Sony and Microsoft announced Sunday that they have mutually agreed to a 10-year deal that will guarantee that the Call of Duty franchise will continue to be available on current and future PlayStation consoles. The agreement was announced by both companies on social media.
“We are pleased to announce that Microsoft and PlayStation have signed a binding agreement to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation following the acquisition of Activision Blizzard,” wrote Head of Xbox Phil Spencer in a social media post on Sunday. “We look forward to a future where players globally have more choice to play their favorite games.”
While Spencer did not note terms in his post, Axios reporter Stephen Totilo says that Sony has confirmed the length of the deal as 10 years.
Sony, the last holdout in the story, finally joins Nintendo, Nvidia, Valve’s Steam platform, and many others in signing deals with Microsoft to secure the Call of Duty franchise on their respective platforms, and clear a major hurdle for Microsoft.
It is tough to imagine that any government regulatory agency in any country can now oppose the $69B USD deal. There are some holdouts, as of this writing, including the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, but with the acquisition deadline of July 18 coming up fast, what happens on Monday (July 17) really matters.
We will continue to follow this story as it develops.