The repurchase from Activision-Blizzard by Microsoft has not finished talking about him. Lately, we can see the various regulatory bodies stepping up their investigations around the takeover, which seems to be normal for a deal of this magnitude. And while Microsoft is going out of its way to show its credentials, declaring that its ambition is not to take Activision-Blizzard’s licenses away from its competitors, sony also seems to go out of its way to make the deal go through so easily, especially when using call of duty as leverage.
The towel burns between Jim Ryan and Phil Spencer
As we know, the main issue surrounding this takeover is call of duty and its dissemination. Phil Spencer and his teams have multiplied the declarations indicating that no, call of duty was not going to become an Xbox exclusivesince they would have nothing to gain from this.
Phil Spencer even indicated that he wrote to Jim Ryan, his counterpart at PlayStation, to reassure him on the subject and assure him that call of duty was going to stay on PlayStation, even beyond the current deal between PlayStation and Activision.
It’s now the turn of jim ryan to speak about the game via GamesIndustry.biz, and he is obviously all cheeky (and very smart). He indicates that he hadn’t originally planned to respond publicly to any of this, but since Spencer did, he saw no reason not to as well.
Call of Duty still on PlayStation, but for how long?
It indicates that Microsoft’s offer about call of duty was ” inadequate on many levels » :
“ I didn’t mean to comment on what I thought was a private business discussion, but I feel the need to set the record straight because Phil Spencer introduced it to the public. Microsoft didn’t offer Call of Duty to stay on PlayStation until three years after Activision’s current deal with Sony ended. After nearly 20 years of Call of Duty on PlayStation, their proposal was inadequate on many levels and failed to consider the impact on our players. We want to ensure that PlayStation players continue to have the highest quality experience for Call of Duty, and Microsoft’s proposal undermines that principle. »
So Phil Spencer’s initial offer was fine to keep call of duty on PlayStation for a limited time, no doubt to negotiate more severely after these three years. And if Jim Ryan declares all this today, it is not for nothing.
With this statement, he certainly intends to put pressure on Microsoft, which is being scrutinized by market regulators, especially on the issue call of duty. We may not go so far as to say that Ryan wants to derail the deal (although), but this kind of statement somewhat forces Microsoft to show once again that it does not intend to deprive PlayStation of the license, and therefore to offer a better proposal to PlayStation to ensure this (a story that regulators are less afraid of).
It is therefore a sacred battle which takes place behind the scenes, and which could still cause a lot of ink to flow.