The romance between Xbox and PlayStation regarding the acquisition of Activision Blizzard continues. After a sequence between the two brands via the Brazilian authorities, the two brand bosses are now discussing the subject through the press.
Call of Duty, the coveted golden egg hen
If you missed the previous episodes, here’s a quick refresher. This summer, official documents from the Brazilian authorities showed Sony’s fears to see the big Activision Blizzard licenses become such big forces for Xbox that it would unbalance the video game landscape.
Sony even said that no current player in the industry would have the possibility of creating a potential rival to Call of Duty, including with a similar budget, as the successful franchise was established. For its part, Xbox had flattered PlayStation and Nintendo exclusives and had Sony accused to pay certain developers to prevent their game from arriving in the Xbox Game Pass catalog. In short, it was not really mad love.
Last week, Phil Spencer, boss of Xbox, publicly evoked a guarantee that he had made to PlayStation by indicating that Call of Duty would continue to arrive on PlayStation “for at least several years following the current contract signed with Sony”. But today, it is the president of PlayStation, Jim Ryan, who responds on the subject.
I did not intend to comment on what I understood to be a private business discussion, but I feel the need to set the record straight because Phil Spencer brought it to the attention of the audience.
Microsoft has proposed that Call of Duty will only stay on PlayStation for three years following the current deal between Activision and Sony ends. After nearly 20 years of Call of Duty on PlayStation, their proposal was inadequate on many levels and failed to consider the impact on our players. We want to ensure PlayStation players that they continue to have the highest quality Call of Duty experience, and Microsoft’s proposal gets in the way of that principle.
It’s hard to fully understand what exactly Jim Ryan is referring to here, but clearly the guarantee that Call of Duty continues to come to PlayStation “at least 3 years” following the current deal isn’t good enough for Sony. . Here, Sony fears that Call of Duty will no longer be distributed on PlayStation in the future, even though the license is today one of those that brings in the most profit for Sony. On to the next episode.
