There is speculation on the issue of Microsoft letting Sony keep Call of duty on its consoles.
Microsoft’s negotiations with Activision blizzard
Microsoft is currently in the middle of negotiating a purchase of five times winner of Fortune 100’s best company to work for, Activision Blizzard, an entertainment and games company that creates a lot of games like Call of duty, Candy crush, Hearthstone, Overwatch, World of Warcraft and many more.
Microsoft has been trying to buy it out for $68.7 billion and Sony was worried that the Call of duty series would be removed from its PlayStation consoles. Considering that Sony’s PlayStation and Microsoft’s Xbox are rivals, Sony was worried that there won’t be fair competition and that when the time comes, Microsoft will eventually remove the Call of duty series from PlayStation.
This causes Sony to worry about future losses they’ll have to make as it was obvious to them that their next generation consoles won’t be having the game they’ve had for the longest time. They said that if the deals go through for Microsoft, gamers will be easily influenced by the titles appearing on the consoles and since Call of duty might not be available for PlayStation lovers, this might affect their decision to buy otherwise.
Sony was also worried because even if a new game was created to rival Call of duty, it still wouldn’t do good and will have so much to catch up on just like every game that was created before for the same purpose. Because of this, Sony has been trying to get the Microsoft-Activision deal blocked, but it hasn’t worked as the deal is now going under regular review.
However, Microsoft was quick to shut this down, saying it offered Sony a few more years to still have the call of duty series on its consoles. At the time the remarks were published there wasn’t clarification on how many years Microsoft has offered Sony as there were rumors of 3, 7, and 10 years swirling around the call of duty deal. That was until now. There has been a report that explains that Microsoft is offering ten years of keeping call of duty on its consoles.
The deal between Microsoft and Sony
Recently, Sony has been having talks with Microsoft on the exact terms of the deal. Initially, there was a plan of offering Sony three years but Sony’s representative called them inadequate on so many levels.
Microsoft then offered Sony ten years just so the deal of buying Activision blizzard should be approved. So far the deal has been approved without any restrictions in Saudi Arabia, Serbia, and Brazil. It is yet to be approved in the UK under CMA, the USA under FTC, and in the European Commission in the European Union.
But there are more rumors that FTC will block the deal, but as the regulator’s decision isn’t expected until January of 2023, these will be nothing but rumors. The other regulators had to launch an in-depth investigation into the purchase, making Microsoft willing to discuss concessions for the future of the Call of duty series.
Microsoft said it was unable to give Sony a forever deal, but just enough years to make Sony and regulators happy and comfortable. And it seems that ten years is as far as they are willing to go, but no further.
UK’s regulator, CMA said it considers Call of duty very important that removing it from PlayStation will lead to unfair competition between Microsoft and Sony’s consoles, and that the change will affect Sony’s user base and revenues.
But Microsoft didn’t buy this claim, saying that Sony is deliberately misleading the regulator and that Sony has oversold the idea of Call of duty’s importance to PlayStation. They further said the regulator adopted Sony’s complaints without viewing the complaints without the appropriate critical review.
However, Sony retaliated, saying it is not true that they are misleading the regulators, rather Microsoft has a long history of dominating other companies and industries and if the Activision blizzard deal goes through, gamer choice will no longer be available when it’s time to get new consoles.
As Sony has been going around to the regulators and asking them to realize that this deal is illegal, Microsoft has been following the soles of Sony and arguing that the deal with Activision is mostly for Mobile games like Candy crush, since they are lagging in that department.
Microsoft is looking for a boost again what they’re saying is their main competitor in mobile games, is a Chinese-based company called Tencent. They believe that the merger with Activision will give them the help they need with Xbox on tablets and smartphones and that they will get new audiences there.
Conclusion
It seems that Sony is aware that accepting Microsoft’s deal means they are endorsing Microsoft’s purchase of Activision. But Sony wants all or nothing, as it hasn’t yet commented on the claim of the ten-year offer by Microsoft.
But what is clear as day is that if they don’t take the deal offered, that means it’s likely that they’ll keep the Call of duty series on their consoles, and the deal that Microsoft is trying to make with Activision blizzard will be blocked and Call of duty will remain the third party.
Looking at the whole issue, Sony might come off as petty for ignoring all the offers by Microsoft, but in the true sense, they’re not. And if Sony refuses the deal Microsoft keeps trying to sweeten, it will all be in the regulator’s decision. Whatever they decide, these two will have to go with it but seeing as most are seeing the argument from Sony’s point of view, they might refuse to approve Microsoft.
If Sony falls for Microsoft’s deals, it will show the regulators that since the latter worked it out with Sony, their biggest rival, the deal is as good as approved and done for. Microsoft allegedly offered Sony the ten-year deal on November 11th this year.
