In its biggest public bid to win approval for the $100 billion Activision takeover, Microsoft has offered Sony the right to include Call of Duty on its PS Plus subscription service.
This is on top of a ten-year licence for the PlayStation console.
Sony has also struck a similar deal to bring Call of Duty to Nintendo consoles for the next ten years.
To that end, Microsoft President Brad Smith told the US Federal Trade Commission it would sign a legally-binding agreement guaranteeing this.
The FTC instead will move to block the deal, concerned it will “enable Microsoft to suppress competitors to its Xbox gaming consoles and its rapidly growing subscription content and cloud-gaming business”.
This is despite PlayStation having 286 exclusive games compared with Xbox’s 59, as Smith explained at the company’s annual shareholder meeting yesterday.
“The thing that probably disappoints me is not that we will have to present this case to a judge in a court because this is a case in which I have great confidence,” Smith said.
“I’m disappointed that the FTC didn’t give us the opportunity to even sit down with the staff to even talk about our proposal to even see if there was a solution there.
“The FTC’s case is really based on a market that they’ve identified that they say has two companies and two products, Sony PlayStation, and Microsoft Xbox.
“If you look at the global market, Sony has 70 per cent of that market, and we have 30 per cent.
“So the first thing a judge is going to have to decide is whether the FTC lawsuit is a case that will promote competition or is it really instead of case that will protect the largest competitor from competition.”
