by If you’ve already missed a new episode of the soap opera starring Activision Blizzard, Microsoft and Sony, then there’s some more news. The situation remains deadlocked and tension between the companies is rising.
Sony reportedly met with regulators recently over its acquisition of the game maker, but a Microsoft communications director said the Japanese company lied to European executives.
Microsoft accuses Sony of lying to European regulators
There is some more news about Microsoft's purchase of Activision Blizzard, a deal that has caused a lot of controversy and a lot of obstacles put up above all by Sony. In short, the PlayStation 5 company fears that the market could make some popular games, such as Call of Duty, exclusive to Xbox platforms, thus leaving out its availability for PlayStation.
So Sony recently spoke to regulators in Europe at a time when the European Union was preparing to issue an "antitrust" warning to Microsoft. But Microsoft's communications director, Frank X. Shaw, took to his Twitter account to say that the Japanese company had lied to European regulators about Microsoft's position on the Activision Blizzard acquisition.
According to reports, Frank says that Sony would accuse the Xbox company of not being interested in bringing equality to the Call of Duty game across the various platforms if the deal closes. Thus, the director of communications at Microsoft posted that “I heard that Sony is informing people in Brussels that Microsoft is not willing to offer Call of Duty equality if we acquire Activision. It couldn't be further from the truth".
I hear that Sony is letting people in Brussels know that Microsoft is not willing to give them Call of Duty parity if we acquire Activision.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
1/4
— Frank X. Shaw (@fxshaw) January 28, 2023
On Twitter, Frank also reinforced Microsoft's proposal to offer CoD 1o support for the PlayStation, which it did for the Nintendo Switch.
We were clear that we offered Sony a 10-year deal to give them parity in time, content, features, quality, playability and every other aspect of the game.
We have also said that we are happy to make this enforceable through a contract, regulatory agreements or other means.
2/4
— Frank X. Shaw (@fxshaw) January 28, 2023
Currently, Sony hosts the most CoD players, but the Redmond company has already said that, for this very reason, it does not make sense to deny players access to the game on rival platforms.
