Agreement reached between Microsoft and Sony to keep “Call of Duty” on Playstation

Microsoft, which wants to take over the video game publisher Activision Blizzard, and Sony have reached a “binding agreement” to keep the famous game “Call of Duty” on Playstation consoles, the American giant announced on Sunday.

“We are pleased to announce that Microsoft and Playstation have entered into a binding agreement to keep ‘Call of Duty’ on Playstation following the acquisition of Activision Blizzard.” tweeted Phil Spencer, director of Microsoft’s video game division.

Supervision by competition authorities

Microsoft, which markets the Xbox console, announced in January 2022 the acquisition of Activision Blizzard for a record amount of 69,000 million dollars, but this project remains in the crosshairs of the competition authorities of the United States and the United Kingdom.

Regulators fear in particular that this operation could allow Microsoft to block access to Activision Blizzard’s games, which also include the highly lucrative “World of Warcraft” and “Candy Crush”, on its competitors’ platforms.

“Since day one of this acquisition, we have worked to address the concerns of regulators, gaming platforms, publishers and consumers,” Microsoft Chairman Brad Smith said on Sunday. retweet Phil Spencer’s post.

“Even after we cross the finish line with the approval of this transaction, we will remain focused on ensuring that ‘Call of Duty’ remains available on more platforms and to more consumers than ever before,” he continued.

Nintendo “for ten years”

In December, Phil Spencer said that Microsoft had “committed to providing ‘Call of Duty’ to Nintendo for ten years” after the Activision integration.

He also told the Bloomberg agency that an agreement similar to the one closed with Nintendo had been offered to Sony, the maker of the PlayStation -the best-selling console on the market-, which initially strongly opposed the Microsoft Activision transaction.

This acquisition would make Microsoft the third largest video game player in the world in terms of revenue behind Tencent and Sony, thus surpassing Apple.