A regulated million-dollar purchase
Taking into account that the purchase of Activision represents a gigantic outlay of 69,000 million dollars, there are many companies and regulatory bodies that must review this entire operation to the millimeter to avoid problems in the future. And with the problems we are talking about aspects such as the monopoly power that Microsoft could choose in some of the cases, something that the company has defended on many occasions with quite practical arguments: that Activision games are on all platforms and that its most direct rival, PlayStation, has been dominating the market quite easily for years.
But it is just PlayStation that is causing the most problems and is trying to stop the operation the most. Its CEO has already spoken on several occasions completely rejecting the movement, assuring that it would affect many parties and that they fear losing one of the most successful games it brings to their consoles: Call of Duty.
10 years of Call of Duty
For that reason, Microsoft is focusing its efforts on reaching some kind of agreement that will satisfy all parties. According to Reuters, those from Redmond would have raised a question with the European Commission 10 year agreement with which they would guarantee the next Call of Duty on the PlayStation platformand possibly entering into the deal for more signature games.
This would serve to officially sign Microsoft’s commitment to continue offering the game to the competition, something that they themselves have confirmed time and time again, ensuring that all they are looking for is the commitment to allow users to have more access to the games, and no less.
Is there a trick?
Offering Call of Duty for 10 years might be easy, but what about the extras that come with the game? You don’t have to go back too far to remember that PlayStation already had an exclusive Call of Duty mode for an entire year. It was about Zombies Onslaughta game mode that came with Cold War and that It didn’t land on Xbox until 12 months later..
Likewise, PlayStation’s relationship with Activision has so far allowed them to have early access exclusivity in betas and get exclusive add-ons and cosmetics for the platform. For this reason, it is strange that PlayStation is putting so much trouble when they themselves already had exclusivity agreements years before.
Said that, What if Microsoft made the new Warzone exclusive to Xbox? Technically they could offer the Call of Duty campaign and its multiplayer to PlayStation, but the Battle Royale would only be available on their platform. Plays like this could be replicated, so we don’t know to what extent the 10-year deal would cheat.