How badly does Microsoft want to close their deal to purchase Activision Blizzard King? Expect to be surprised.
We had previously reported that Sony gets a plum deal with Activision when it comes to Call of Duty. In fact, they get a favorable publisher/platform split for every copy of Call of Duty sold on PlayStation.
Sony themselves revealed this provision in their deal, in documents they gave to the CMA. They argued that even if Microsoft offered them a ten year deal, that they would not receive a deal like this from their competitor.
So guess what? Microsoft has been offering that kind of deal to Sony for Call of Duty.
As summarized by IDAS on ResetEra, from a report originally from Equity Report UK;
“The second lawyer also says that MS is offering provisions ensuring that Sony gets the game at a discount of the Microsoft price and any new version of the game at the same time as MS.”
Microsoft is now willing to go as far as to propose an unfavorable situation for them when it comes to Call of Duty. If Sony accepts this arrangement, they will maintain a larger margin for every Call of Duty game sold on PlayStation than Microsoft gets on Xbox. Sony’s competitor, Microsoft, will themselves be paying them that margin, and they have to do it for the next decade, all the way through the upcoming tenth generation of video game consoles.
At this point, one would be wondering what Microsoft is even going to get out of this deal. But that line of thinking would be based on the idea that Microsoft is trying to dominate consoles, the way it did during the original launch of the Xbox under Bill Gates’ watchful eye.
Xbox head honcho Phil Spencer recently spoke at length about the finer details of this in a new interview with the Times. As covered by Video Games Chronicle, Xbox will continue to exist if this deal does not go through.
Furthermore, Phil elaborated that Microsoft does not want to see the console market go into the direction the mobile game market is in, the same market Microsoft hopes to disrupt with this Activision deal. Phil explains they want to see Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft thrive together in the console space.
And with that, Phil raises the elephant in the room; that in spite of how big console gaming seems to its most ardent fans, that it has the ‘real’ games unlike mobile gaming, the real money in video games is actually in mobile.
If you look at the industry in that bigger picture, Microsoft’s enthusiasm for console games is probably genuine. Even if they’re the third or fourth biggest player in the market, it’s a market where they’ve seen considerable success, far more than with Zune, or their efforts on mobile so far.
It may be strange to us, but giving Sony everything they want would make sense to Microsoft. What Microsoft really wants is in the finer details of that Activision deal we don’t know about. I think it’s a ten year plan of its own, that could see Microsoft publish Genshin Impact or Fortnite level successes on Android and iOS, before Microsoft then leverages that following to launch their own mobile gaming plans. That could be a new Microsoft mobile OS, or as they’ve hinted at before, a Microsoft mobile market, that regulators will force Android and iOS to host on their platforms.
In fact, we just reported on Microsoft offering every Activision Blizzard King game coming on every platform for ten years, which still sounds too good to be true. If there’s a potential catch to that offer, it would be that Microsoft has an even bigger plan in mind.
