Sony has signed an agreement with Microsoft to ensure the availability of Call Of Duty on Playstation consoles for the next ten years. This decision came after Sony failed to convince European Union regulators that Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision-Blizzard would lead to anti-competitive business practices.
Activision-Blizzard is one of the largest video game vendors in the world, and Microsoft owns one of the largest game platforms in the world (Xbox) as well as the largest desktop PC operating system (OS) in the world (Windows). Purchasing Activision-Blizzard would give Microsoft the ability to stop making versions of Activision’s games (one of their largest is Call Of Duty) available for platforms outside of Xbox and Windows. Whether or not they will actually do that is a topic for another day.
Ownership of Activision-Blizzard would also enable them to keep Activision’s games and their developers from participating in or using cross-platform game libraries, engines and other tools that could allow players to use platforms other than Windows or Xbox. On the other hand, sacrificing Playstation’s large user base with such a move would present it’s own drawbacks.
