Microsoft Said It Offered FTC 'Legally Binding Consent Decree' on Call of Duty - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 13 December 2022 / 3,956 Views
Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith at Microsoft's annual shareholder meeting on Tuesday and reported by Bloomberg has stated the company did offer the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) a "legally binding consent decree" to keep Call of Duty on gaming rivals, including Sony.
Smith says the FTC didn't give Microsoft the chance to sit down with the staff to talk about the proposal.
"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 last week announced it would seek to block Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard claiming the deal would give Microsoft the ability to suppress its competitors in gaming. The deal is not only the largest in Microsoft history, but also the largest in the video game industry as a whole.
There was a report that Microsoft offered Sony the right to add Call of Duty to its PlayStation Plus subscription service if its deal to acquire Activision Blizzard is approved. This offer would be in addition to the guarantee that Microsoft will release Call of Duty games on PlayStation, Nintendo, and Steam for the next 10 years.
Microsoft last week announced Microsoft has entered a 10-year commitment with Nintendo to bring Call of Duty to Nintendo platforms if Microsoft's Activision Blizzard acquisition is approved.
The company offered the same deal to Valve to guarantee the series on Steam, however, Valve President Gabe Newell says he did not sign Microsoft's long-term Call of Duty commitment has he trusts their intentions.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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So the FTC didn't even sit down and meet with MS about the proposal? Wow. It just comes off as very unprofessional.
FTC is playing politics.
The US government is out to get the best for themselves. At all costs, especially yours. Politics is just another way of saying,...hey, look over there! It doesn't matter which way you are facing, your ass end is always sitting there ready for the fucking.
I don't disagree with that, though I'm not sure how it applies here.
It's just the drunk fortune-cookie ramblings of the bored.
So, say Apple were to buy out Valve (Steam) and Alphabet inc (Google, YouTube), being that they’re smaller tech companies than Microsoft (according to you), you’d be OK with this?
Because if not, why do you think it’s alright for (what’s in your opinion) an even larger tech to start swallowing up large companies?
This isn't a matter of free speech or anything, it's about anti trust. The FTC's job is to protect the consumer from big companies (like Microsoft) from becoming uncontrollable monopolies.
If they blocked Coca cola from buying Dr Pepper and 7up in the 80's and At&T from buying every damn phone company in existence, they can block Microsoft. M$ and their fans seem to think that money means they can just buy up everything that they want.
Thank god the government won't Microsoft ruin the gaming industry.
Spoken like someone who has no idea how the FTC operates. The FTC doesn't give a fuck about consumers. The FTC has revolving door of of people moving between big business and government. They are effectively controlled by big business. They're an instrument of regulatory capture.
Depends really we don't know anything except what's being said by MS. For all we know the FTC didn't sit down with them because the FTC simply doesn't want the deal to go through period. At some point all the consolidation of all these gaming studios has to be stopped. Is this the time to stop it? I don' t know but I think we can all agree that Sony and MS shouldn't just be allowed to purchase every major gaming studio there is.
I can't believe how stupid the FTC has been. -_-
You can't believe how stupid government has been? Really?
I tried giving them the benefit of the doubt. Then this article came up.
Microsoft shot themselves in the foot by how they handled the Besthesda deal. At first everything was going to stay multiplat and one of their most anticipated games, Starfield, became an exclusive.
Everyone and their mom knows that they will do the exact same thing with CoD by making exclusive entries.
FTC has contempt for any evidence that supports this easy to approve deal.
FTC will fail in this case and it will be a deserved loss, but like all fraudulent politicians & their agents, they will sell this as the FTC "trying" to fight big tech.
Non stop PR sham.
Gamers is the last thing on the FTC mind. Disgraceful
That’s right and good for those on a budget
Of course not, but they should at least do their due diligence which they clearly haven't.
Why doesn't microsoft offer an "in perpetuity " deal
No company on the planet would guarantee a series "in perpetuity". Market conditions can change. CoD popularity could plummet to the point where it no longer is financially viable to port to PS, or a level of crunch might be required to get a PS version out at launch without the Xbox and PC versions also suffering, that would put undue hardship on the devs, and Xbox would be unable to delay the PS version due to the terms of their deal. All kinds of possible scenarios that would make an "in perpetuity" deal a bad idea.
I hope the FTC is successful. Microsoft has its fingers in everything, even in politics, they assert their interests by providing the parties with money.
Microsoft definitely needs to be stripped of power...
great, give em hell ftc
I have never ever in my life seen so many people praying and begging for big tech to get bigger. What some would do for validation, lol.
This has become about governments not properly doing their job lol. It's one thing for the FTC to sit down with MS, not like what their offer is on concessions on the potential deal and then sue to block, but it's another thing entirely for the FTC to not even bother and just go "boo big tech bad, we sue" Brazil has probably been the only regulatory body that's had a lick of sense through this mess.
