30 Jan. (Portaltic/EP) –
The Director of Communications at Microsoft, Frank Shaw, ha charged to sony to give information that is “nothing further from reality” at European regulatory authorities in Brussels about the parity of call of dutyif the Xbox manufacturer buys Activision Blizzard.
Microsoft reached an agreement at the beginning of 2022 with the video game developer Activision Blizzard to carry out its purchase for around 60,300 millions of euros. Since then sony, the maker of Xbox’s main competitor platform, has manifested against of this acquisition, alleging that it could result in a microsoft monopoly in the video game industry.
Sony also stresses that this purchase could jeopardize the maintenance of games published by Activision Blizzard on PlayStation. games like call of dutyone of the most successful of this developer and of the video game industry.
However, Microsoft confirmed in December of last year that offered Sony a contractual agreement to maintain the Call of Duty franchise available on the Japanese manufacturer’s console for ten years. This agreement would form part of a Microsoft’s attempt to avoid blocks from relevant regulatory bodies from several countries, which are currently investigating the purchase of the developer. Among them, United States and the European Union.
Now according to has indicated Frank Shaw, sony has been informing the authorities in Brussels that Microsoft “is not willing to offer them parity of Call of Duty” if they acquire Activision Blizzard, to which he has responded that “nothing is further from the truth” and has referred to the contract offered to Sony.
“We have made it clear that we have offered Sony a ten-year contract to give them parity in time, content, functions, quality, gameplay and any other aspect of the game”, has sentenced the director of Communications of Microsoft through Twitter.
I hear Sony is briefing people in Brussels claiming Microsoft is unwilling to offer them parity for Call of Duty if we acquire Activision.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
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—Frank X. Shaw (@fxshaw) January 28, 2023
In this sense, he stressed that the company is “happy” that this agreement to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation can be reflected through “a contract, regulatory agreements or other means.” In addition, he has stressed that Sony is the “console market leader” and that It would “defy business logic” to exclude PlayStation gamers from the Call of Duty ecosystem.
For all this, he has transmitted that the objective of Xbox is bring Call of Duty and other games to “more people around the world so that they can play where and how they want”. As an example, he has referred to Minecraftwhich continues to be released on PlayStation and Nintendo Switch, after it acquired its developers, Mojang, in 2014.
Sony is the console market leader and it would defy business logic for us to exclude PlayStation gamers from the Call of Duty ecosystem.
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—Frank X. Shaw (@fxshaw) January 28, 2023
