Sonyhas reportedly responded to Microsoft’s 10-year commitment withNintendo to allowCall of Dutyon its platforms, while Microsoft has also pledged to keep releasing these games simultaneously on Steam. Microsoft made these pledges while regulators investigate its acquisition ofCall of Dutypublisher Activision Blizzard King, and Sony has repeatedly protested and argued against this, withCall of Dutyserving as the major crux of the argument.
Microsoft has reportedly offered Sony a 10-year dealas well, while Sony has said any concession offered by Microsoft has been inadequate. At the same time, Microsoft has expressed willingness to make certain concessions to ensure the Activision Blizzard acquisition goes through. The latest development on the situation reportedly comes from Sony’s response to the Microsoft-Nintendo deal, obtained internally by MLEX.
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In short,Sony’s argument boils down to that Activision Blizzard doesn’t putCall of Dutygames on Nintendo products today “because Nintendo’s younger audience is not interested in the first-person shooters,” previous versions of the series on its console was a “commercial flop,” that the deal only exists to make Microsoft look cooperative, that Nintendo’s Switch could not runCall of Dutyand may never be able to, that development of a Switch version would take years (making the deal meaningless), and that Nintendo can accept the deal easier because it doesn’t have to “worry about equal treatment for its subscription services or cloud gaming service” as the company does not compete here aggressively. Read the full statementHERE.
However one feels about Sony, Microsoft, and the pending acquisition, many have pointed out the flaws in Sony’s arguments here. First off, the implication that Nintendo only caters to younger audiences is akin to sayingFortniteis only for kids; it’s grossly generalizing. It says Microsoft is doing this to look cooperative, but it doesn’t dive into why Nintendo would go out of its way to accept such a commitment without some benefit for itself. All companies involved, including PlayStation, have been posturing to some degree. It then says the Switch may never be able to run it and that development for it would take years, but nothing was ever said about the Switch in the commitment (which many interpret into more rumors of a possibleSwitch Pro console). The meat of it comes near the end, as pointed out by Grubb, in that Sony is worried about equal treatment for subscription services and cloud gaming services.
BecauseCall of Dutywould stay on PlayStation but likely be available day one on Xbox Game Pass (read, free), it would take away from Sony’s consoles. PS Plus, as well as its new tiers, could fall rapidly, as fans sought to get it on Xbox consoles instead. While this makes some sense, it’s still a competitor and leader in the market space, and it’s not the regulators' job to verify there is “equal treatment” – just competition. No competition is equal, and it hasn’t been betweenCall of Dutyon PlayStation and Xbox in years. The irony here is the number ofCall of Dutyexclusives PlayStation has committed to over the years, to do what it can to keepCoDplayers on PS consoles instead of Xbox.
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