Sony agrees to 10-year Call of Duty deal with Microsoft

Sony has agreed to a 10-year deal for Call of Duty with Microsoft to keep the franchise on PlayStation after the proposed Activision Blizzard acquisition. Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer says Sony and Microsoft have agreed to a “binding agreement” to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation.

This ends a bitter battle between the companies that has been waged both privately and publicly over the past year after Microsoft announced its proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard in January 2022.

once Microsoft decided to keep CoD multiplatform this was a forgone conclusion.

turns out, businesses want to keep the money faucet on.

Anytime a company buys another company, they should be legally forced to add that company's name onto the end of their name. I bet people would have some more questions to ask "Xbox-Activision-Blizzard-King-Bethesda-Obsidian-Rare-InExile-Double Fine-Ninja Theory-Mojang" than just "But what about CoD?" if that where the case.

I don't believe you. I mean, I believe you that they made a deal that means that everyone who is already rich will stay that way. There's no way this has only been going on since last January. It feels so much longer.

That's it Sony, you've got 10 years to consider making your own first person shooter.

I personally don't care about Call of Duty along with a majority of shooter game franchises so I don't mind about that, however, I still like Cyberpunk 2077 (Also an action RPG) and the Halo series.

WIll Playstation owners finally shut the fuck up then?

@cikame: Are we going to go through ANOTHER round of "Sony makes a Halo killer" but for Call of Duty this time? Because that was a fun discourse!

@brian_: Uhh, do you know how many companies MICROSOFT has bought? You could maybe do this for Xbox but for Microsot as a whole...

And just for comedy purposes I understand why you didn't include Skype but you really need to add Nokia.

@bigsocrates: I'm less concerned with Microsoft buying their way into other markets than I am with our moving towards the future where the only major video game companies in the U.S. are owned by Microsoft, EA, and Take-Two.

get dabbed on sony ponys no Cabelas big game hunter remakes for you! you'll have to make due with call of duty

@brian_: Not to worry then! Sony also owns a bunch of major US based video game companies! As does Embracer depending on your definition of major!

And Valve doesn't really make many video games but I think it's fair to call them a major video game company!

Also Warner Brothers Interactive maybe sort of not really!

Honestly, though, I don't see EA remaining independent for the next decade. I doubt Microsoft will buy them because the Activision purchase was a specific time and place decision (partially fueled by Microsoft having a big pot of cash at the time) but I could see Amazon or maybe even Google scarfing them up.

@bigsocrates: I wonder what the state of Call of Duty will even be in 10 years, the way i see it COD4 was massive, then it slowly went down and down, then Modern Warfare was massive (ironic), now it's slowly going down and down, it could go around a 3rd time or it could crash, 10 years is a long time.

So all of this drama for nothing. Hilarious.

I sincerely hope that Call of Duty will no longer be a relevant franchise 10 years from now.

@cikame: I would not count Call of Duty out. It ebbs and flows a little but it is routinely the top selling game of the year and often the most played game on major platforms like PlayStation

In some ways it's as much an institution as Mario or Zelda, and we all see how they continue to sell almost 40 years after they first appeared on console.

It won't be the #1 franchise forever but it will be relevant.

yeah- as much as they're personally irrelevant to me (last CoD i played was 2009's MW2), in 10 years time i very much expect the CoD brand to be alive.

will there still be people buying a console just to play CoD? my guess is probably not- we're on the outer edge of pop cultural institutions like Indiana Jones beginning to fade, so give it another decade or so and we'll see where we're at. relevance does require constant reinvestment and energy to maintain, so that's kinda up to Microsoft now.

but they'll have a product (most likely a sub) to sell the boomers who remember playing CoD as tyke on Xbox Live, no doubt.

That's not as much time as you think it is. Assuming they have a concept ready, there's another 4-6 years of development after that.

As others have said Call of Duty has an enduring quality to it that just sells. To compete against it seems like a fool's errand. At best, you want an alternative but Battlefield kinda has that covered.

@av_gamer All of that drama for:

• Revenues from the best selling retail game.
• Revenues from the most profitable MMO
• Revenues from a mobile game juggernaut
• Tony motherfucking Hawk?

Sony went about it like dicks but I can't see how anyone would've played it another way. There is a looming shadow over this acquisition that makes a massive entity even larger. An entity that always had the resources to pull something like this off in a way that Sony possibly couldn't.

@shindig: I'll admit, if this leads to them remaking Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3 and 4, like they did 1 and 2, or a new game in the franchise that is not the disaster TH5 was, then it could be worth it. As far COD, that series will always have a place, no matter what happens or who owns it. Its too big to fail, even when they release the occasional stinker.

I just heard something about apple buying disney and thats more of a worry for me

Don't really care for Call of Duty on Playstation.