsoft completes the acquisition of Activision-Blizzard, it would guarantee not only Call of Duty, but also World of Warcraft, Overwatch… This is the biggest acquisition in technology.
