The Redmond-based company already promises the stars from the sky to acquire Activision Blizzard King.
In two tweets, Xbox boss Phil Spencer said: “Microsoft has entered into a 10-year commitment to bring Call of Duty to Nintendo following the merger of Microsoft and Activision Blizzard King. Microsoft is committed to helping bring more games to people—however they choose to play. I’m also pleased to confirm that Microsoft has committed to continue to offer Call of Duty on Steam simultaneously to Xbox after we have closed the merger with Activision Blizzard King.”
And that’s it. He didn’t say anything more, so it’s safe to say that it is just PR hype to close the acquisition of the Bobby Kotick-led publisher by the end of Microsoft’s fiscal year on June 30 (because they start in July instead of April…). However, Microsoft president Brad Smith made an odd comparison to the Wall Street Journal: he said that Sony is in a similar position to Blockbuster! (There is one store left of that video store chain.)
“Sony has emerged as the loudest objector; it’s as excited about this deal as Blockbuster was about the rise of Netflix. Microsoft faces huge challenges in the gaming industry. Our Xbox remains in third place in console gaming, stuck behind Sony’s dominant PlayStation and the Nintendo Switch. We have no meaningful presence in the mobile game industry,” said Smith, who then hit out at the Apple/Google duo for having a profit margin from mobile apps if they have microtransactions and are on the Apple App Store/Google Play Store.
Smith said it would be good for the players to be acquired, giving third-placed Microsoft a better chance of fighting Sony, Tencent, or Nintendo. He then reiterated that Call Of Duty would remain on PlayStation (and here, the ten years was confirmed) because it would not make financial sense to leave Sony’s platform: “The main supposed potential anticompetitive risk Sony raises is that Microsoft would stop making Call Of Duty available on 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 US, UK, and European Union regulators.”
The trick is that Sony has to sign the agreement too, and the regulators (the FTC in the US, the CMA in the UK, and the European Commission in the EU) can still sue Microsoft. The CMA will decide in March whether to accept Microsoft’s mountain of promises.
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