Sony has agreed to a 10-year deal for Call of Duty with Microsoft to keep the franchise on PlayStation after the proposed Activision Blizzard acquisition. Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer says Sony and Microsoft have agreed to a “binding agreement” to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation, The Verge reported.
This ends a bitter battle between the companies that has been waged both privately and publicly over the past year after Microsoft announced its proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard in January.
According to The Verge, while Microsoft’s initial announcement doesn’t mention 10 years for Call of Duty on PlayStation, Keri Perez, head of global communications at Xbox, confirmed the 10-year commitment to The Verge. Perez later confirmed to The Verge that the deal is only for Call of Duty, though. That makes the deal similar to a 10-year agreement between Microsoft and Nintendo, but not the various deals Microsoft has struck with Nvidia and other cloud gaming platforms to bring Call of Duty and other Xbox / Activision games to rival services.
CNBC reported Sony has signed a binding, 10-year agreement with Microsoft to keep Call of Duty on its PlayStation gaming consoles after closing the Activision Blizzard acquisition, Microsoft said on Sunday.
Activision is the maker of the best-selling Call of Duty lineup. Regulators around the world had expressed significant concern about Microsoft’s power over the gaming market if an Activision acquisition was approved, CNBC reported.
Microsoft is the manufacturer of the Xbox, which competes directly with Sony’s PlayStation, prompting fears that Microsoft would be able to make games “exclusive” to its own consoles and displace Sony from competition.
According to CNBC, the deal does something to ameliorate those concerns, although Microsoft and Sony aren’t disclosing the duration of the agreement. A Microsoft spokesperson noted the deal was in place for the long term. The company has signed similar deals in the past.
Regulators in the EU signed off on the deal in May. The U.K.’s Competition and Market Authority, which has forced divestitures and blocked prior tech deals, said in Wednesday that it was prepared to negotiate with Microsoft over the terms of the deal.
Kotaku reported that Microsoft and Sony have finally reached a deal for keeping Call of Duty on PlayStation once the Activision Blizzard merger goes through. The surprise agreement comes after months of fighting between the two companies and is a sign the acquisition is all but inevitable.
According to Kotaku, it’s not immediately clear what the terms of that agreement are, and whether they are similar to proposals Microsoft recently signed with Nintendo and other cloud gaming providers. In the past, Sony has paid Activision for special benefits relating to Call of Duty, including timed-exclusive content and special marketing rights. It was also revealed during the recent court battle over the deal that Activision had leveraged its partnership with Sony to negotiate better commission rates for the franchise Xbox.
Personally, I’m hoping that this means we won’t have to hear much more about the Microsoft-Activision acquisition. It certainly seems like (nearly) everything has been resolved.