By Jason Collins | Published
According to Kotaku, Microsoft is offering huge deals with Sony and various other concessions to the European Commission, including a 10-year agreement with Sony on the Call of Duty franchise – whose latest installment had the biggest opening in entertainment industry history – and other ABK games. Should Microsoft’s deal with ABK go through, all ABK titles, including the aforementioned FPS franchise, would be under the control of Sony’s biggest gaming competitor.
Microsoft really decided to change the history of gaming with its acquisition of Activision Blizzard (ABK), and Sony isn’t too happy about that – it’s actually vocal about its concerns after Xbox beat the PlayStation 5 on Sony’s home market, even going so far as to call for a regulatory veto after its own company faced a massive lawsuit over pricing, mishandling of gamers’ physical assets and refusal to issue refunds for the said goods.
This forces Microsoft to make various deals left and right just to complete the acquisition. The whole issue arose following Sony’s call for a regulatory veto and statement of objection. Namely, Sony is apparently having issues with the biggest tech giant acquiring one of the biggest and oldest independent video game developers and publishers on the planet, which directly jeopardizes the already fragile position of Sony in the gaming industry.
This, coupled with an insider trading scandal, forced Microsoft to spend an entire year negotiating with various committees, only to appease the European Union and acquire ABK. The alleged deal between Microsoft and Sony would keep said game franchises available for Sony’s PlayStation platform for at least ten years into the future, echoing previous statements made by Xbox head Phil Spencer, who said the company did not intend to do Call of Duty.
Certainly, that would amount to a Pyrrhic victory; it would cripple PlayStation’s supply, but it would also rob Microsoft of a good chunk of the market for one of the biggest titles coming into its possession. Even Sony has realized the folly of keeping its titles exclusive to its gaming hardware. For decades, PlayStation has reigned over Xbox as the superior gaming console, prompting Microsoft to strike deals and provide better subscription service for its players.
This ultimately tipped the scales in favor of the tech giant so much that it actually forced Sony to redesign its subscription service to retain player numbers. The effort ultimately proved unsuccessful, and although sales spoke in favor of PlayStation, Xbox gaming services and hardware became more readily available to the public.
So, with the EU now taking regulatory action and rumors of the FTC filing an antitrust complaint in an effort to block the acquisition, Microsoft has to jump through some fiery hoops to seal the deal with Sony. This is very inconvenient since the main idea behind the acquisition was to overcome ABK’s lack of computing power and machine learning expertise and Microsoft’s lack of first-party gaming content. This agreement would be very beneficial for everyone, especially since it would challenge the collaborations that have been established between gaming and technology giants in China and other Eastern countries.
