Microsoft President Brad Smith has revealed that Sony’s current deal for Call of Duty is expiring next year.
In an interview with CNBC, Brad said this when asked about signing a deal with Sony themselves:
“Well, we’re offering to Sony the same thing we’ve offered to Nintendo and Nvidia. Especially for Call of Duty: ten year agreement, legally binding. So that, when we bring out a new version of Call of Duty on Xbox, it will be available on Sony PlayStation; on the same day, on the same terms, with the same features. It really ensures parity. I think everybody who would look at it would say it’s a better deal for Sony than the one they have right now with Activision Blizzard that will expire next year.”
We had previously covered that the current deal Sony has with Activision Blizzard for Call of Duty makes them more money for each Call of Duty game sold on PlayStation, because they have a more favorable split with Activision than what most game stores get. So it may be hard to understand, what does Brad Smith mean when he says the deal Microsoft has drafted for Sony is better than the one they have now with Activision?
Well, that would require we go back to the history of Activision’s dealmaking with Xbox and Microsoft when it comes to Call of Duty.
As covered by Tweaktown, the original dealmaker was actually Microsoft, not Sony. Microsoft signed a deal in 2009, then extended for a total of five years, for Call of Duty to arrive to Xbox 360 one month before the PlayStation 3. This was one of the key decisions Microsoft made that put their Xbox 360 ahead of the PlayStation 3 for the duration of the actual lifetime of the seventh generation of consoles.
The deal that Activision signed with Sony now started in 2015. Sony did not mandate a similarly harsh one month gap for Call of Duty releases for their PlayStation 4. Instead, Sony received a bevy of exclusive content. This included DLC, game modes, betas, in various degrees of exclusivity and timed exclusivity.
Unlike the earlier Microsoft deal, we didn’t know how long the Sony deal for Call of Duty was, up until now.
So, Microsoft’s offer to Sony for Call of Duty is definitely longer than the deal that Sony originally got from Activision.
Whatever money got passed around between Sony and Activision for their 2015 deal, getting this new deal from Microsoft would actually be a huge relief. It guarantees Call of Duty games for the rest of the PlayStation 5’s lifetime, and for some of the PlayStation 6’s lifetime as well. But then, Sony may be looking a bit harder at the third party margin they’ve received from Activision thus far, or they just want to ruin everything for Microsoft.
Whatever the case, the extension Sony received to make this deal more favorable for them is ending soon, if it hasn’t fully closed. If Microsoft’s one-two punch of getting deals with Nintendo and Nvidia works, regulators may find themselves forced to approve the deal, with considerably less room for concessions from Microsoft.
You can watch the full interview below.
