Leaked Doc From Microsoft To UK’s CMA Says ’10 Years Enough For Sony To Make Its Own CoD’
from the 10-year-sunset dept
Well, well. The fight between Sony and Microsoft over the latter’s proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard continues to get more and more interesting. As three regulatory bodies have been poking at the deal — the European Commission for the EU, the Competition and Market Authority (CMA) in the UK, and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in the States — Microsoft’s featured attempt to appease the concerns over Call of Duty suddenly going exclusive has been its inking of 10 year deals to keep the series multi-platform. This seems to have placated the EU thus far, though its impact on the CMA and FTC remains to be seen. The idea, though, is that it is a demonstration of Microsoft’s commitment to keep CoD multiplatform generally. As I have pointed out in repeated posts, that doesn’t necessarily make sense. After all, Microsoft could be playing the long game, inking these deals to get the purchase done with plans to yank the series back to an exclusive after the ten year deals expire.
And if you read between the lines, Microsoft may have tipped its hand on that to the CMA in a recent leak of testimony from the company.
As spotted by VGC, Microsoft argued in a supplemental response that its 10-year proposal to keep Call of Duty available on PlayStation 5 and future Sony consoles is plenty of time and wouldn’t leave the hardware manufacturer on a “cliff edge” once it expires. Why not? Because Sony can use that time to make its own version of the best-selling military shooter.
“Microsoft considers that a period of 10 years is sufficient for Sony, as a leading publisher and console platform, to develop alternatives to CoD. […] The 10-year term will extend into the next console generation. […] Moreover, the practical effect of the remedy will go beyond the 10-year period, since games downloaded in the final year of the remedy can continue to be played for the lifetime of that console (and beyond, with backwards compatibility).”
There are plenty of clues to go off in the quoted statement from Microsoft to the CMA. The reference to developing alternatives is what most folks are keying in on. While not explicit, what is obviously implied there is that over 10 years Sony can develop a CoD competitor such that it need not worry if the series no longer appears on Sony’s PlayStations.
For me, though, I got laser-focused on the reference to “the final year.” Final year of what? This particular 10 year agreement? The final year of Microsoft having CoD titles released as multi-platform? Nowhere do I see any reference to suggestions that these deals can be renewed after the 10 years have expired. With that lack of clarity otherwise, it sure feels like this is talking about the end of the series being multi-platform.
As to Microsoft suggesting that Sony go build a competitor to CoD, well, why couldn’t Microsoft do that instead of gobbling up Activision?
“We’re not good enough” has actually been Microsoft’s line throughout these messy proceedings, however. One of its main arguments rests on the idea that, after being trounced by Sony and the PS4 for years, a massive acquisition is actually one of the only ways to disrupt the marketplace and create more competition. The implication has effectively been that Microsoft can’t make hits on its own so it needs to buy them instead.
None of this changes the simple fact that Sony has, with some recent deviations, traditionally been more than happy to keep a ton of its first- and third-party titles exclusive to the PlayStation. Sony also has absolutely trounced Microsoft in the console market year after year.
There are no good guys here, in other words. But as far as this acquisition is concerned, Microsoft’s comments above sure should have regulators raising their eyebrows.
Filed Under: antitrust, call of duty, competition, uk
Companies: activision blizzard, microsoft, sony
Comments on “Leaked Doc From Microsoft To UK’s CMA Says ’10 Years Enough For Sony To Make Its Own CoD’”
Should have just lead with that
Well that certainly clears up why they were being so cagey about giving a clear yes or no to the the ‘will this acquisition result in pulling the series from competing platforms?’ question, apparently it’s a solid ‘yes’ but they understood how poorly that would look to those in the various governments who were iffy on the deal due to competition concerns.
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Whatever the reason, obviously any company is going to be cagey about committing to something more than 10 years in the future, especially in a tech field where that’s literally a hardware generation (or maybe 2) that nobody knows anything about yet.
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Except they do seem to know what they already plan to do at the end of that ten years so it’s not like they were waffling because they weren’t sure what might happen down the road.
Had they just outright stated that they wouldn’t pull the series from competing platforms for the next decade but once that was over they planned on making it an MS exclusive that would at least have been honest.
Sony says WAHHH!!!!
Oh, wait, the company that pays for exclusives, and does everything it can to get games to release only on its platform and no one elses is suddenly worried about exclusives?
someone call the waaaaahhhhmbulance folks!
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So presumably they know what they’re talking about when it comes to anticompetitive practices that are bad for consumers.
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Sony didn’t say anything.
Sony made Planetside 2, which is a gem of a game. I read at the time they didn’t advertise it as much as they should have for what they had, which IMO was much better than the CoD (and even Battlefield) small maps of the time as Planetside had much higher player limits and large continent/island maps the size of a Fallout game for example. While I’m not clear on what happened exactly, Sony sold it after North Korea hacked them in that big attack over the movie.