I have never ever in my life seen so many people praying and begging for government agencies to ignore protocol even with so many other major gaming companies agreeing the purchase should be passed, including the backing of major workers unions. It's like everyone wants ActiBlizz employees to be stuck in the shithole they've been in.
But thats the thing, i dont think this is a bad thing. Sure if the was only a small few developers making games. But in the dynamic video game market where the is 1000's of companys making games this is just one company buying another to me. And it gives Nintendo and PC gamepass players benefits . For Nintendo gamers they will once again get CoD, for pc gamers we will be able to play CoD using our gamepass subs. hell even Sony is getting benefits as Ms said they would allow the game on PS+. Only people i see mostly complaining about this are some Sony fans.
If the regulators won't step in and stop what Sony has been doing (timed hatted like 7 or 8 AAA games in just 3 years already), then Xbox's only possible recourses are to start timed hatting AAA's again themselves (which Phil doesn't want to do) or to acquire a bunch of studios to counteract Sony. They went with the latter. And now some of the regulators are fighting them on it, even though their concessions are acceptable and 3 regulators have already approved the deal.
Concessions offered by MS are there only to buy their way through scrutiny. If people had it their way here, government should never interfere and consumers should simply accept to get screwed up down the line, even more than they are right now. Some people can’t get rid of their emotional attachment to the brand they jerk off to to look at the bigger picture and see or imagine further than the current generation. Incapable of seeing more than one possible outcome to this kind of behemoth deals.
I am seeing prominent lefties cheering this on just to score console wars points, it's pathetic. All along I thought the left has always had the right mindset when it comes to corporate consolidation, it's bad, and the downsides outweigh the benefits. I'd have more respect for these people if they were honest about what they're cheering for lol
Except we know that Xbox offered Sony the first CoD deal before the regulatory process even began, I remember reading an article 3 months ago that said that said that Xbox way back in January 2022 sent Sony a signed agreement guaranteeing Sony Call of Duty releases on PS5 for the remainder of this generation, which Sony refused to sign. Xbox increased the length of the deal to 10 years beyond the current Sony-CoD marketing agreement which ends in 2024, so through 2034, only after the regulatory process began, but they offered the first agreement before the regulatory process began.
There is zero indication that Xbox ever planned to make CoD exclusive. There is no incentive for them to do so, most Call of Duty games bring in over $2b in revenue lifetime, and currently Playstation accounts for more than half of that revenue per game I believe. Xbox is going to want to make alot of that $69b back as quickly as possible, so they have no intention of making it exclusive anytime soon. We already saw them keep the similarly large Minecraft multiplatform for basically an entire generation so far, including the new spinoff releases Minecraft Dungeons and Minecraft Legends.
Likewise, with Diablo 4 about to release, and Overwatch 2 having just released, and both being live service, we also know that Xbox has a policy of keeping live service games supported on PS after an acquisition, because they already did it with Zenimax's live-service games, Elder Scrolls Online and Fallout 76. Diablo 4 and Overwatch 2 will likely be the only Diablo and Overwatch games for the rest of this generation, and they may well plan to make Diablo 5 and Overwatch 3 multiplatform as well. If that happens, the only exclusives Xbox will get out of this whole acquisition anytime in the next 10+ years are small fry exclusives, Crash, Spyro, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, etc., certainly nothing big enough to be considered anti-competitive by regulators.
Xbox's goal for this acquisition has always been about Gamepass growth, not exclusivity.
Indeed, its like some Sony fans on this site doesnt give a shit about the workers or Governments ignoring protocol as long as their precious Sony is protected from big bad MS. Them using the excuse about "Big tech getting bigger" is just that an excuse as they would be all over this deal if it was Sony.
Whatever SONY anti-competitive tactic you'd think I'd support, I wouldn't. Why would you think that is beyond me.
This buyout is anti-competitive, full stop. The fact that we got used to regulatory bodies failing and allowing such farce doesn't make this particular buyout acceptable even when it's finally approved. Did we need proof that Meta will ultimately weaponise WhatsApp users information to supercharge Facebook data mining schemes? we didn't, and here we are.
Im on this site long enough to see you praise and embrace some of Sonys anti competitive tactics. This buyout is pro consumer. Its pro unions. This buyout would do much more good for the gaming community and the workers then any harm it would do to Sony. Meta and Whatsapp is not the same as a 3rd place console maker buying a publisher while the market leader for so many gens have been able to do proper anti competitive tactics with without any backlash since they entered the gaming market.
