An absurd quantity of people still believes that after the Activision-Blizzard deal is done, Microsoft is planning to turn Call of Duty titles into Microsoft exclusives; the company headed by Phil Spencer has been arguing for a while with these people, including the heads at PlayStation of America.
This controversy has grown on such a scale that Microsoft is committing to keeping Call of Duty on PlayStation for several more years beyond the already signed marketing deal Sony has with Activision. How? You may be wondering, well according to our friends at The Verge, Xbox’s CEO Phil Spencer made the commitment in a written letter to PlayStation head Jim Ryan earlier this year.
“In January, we provided a signed agreement to Sony to guarantee Call of Duty on PlayStation, with feature and content parity, for at least several more years beyond the current Sony contract, an offer that goes well beyond typical gaming industry agreements.”
Maybe this will calm the waters?
The exact number of years was not revealed but according to information released at the beginning of the year by Bloomberg, Microsoft will honour this deal and may add at least another two years.
A while ago we shared with you the number of problems that have been slowing Microsoft’s billion deal to acquire Activision-Blizzard, one of them being Sony’s claims of unfair practices, as they are sure that if Microsoft ends up acquiring COD, it would be difficult for other developers to create a franchise that rivals this game as it is a gaming category on its own.
We know that this beef will not end until the deal is over, however, this seems far from it as a couple of days ago the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) just concluded the first phase of its investigation and call an urgent meeting to clarify critical points of the agreement.
Hopefully, this will end soon, on the meantime, Microsoft still argues that this is not as important as its rival makes it out to be… It's a little bit of this and that.
What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments below:
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