It shouldn't take more than 10 years for Sony to produce a viable Call of Duty competitor, according to Microsoft. The spat between the two gargantuan gaming companies continues to escalate over the issue of Microsoft attempting to acquire Activision Blizzard, with the Xbox company having come up with an all-new batch of arguments to solidify its case.
While many gaming studios support Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard, it's only natural that the company's biggest rival wouldn't be quite so keen on accepting it. Over the past months, Sony has come up with a whole slew of reasons why the deal should not go through without major changes to, for example, Activision Blizzard's held IP rights, and Call of Duty is at the center of it all.
Microsoft just released a fairly heavily redacted response to the UK's Competition and Markets Authority on the topic of whether Activision Blizzard should keep Call of Duty, in the event that the acquisition gets greenlit by all the pertinent authorities. One of the most interesting comments Microsoft issued via this document is that the company believes Sony would be more than capable of producing a solid alternative to the Call of Duty franchise over the course of the next 10 years.
This information should be considered with additional context, of course. Specifically, Microsoft offered Sony a 10-year COD deal, during which time the franchise would remain available on PlayStation consoles. Sony did not accept it, however, and continued issuing statements in an attempt to put the deal in a negative light with authorities. The aforementioned document has come about as a response to the CMA's latest Remedies Hearing, where the regulator asked for Microsoft's input on a number of issues concerning the Activision Blizzard deal.
In the interim, Sony argues that Xbox's Call of Duty offer would "irreparably harm competition" in the grand scheme of things. The interplay between Sony and Microsoft is bound to continue as regulatory bodies from across the globe assess the deal and its potential problems, and it doesn't seem like it's necessarily about to wrap up all that quickly.
One of the latest updates on the acquisition is that attornies have said that Sony "lost control" over the Activision Blizzard narrative as of late. Some believe that the conversation has simply moved on from Sony's perceived grievances and that the company doesn't actually have a legal foot to stand on anymore. Many governments have already accepted the merits of the deal, and though it's all but certain that Sony will continue drawing things out for Microsoft, the scale may have already tipped in favor of the latter.
Source: Eurogamer