Microsoft confirms details of 10-year offer to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation
Microsoft president Brad Smith has provided details on the company’s offer to keep the Call of Duty franchise on PlayStation for at least a decade.
The future of the Call of Duty series as a multiplatform product is one of the key areas being examined by worldwide regulators scrutinising Microsoft’s proposed $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard.
Last month the Xbox maker told the New York Times it had offered Sony a 10-year Call of Duty deal, and on Monday Smith confirmed this was the case in an opinion piece written for the Wall Street Journal.
“Sony has emerged as the loudest objector [to the acquisition],” he wrote. “It’s as excited about this deal as Blockbuster was about the rise of Netflix.
“The main supposed potential anticompetitive risk Sony raises is that Microsoft would stop making Call of Duty available on the PlayStation. But that would be economically irrational.
“A vital part of Activision Blizzard’s Call of Duty revenue comes from PlayStation game sales. Given the popularity of cross-play, it would also be disastrous to the Call of Duty franchise and Xbox itself, alienating millions of gamers.
“That’s why we’ve offered Sony a 10-year contract to make each new Call of Duty release available on PlayStation the same day it comes to Xbox. We’re open to providing the same commitment to other platforms and making it legally enforceable by regulators in the US, UK and European Union.”
The European Commission and the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority recently launched in-depth probes into Microsoft’s acquisition plans, while it’s been claimed that the FTC could file an antitrust lawsuit in an attempt to block the Activision deal.
Smith said suing Microsoft in an attempt to stop the acquisition “would be
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