Apparently recognizing the inevitability of Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard, Sony has signed an agreement with Microsoft to keep Call of Duty available on PlayStation for the next 10 years.
The news was announced by Microsoft’s gaming boss Phil Spencer on Sunday. “We are pleased to announce that Microsoft and PlayStation have signed a binding agreement to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation following the acquisition of Activision Blizzard.” Spencer tweeted. “We look forward to a future where gamers around the world have more choices to play their favorite games.”
A Microsoft spokesman followed confirmed to The Verge that the deal would run for 10 years and only cover Call of Duty – no other Activision Blizzard games. That puts it on par with agreements Microsoft has previously signed with Nintendo, Nvidia, and others.
Microsoft President Brad Smith also commentedHe said: “From day one of this acquisition, we have been committed to addressing the concerns of regulators, platform and game developers, and consumers. Even after we reach the finish line for approving this deal, we will remain focused on making sure Call of Duty stays available on more platforms and to more consumers than ever before.”
The signing of the deal marks the end of a long standoff in which Microsoft repeatedly made public offers to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation while Sony turned them down, instead trying to use its influence with regulators to secure the US$68.7 billion -Dollar expensive acquisition of Activision by Microsoft to prevent Blizzard completely. “I don’t want a new one call of Duty act. I just want to block your merger,” PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan reportedly told Activision executives on the day of a meeting with European Union regulators in February.
PlayStation’s strategy was to use Call of Duty to persuade regulators that the merger would destroy competition in the console market since Microsoft would hold back PlayStation’s games or release inferior versions there. But this strategy was not too successful. EU regulators were happy with the assurances offered by Microsoft, while the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority eventually acknowledged that it was in Microsoft’s interest to keep Call of Duty available to the large PlayStation audience and in their rejection of the deal took a different tack and expressed concerns about cloud gaming.
Only the US Federal Trade Commission ultimately agreed with Sony’s argument, but when her case went to court, she lost. Evidence presented in the case included an admission emailed by Ryan that he had no concerns that PlayStation would lose access to Call of Duty “for many years to come”.
The signing of the agreement with Microsoft means that Sony has all but ended its opposition to the acquisition and now expects to close it — perhaps as soon as Tuesday, July 18, the deadline by which the deal is supposed to be finalized. In theory, two regulators remain opposed to the takeover. But the The FTC failed to convince an appeals court extend an emergency ban on the deal while the CMA entered negotiations with Microsoft to find a way forward in the UK, with an extended period until August 29th. It’s possible that Microsoft and Activision are now extending their own contract deadline to give this process time to complete.
