Sony and Microsoft had a private meeting on February 6 to negotiate the Call of Duty license.
Florian Mueller AKA FOSSpatents was able to verify the details of the flight. Sony executives flew from London to Seattle on a Dassault Falcon 8X, a plane that is registered to Sony itself as the owner, and also its operator.
This is the first major step forward that would suggest that Sony will finally make a deal with Microsoft for the video game franchise to continue to be published under their platforms.
Microsoft brokered a deal to acquire Activision, but that deal has been stalled following investigations by antitrust and competition regulators around the globe. Sony has been the most vocal opponent of the deal, claiming that Call of Duty exclusivity on Microsoft platforms would harm competition.
Microsoft actually preempted this argument, revealing that they have been offering their competitors ten year deals for parity on Call of Duty games. Nintendo accepted the deal, Valve rejected it, stating it was unnecessary as they trusted they would get that parity, and Sony was the only one to reject it.
Most recently, word got around that Sony had stopped communicating with Microsoft. This was a claim that even Activision Blizzard King CEO Bobby Kotick repeated in an interview, though Sony denied this claim.
Earlier this week, documents Sony sent to the FTC accused Microsoft of harassing Sony by weaponizing their subpoena. While the validity of Sony’s complaint is up for debate, it was a clear indication that things had started to heat up for both companies, for the first time since possibly the sixth generation of consoles. It’s certainly been a strange turn of events, if you remember that only four years ago, Sony and Microsoft were publicly demonstrating they were collaborating on certain projects, including cloud solutions for video games and AI.
If Sony is finally making that deal, it may be because it is no longer advantageous for them to try to delay or curtail this deal. While the CMA still represents a significant threat to the deal going through, the possible alternate outcomes of the CMA decision don’t all come up in Sony’s favor.
For example, if Microsoft agrees to have a new company run Call of Duty for the UK markets independently, that new company may not give Sony a favorable deal. While it could be something to gamble on, guaranteeing parity for future Call of Duty games is a safer bet.
If Sony is finally making that deal, it could finally mean an end to this ordeal that Microsoft and Activision Blizzard King have gone through. There are still other players and roadblocks in the way, but this was the biggest hurdle to getting the deal approved, and it may just be over.
