Sony strongly opposes Activision Blizzard’s acquisition of Microsoft’s “Call of Duty” PS platform to continue to sell

Microsoft’s US$69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard has entered the final stage. Most of the legal procedures are no longer a problem. The rest is the attitude of the review agencies and rival Sony. Sony strongly opposes this acquisition. Microsoft also promised that the super IP “Call of Duty” game will continue to be sold on the Sony PS platform.

According to reports, insiders revealed that Microsoft, in order to get Sony to agree to the acquisition,A $1 billion deal has been proposed to Sony so that Call of Duty could run on the latter’s PlayStation console.

Additionally, the proposal includes the right to sell the game on the PlayStation Plus service — a service that gives users access to a bundle of games for a monthly fee.

However, Sony has not yet accepted this proposal, and they are still concerned about it.

In this transaction case, “Call of Duty” became the focus because this IP is the highest-selling game on Sony’s platform. The game is released almost every year, and the annual gold-absorbing masterpiece is the same for this year’s “Call of Duty 19”.

According to Sony, as of April 2022,“Call of Duty” has sold 25 million copies a year on the PS platform, which can be said to be a major contributor to Sony’s PS business.

Therefore, for Sony, once Activision Blizzard is acquired, they are worried that the “Call of Duty” series will become exclusive to Microsoft’s Xbox platform. Although Microsoft has repeatedly promised to continue to sell on the PS platform, Sony is still worried.