Sony considers Microsoft’s proposal to share Call of Duty for three years “inappropriate”

The purchase of Activision-Blizzard by microsoft It has left the presence of the titles of the first on PlayStation consoles very much in the air. Sony, obviously, is aware of this and has not hesitated to criticize the operation carried out by the Redmond giant on several occasions.

Following the agreement between Activision-Blizzard and Microsoft, the latter has proposed to Sony that future installments of Call of Duty also appear on PlayStation for the next three years. However, Jim Ryan, CEO of PlayStation, has responded to said proposal saying that “after nearly 20 years of Call of Duty on PlayStation, his proposal was inadequate on many levels and did not take into account the impact on our players”.

If the operation is completed, Activision-Blizzard would become part of Microsoft and since then it could only publish on the platforms that its parent company authorizes. Seeing that Microsoft competes with Sony in consoles and services via streamingit is clear that the Redmond giant seeks to strengthen its catalog of exclusive video games against the competition.

As we have already said, Sony has not bothered to hide its disgust, so Microsoft has decided to come to the fore to accuse the Japanese company of hypocrisy due to the agreements it has reached to obtain titles such as Deathloop, Ghostwire Tokyo and the remake of Final Fantasy VII, which have not been released for Xbox. To these movements can be added the acquisitions of Bungie and Savage Game Studios.

In addition to public criticism of the Activision-Blizzard deal and Microsoft’s Call of Duty deal, Sony is maneuvering before various regulators as a spring to prevent the acquisition process from being completed. Here we can highlight the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) of the United Kingdom, whose Phase 1 investigation has concluded that the agreement between Activision-Blizzard and the Redmond giant can “harm rivals”, mainly Sony. If we say that the CMA was the first to torpedo NVIDIA’s purchase of ARM, one might think that Microsoft has apparently hit a major roadblock.

We remember that Microsoft reached an agreement to take over Activision-Blizzard in exchange for paying about 68.7 billion dollars. If the operation is authorized, we would be talking about the second video game giant that would become the property of Microsoft, which in 2020 took over Zenimax in exchange for some 7,500 million dollars.

Regardless of who started it, the fact that Sony and Microsoft reinforce each other by compromising or buying third parties is detrimental to consumers, not only because the exclusivities of one deprives the other of titles, but because it lays the foundations for a duopoly that could prevent other competitors from joining the race. In fact, in these debates, many forget about Nintendo, which has managed to recover part of the “hardcore” public with Switch that turned its back on it a decade and a half ago.