“We are pleased to announce that Microsoft and @PlayStation have signed a binding agreement to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation following the acquisition of Activision Blizzard. We look forward to a future where players globally have more choice to play their favorite games.”
https://twitter.com/XboxP3/status/1680578783718383616
No word on how long the deal is for, but my guess would be 10 years.
Not a huge deal. Microsoft has every incentive to keep Call of Duty on the market leading console. Considering we’re about halfway through this cycle based on history, that means Microsoft would have left CoD on PlayStation 5 for another 3-4 years. This deal is very obviously only happening due to the anti-trust case, and because of the aforementioned 3-4 years it basically just says “we agree to put CoD on PS6 regardless of how well it does.”
Of course, when the companies merge, no regulatory body is going to actually keep Microsoft to their word with penalties high enough to care about.
This merger is bad for the industry without a doubt in my mind.
I would argue that MS had every incentive to put Starfield out on PS5, but ultimately decided against it along with all new Zenimax games. They even estimated they would have sold 10 million copies on Playstation. I think that shows they are willing to forego money from some multiplatform games in the short term if they think they will make more money from Game Pass and Xbox hardware in the long run.
If you go by that logic then there would be no second place console in the market, because every game would exclusively be on the number one console.
Walled garden captivity for any platform has always been anti consumer profiteering and was perfected in the mid 90s after the atari clones all passed into history.
I’d argue this deal is happening now because the anti trust cases are going in Microsoft’s favor. Microsoft and Sony have been in talks for a while to settle the Call of Duty on PlayStation deal but Sony probably thought it would be beneficial to hold off on this deal until the last possible moment in case it gave ammo to the FTC/CMA to stop the merger from happening.