The soap opera over Microsoft’s attempted takeover of Activision Blizzard continues, with regulators in the UK, EU and US scrutinizing the deal to decide whether it could be harmful to consumers and the video game industry or not.
From the beginning, Sony has been one of the biggest opponents of the merger, on the grounds that it could make franchises like Call of Duty exclusive to the Xbox ecosystem and cause an unfair imbalance in competitiveness. This week, an Activision Blizzard executive decided to reveal the position of Jim Ryan, CEO of PlayStation, on the merger.
Even though Sony has tried tirelessly to claim that Microsoft will make Call of Duty an exclusive franchise in the Xbox ecosystem when it completes its merger with Activision Blizzard, the Redmond giant and its representatives have already commented on this concern numerous times, offering Sony a 10-year agreement for equal releases of the franchise on PlayStation.
While Sony refused to accept this agreement, Nintendo and NVIDIA accepted it and have already signed the partnership with Microsoft, which further inflamed the spirits of the executives.
This week, via a new excerpt from Sony’s testimony to the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), we learn that Sony fears receiving unoptimized versions of Call of Duty should the sale of Activision Blizzard go through.
Amidst the revelations of the deposition, Lulu Cheng Meservey. Executive Vice President of Activision for Corporate Affairs and CCO, commented on his social networks on the subject and revealed that during his testimony to the regulators of the European Union in February of this year, The CEO and president of SIE, Jim Ryan, officially admitted that he did not is looking for a deal for Call of Duty, but blocking the merger between the companies.
The CEO of SIE answered that question in Brussels.
In his words:
“I don’t want a new Call of Duty deal. I just want to block your merger.”
— Lulu Cheng Meservey (@lulumeservey) March 8, 2023
Cheng also states that, “Microsoft offered Sony (the dominant leader in the console market for over a decade, with over 80% market share), a 10-year deal on much better terms than Sony would have received from Activision. In addition, Activision has also secured long-term access for Call of Duty to Sony.”
The executive’s revelation directly contradicts Sony’s position with the UK CMA, where it claims that Microsoft has not attempted to negotiate with Sony about the future of Call of Duty.
Sony has been accused of misleading the UK regulator before, but the closed-door comments to EU regulators may have gone on record and serve as evidence should UK regulators seek to gather EU evidence about the merger.
As always, we’ll have to wait for the next chapters, but Sony is certainly going to the last consequences.
