With Microsoft’s $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard pretty much in the bag following a big court win against the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, the most committed opponent of the deal, Sony, has officially signed a deal to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation for 10 years. On the surface, that may sound like a fairly generous agreement, but there are some limits to the deal once you look at the finer details.
The Verge has confirmed with Microsoft that the 10-year deal with PlayStation is only for Call of Duty and doesn’t cover other Activision Blizzard franchises and games. That’s interesting, because according to documents included in the recent FTC case, back in early 2022, Microsoft offered Sony a 5-year deal to keep all current Activision franchises on PlayStation. So, in the end, it seems PlayStation traded a longer guarantee on Call of Duty for guarantees when it comes to Acti-Blizz’s entire slate of games.
Of course, it’s unlikely major Activision Blizzard multiplatform titles will be pulled from PlayStation out of nowhere. Diablo IV and Overwatch 2 probably aren’t going anywhere. But future Acti-Blizz titles? Well, we’ll have to see about those. At the very least, Sony will have to make individual deals for those titles, and a future where at least some Activision Blizzard games are exclusive to the Xbox ecosystem seems likely.
Also interesting, is the fact that a number of other companies may have got better deals than Sony. Again, per documents for the FTC case, “Nintendo has a contractual right to obtain Activision content post-merger, including Call of Duty” under their 10-year deal. That leaves things kind of open-ended, but it definitely isn’t strictly limited to Call of Duty. Meanwhile, Microsoft has also promised cloud gaming services like NVIDIA’s GeForce Now will get Acti-Blizz titles beyond Call of Duty.
You can keep up with the latest happenings in the Activision Blizzard acquisition saga here. While there is still some legal wrangling to be done with the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority, there’s a good chance the deal closes today or tomorrow.
