While the purchase of Activision Blizzard is still not validated, Microsoft has announced that it has offered a ten-year deal to Sony for Call of Duty.
When Microsoft formalized the purchase of Activision Blizzard for a tantalizing $70 billion, we knew it would take time to be validated. Especially since the Redmond company has to deal with a rival determined to derail the transaction. Thus, Sony does not see the merger in a good light and uses the Call of Duty excuse to make the authorities understand that the advantage would be too great for Microsoft.
In recent months, the American multinational has multiplied its steps towards Sony, repeating again and again that Call of Duty will not disappear from the PlayStation ecosystem. Concrete evidence was again provided by the New York Times in an article published on November 21. Where we discover that Microsoft has offered a ten-year contract to Sony regarding Call of Duty. The Japanese company declined to comment.
A war of communication between Sony and Microsoft
Last September, Jim Ryan, president of the PlayStation division, had rated an initial offering from Microsoft “ inadequate in many respects “. At the time, Microsoft clearly promised to publish games call of duty on PlayStation for three years. Since then, Phil Spencer, his counterpart at Xbox, has repeated several times that it was not in Microsoft’s interest to deprive PlayStation players of the Call of Duty saga (whose latest installment generated a billion dollars in a few days). At the end of October, he stated bluntly: ” As long as there is a PlayStation on the market, we will continue to launch Call of Duty on PlayStation. “As is the case today for Minecraftanother great success.
According to the New York Times, Microsoft would have offered this ten-year contract to Sony on November 11 – a contract that can of course be renewed when the time comes, so that Phil Spencer’s promises of eternity are kept. Will that be enough to convince Sony? Nothing is less secure.
Microsoft is also accusing its competitor to mislead » the supervisory authorities, who explain that it « overestimates the importance of Call of Duty in its profitability “. A point which is rather difficult to comment on: does Sony really need Call of Duty to sell its consoles in light of its editorial line articulated around very attractive exclusive games? Activision’s license knows how to attract players, but Sony’s catalog is large enough to satisfy the community.For Sony, Microsoft remains after all a tech giant with a long history of dominating industries “.
A dozen regulators are currently considering the takeover of Activision to address the monopolistic risk. Two of them – Brazil and Saudi Arabia – approved it. The European Commission, for its part, has launched an in-depth investigation that identifies several areas of concern. In short, Microsoft has yet to win.