Haha what is going on? Anything? ANYthing? MSFT has purchased what, 15 studios in the past 2-3y? And your comment is that MSFT can’t buy anything? You people need to actually think about what you’re writing. There hasn’t been so much as a sneeze at MSFT’s other acquisitions, even Bethesda. This one is a little different. $69 billion different.
There is Sony bias on this topic as well, but the Xbox bias with this has been on another level. This deal is different from any deal that’s ever been attempted in all of video game history—and also from any deal in history outside of video games. This would be the largest acquisition in history—AND it has the ability to directly damage MSFT’s SINGULAR competitor. The arguments against the deal are really not that hard to understand. I feel like I’m taking crazy pills with the pro-MSFT/anti-PS ignorance on display.
That's only cause they bought 2 big ones. People have forgotten Sony history where they bought alot of companies which affected their competition hugely. Back then Sony killed the dreamcast, Sega saturn, game cube and n64 to name the a few.
Even with the largest purchase in history, ms still is in 3rd place in terms fo size
They are far away from becoming second which is where Sony is atm.
Doing some damage to sony is a gd thing right. Why is everyone afraid of a little competition. Sony hasn't had one in a very long time. Its about time they got some.
How would it damage sony if ms has offered them 10 years of cod, cod on psn plus. Cod on nintendo and steam. Don't see the logic there. This complaint from Sony has nothing to do with Cod. Its solely due to gamepass. Sony doesn't want to be in a position where people has a choice between having it on gamepass day 1 or allowing people to buy physical. It seems Sony is selfish and not wanting to give players options as to how they want to play cod. They want them to either buy their consoles or buy physical copies of the game at 70usd
I don't think it's accurate to say this buyout is "full stop" anti-competitive. It might lead to less competition in the console market. Maybe. Maybe not since they're going to keep their titles on Sony and Steam, and also bring them to Nintendo, for at least a time. But maybe, long-term, yes.
But it's not a full-stop anti-competitive buyout because of Microsoft's plans to grow Game Pass to challenge the dominance of the App Store and Google Play (and games are the majority of the traffic and profits of those walled gardens these days, apparently). Something very few entities could even joke about doing, but that Microsoft/Game Pass might just be able to pull off.
Again, Apple is opening iOS to third party apps, this is due to the new EU regulations. We didn't need corporate consolidation or bigger tech to solve the problem.
All you guys seem to be doing is justifying the buyout by laying out problems that will NOT be helped by further corporate consolidation. Just be honest, you care more about owning SONY boys than anything else, I'd have more respect for your cause if you honest with yourselves, but you are absolutely not.
Cause the buy out allows more people to play the game. U don't need a console to get access to gamepass. The number of users that play games on mobile, pc and laptop and Nintendo is more then what Sony can muster up in 1 console generation. It gives the ability to those who cant afford 70usd for every new game to be able to play nay game they want at any time. Is that a bad thing for gamers?. If the role was reversed and Sony bought abk, they would have kept it all to themselves
Here’s the thing: Sony wouldn’t do this deal. First of all, they’ve never done deals like this. They’ve almost exclusively acquired second party studios, and never a publisher to my knowledge. I do predict they will soon tho, bc they’d be incompetent not to after MSFT has tried to acquire the entire gaming industry.
Secondly, Sony doesn’t even come close to having the money. There are only 3 or 4 companies in the entire world that could make this acquisition, and Sony is far from one of them. Hell, Sony’s market cap isn’t even much larger than the $69bil ABK is being purchased for.
You could be right, but also, see reason number one; Sony has very rarely bought companies other than those they had a second party working relationship with, so their history would strongly suggest otherwise. No one in the history of video games has made acquisitions in the way and on the level that MSFT has in the past 3y.
I’m not a fan of Disney, and the Fox deal probably should’ve been blocked, but saying that deal is worse, let alone much worse, than this deal, is way off base.
How did the Disney deal directly harm its competitors? It didn’t. What did it take away from its competitors? Nothing. All that deal did was create one less production studio and make Disney bigger. Still unfortunate, but it didn’t actually harm the competition. And there were still around 6 major competitors remaining—including Sony Columbia.
The difference with this deal is that Sony and MSFT are platform holders that ABK released their games on, so this acquisition WILL directly harm PlayStation. How much is to be determined, but it will absolutely harm PS in some ways. Also, making things even worse is that there is really only ONE true competitor to Xbox—not 6 like in the movie industry.
Its not about wanting microsoft to get it , its about sony losing a couple franchises.
Mass downvotes and reports incoming !
So much for online forums being PS fanboys dominant, lol.
That's also my feeling...
I remember this place used to have a sizable Playstation community, but lately majority of users seems to be a bit too negative about Sony.
I mean, users here are advocating buying publishers and promoting industry consolidation!I have the impression that there is a lot of "revanchism" here, a grudge against Playstation.
