The first day of litigation with Microsoft and Activision Blizzard, the acquisition of which wants to block the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), brought a lot of interesting things. They now include information from the VP of Xbox.
Sarah Bond said in a San Francisco court that Microsoft had to back off to keep Call of Duty on Xbox. Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision Blizzard, demanded an increase in Microsoft’s revenue share.. If Microsoft hadn’t backed off, it would have been more than obvious that the popular action shooter wouldn’t be coming to Xbox.
“Time was against us” she said in her court testimony, Bond, saying they have players they don’t want to let down. “In the end, we made a decision that was the best for the company,” she added.
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An FTC spokesman explained in the courtroom that by default Microsoft takes 30% of the revenue and the other 70% goes to the publisher/developer, but Activision Blizzard was pushing for 80% of the revenue. Apparently, Activision has the same conditions and its rival PlayStation. However, Sony has a much bigger deal with Call of Duty. She even Xbox bans mention of Call of Duty outside of its channels.
“We wanted to show that Call of Duty Vanguard is coming out on Xbox, but we were told we can’t do it on YouTube or any other place where customers who aren’t our customers can see it.” Bond continued.
Microsoft may have mentioned Call of Duty on the Xbox website over time, as well as on its own Xbox Twitter account. But he couldn’t mention the famous brand in his presentations because non-Xbox users could also see him live on YouTube. At the same time, Microsoft only wanted to show at the end of the presentation the logos of the games that will be released on the Xbox in the coming year, among them they wanted Call of Duty, but could not.
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When asked if there were other games with the same marketing exclusivity, Bond replied that Hogwarts legacy, which was released earlier this year. As we could all see, the action-adventure from the world of Harry Potter was can only be seen at PlayStation presentations and it was too much exclusive content for PS5 players as a side quest.
In court, Bond mentioned a 10-year deal with Nvidia, Nintendo and Valve to bring Call of Duty to the GeForce Now cloud service, the Nintendo console and Steam. That is, other players. Microsoft will also look to provide more support for Call of Duty and other games on smartphones and tablets as that is the largest market. It matters $145 billion and Microsoft has only 0.3%. With Studio King (authors of mobile hits including Candy Crush), which is owned by Activision Blizzard, he wants to change that. Previously, there was talk of an Xbox/Microsoft Store extension that would compete with Google Play and the App Store.
As we have just seen, prior to the announcement of the historic acquisition (January 2022), Microsoft’s relationship with Activision Blizzard was not ideal. However, the two companies have been in talks since early 2022, with Bobby Kotick keeping in touch with and “fighting” for Xbox.
Sony’s contract for Call of Duty marketing exclusives (and other perks) expires next year.. Bond added that Call of Duty may arrive on Game Pass no earlier than January 2025.
Source :Indian TV
