We know that Xbox | It took a while for PlayStation to sign a Call of Duty deal with Xbox
For more than a year and a half, video game news was punctuated by Microsoft’s attempts to buy Activision Blizzard King. To do this, the Redmond firm had to make numerous concessions to appease bodies such as the FTC, CMA and the European Commission. Thus contracts were signed with Boosteroid, EE, Geforce NOW, Ubitus, Ubisoft, Nintendo and PlayStation. It is precisely this generation that interests us today.
The deal signed for Call of Duty was different from what was initially proposed
During a long series of takeovers completed in October 2023, PlayStation’s CEO, Jim Ryan, spoke on numerous occasions about the threat of Microsoft owning the Call of Duty license.
In March 2023, Microsoft Group Vice President Brad Smith said that he had made an offer to Sony, but the two companies still had not reached a formal agreement and were not in discussions.
After months of reluctance, the two companies finally reached an agreement, allowing Sony to guarantee the release of Call of Duty on PlayStation for at least 10 years. In an interview with CNBC this week, Jim Ryan explained why he finally decided to change his mind after all this time. Without going into details, we understand that Microsoft made several proposals and they did not suit Sony at first.
Do you know ? We risk getting too granular here, but there are contracts and agreements. And, you know, at any given time the deal that was proposed might not be the deal that was signed.
PlayStation’s CEO says he’s happy to sign an agreement to guarantee the arrival of Call of Duty games on PlayStation for 10 years.
We were very pleased to be able to negotiate a deal with Microsoft to ensure that this franchise would remain on the PlayStation platform for the next ten years, and that was very important to us, and we are very pleased to have reached this deal.
Unfortunately, we don’t know the finer details of the agreement, but Microsoft has confirmed several times that all versions of Call of Duty will be entitled to equal treatment as long as the technical specifications allow. Remember that Jim Ryan will be stepping down on April 1 and handing over his duties to Hiroki Totoki, who will be named interim CEO.