Anyways though they made a solid CoD competitor but blew it somehow (it may be because it was linked technically somehow to Everquest Next which flopped). I actually wouldn’t mind if Sony made a Planetside 3 but I don’t think they have the rights anymore. PS2 is still running under different ownership and is free to play by the way, it has my recommendation. The lead dev gets complained about often as the major complaint I hear but I think that’s probably more political than being as bad as they say, though I didn’t watch their streams or read their posts to know for myself.
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They have had multiple competitors over the years, it’s just that none of them have even remotely the same reach CoD does. Most people don’t remember games like Killzone anymore these days.
Sony’s niche just isn’t the FPS genre, the strengths of their studios have always lied more with JRPGs and action games.
Microsoft would know I guess, they’ve spent 23 years successfully developing their flagship Xbox CoD alternative.
Oh, what’s that? Halo hasn’t been considered a serious competitor for at least 13 years? And the experts have confirmed that 13 is more than 10?
Never mind then.
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Halo 3 was a top multiplayer title for a decade. Do any CoD’s really survive past their 2 year release cycle?
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In M$’s eyes, that’s a feature, not a bug
Microsoft had their own massive shooter franchise. It's called Halo.
Problem is, Microsoft is also terrible at managing Halo as a brand and 343 Industries keeps stumbling around when it comes to actually making (or even remastering) mainline games (on top of overcomplicating the story). The franchise kinda fell from grace the moment Bungie jumped ship.
So Microsoft admitting they need to buy out existing successful franchises because they’re too incompetent to make their own is surprisingly honest.
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Meanwhile Sony Interactive is even worse at managing their own company, let alone reviving or creating their own shitty big-budget franchise.
I dunno, at least MS tries, though that’s not saying much.
I don’t get what all the fuss is about. Mergers & acquisitions always work out great for everybody. Just look at how well Blizzard has been doing since they got bought by Activision!
Ten years is roughly the life cycle for a major franchise like this to generally start having worse and worse instalments and for people to abandon it when something that offers either more, or offers a fresh twist on the experience people miss because it changed so much, comes along from a competitor.
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A great observation that falls in the face of call of duty’s longevity.
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Yes but it spent the era of its first three games in the shadow of more popular titles only really claiming the crown after 2007, and even then, there have been some utterly lambasted instalments that have seen many players sticking with other games that came out those years and waiting for the next CoD instead.
It’s unlikely Sony could make another FPS As good as Cod they would have to buy a studio that is skilled at making FPS military games ,plus in 10 years time extraction type shooters might be more popular than Cod 10 years is a long time many popular games from 10 years ago are now forgotten
Right now CsGo is the most popular FPS shooter game on Steam
No one can tell what games will be popular in 10 years as consoles become more powerful with 4k graphics displays
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Sony might just have to go out and buy a FPS specialist like, say, Bungie.
Oh wait.
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Or revive some of their older franchises…
You’re asking too much from Sony Interactive, however.
One of the big confusing things about this fight is the traditionally, hardware is a one time sale. To keep the games (the software that is) interesting, requires buying more an more add-ons. Also, there has been a lot of discussion in the past that the hardware is either a loss leader or breakeven sale for the company. However; software is generally profitable. As in, producing the next copy of the software, especially as a download costs close to nothing.
Why on earth would every game producer not want to be cross platform? More software sales have a trivial cost to produce. Oh, and how about the Minecraft folks, they are stopping the sale of Minecraft because it is costing them too much money???? Sony and Microsoft are too confused over selling hardware and software. They should concentrate on one or the other (and get good at it).
Companies are way too interested in controlling the entire vertical integration in order to become a monopoly and “make more money.” On the other hand, they get so busy trying to squeeze out every nickel and dime that they alienate their customers and those customers move on to somebody else.
Re: Game producer yes, hardware producer no
You’re right, a game producer wouldn’t.
Like you said, Microsoft doesn’t get a lot of profit from the hardware, but they sure rake it in with their subscription services.
More exclusives means (they believe) more people will want to get XBoxes. And more XBoxes means more game passes, which == profit.
Cod is avaidable on sony consoles ,sony sells more consoles than microsoft at the moment , sony is maybe afriad that for instance when theres a new xbox console launched Cod will get dlc or certain maps released first
on xbox consoles before it gets a sony console release.
it makes no economic sense to have call of duty be an xbox exclusive .
A pox on all their houses
All the players here appear to be monopolists.
Merging would-be monopolies will help … how, exactly?
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It gets Bobby Kotick a new yacht. That could create up to twenty crew jobs!
Where’s the bacon?
Back here in the real world, does anyone in the gaming community (outside of the tiny group of Sony loyalists) actually care?? 10 years. The current PlayStation is going to be long gone by then. With the knowledge that you can play COD elsewhere, buy a different system.
10 years from now there won’t any new anything from a major company on the platform.
Man, it’s ten years in the future. Microsoft’s absolutely right about this; that’s boatloads of time and hardware changes down the line, and we’re not talking about standing up a new fibre network or something here. It’s a game, and even if games get movie-level funding these days, well, it’s not like MS is the only player in the space to have that kind of cash either.