Nothing against Sony but they are proving to be whiny babies. They buy companies all the time and never share but whine when others do it even after they were offered decent concessions. It's like Sony doesn't want any competition and want to be number 1 with out any competition from their rivals.
Again....
you can't compare money hat some games (something Xbox also does) and acquiring small/medium studios with no valuable IPs (except bungie, that's an almost idependent studios with self-publishing licence ) with acquiring a gigantic publisher with some of the most valuable Ip's in the industry like ABK !!!
It's like knife figth, but one of the guys brings a f@#$@ Shotgun and says:
"we both have weapons, it's fair..."
Paying to keep games off a platform makes no difference to the customers. Example: Sony said "you want to play Street Fighter 5, buy a PS4" whats the difference?
You’re twisting the facts.
Sony said: “You want SFV done? We’ll fund the project.“
Why shouldn’t the game be tied to the party that made it possible and financed it?
Do you put your newly bought gaming systems in your neighbour’s living room?
https://www.google.com/amp/s/gamingbolt.com/street-fighter-5-producer-tells-xbox-one-owners-to-buy-a-ps4-if-they-want-to-play-the-game/amp
Maybe read the facts first. This was straight out of Capcoms mouth. If Sony can work like this, so can MS and Nintendo.
I read that. Sf4 was on xbox and so is sf6
Why did sony have a change in heart for sf6?. Capcom had no issues with getti g the game made without sonys money. Sony only gave them the money as they wanted to be the dominant force in the esports side of fighting games as street fighter is hugely popular. Sf5 is the only that never made it ot xbox in recent generations.
The article never said that capcom needed the money to get Sf5 made. Nice try though. It was intentional and planned by Sony to purposefully keep away from its competitors.
They brought SFV because there competitors all had inhouse fighting franchises. This is another genre Sony dropped the ball on due to 3rd party payouts.
Not really. Mortal. Kombat has always been multiplatform, marvel bs capcom has always been multiplatform. Dead or alive has always been multiplatform. Sony had also exclusivity to guilty hear franchise for awhile and blaze blue. . Guilty hear is just as popular as street fighter. During that era that sfv was exclusive to sony, ms only had killer instinct.
Well commons argument now days regarding ms abk deal is why doesn't ms make their own games from scratch and build them up instead of buying publishers. We'll why didn't Sony use their inhoue team and create a Inhouse fighting game like their competitors did? Again doesn't make sense with that argument for sfv5 but they didn't do the same for sf6🤣🤔
Exactly they were multiplatforms meaning PS had no real exclusive fighter so they practically brought SF for that gen. Guilty and Blaze are Niche and are not in the same league as a MK, SF, KI, Tekken and Soul Calibre.
Yea why didnt they continue with sf6 for that exact reason?. Makes no sense to just do it once and be in the same position for fighting games this gen. There are esports competition for guilty gear and blaze blue though.
SF5 did not do to well and Capcom possibly wanted it back to multiplatform. SF5 did not live up to SF4 levels.
It sold 6.6 million which is pretty gd better then most fighting ganes exclusive on rival platforms
Your link doesn’t give the full picture, and there’s no mention of the funding part. You’re free to google further for it.
But the hilarious part is that if you go by what your link explains, the decision wasn’t Sony’s, yet you still pin the fault on them. 😂😂😂
Capcom doesnt work for free Hynad. Sony paid for full exclusivity. If that is allowed by the industry leader than so can others.
Really you are arguing this?
You actually believe Capcom just decided to make SF5 full console exclusive from the bottom of their hearts?
But the biggest ip will be treated like minecraft where it will be on every ci sole imaginebale.
They have been mentioning it for ages. Cod makes too much money to not treat it like how they currently treat minecraft.
This whole Deal for Sony has nothing to do with cod or abk. For Sony its all about gamepass. They don't want cod to be on gamepass. That because of the proposition where u have to pay 70usd or play it cheaper on gamepass. Sony doesn't like that and is afraid of that.
Money hatting some games? More almost every square enix games especially with ff7 remake. Final fantasy is a huge franchise and ff7 is still one of the most popular final fantasy to date. That seems to he permanently money hatted. What about kotor remake?
Xbox did back in 360 but the ps4 era and this gen, Sony has money hatted one of the biggest third party games and forcing you to buy their ps5 to play it.
At least when ms money hats some games, you don't have to buy their consoles as gamepass is accessible from various platforms. That's the big difference. Sony doesn't care about gamers. Only care about how deep they can get their pockets. What about cod exclusivity that sony has had for many years now?.
Also Sony should have expected completion. U can't expect your opponent to not buy stuff. Sony did alot back during ps1 and ps2 era. Because of that they killed game cube, dreamcast, saturn, n64 to name a few.
Beyond cod the other franchises are nowhere big or threatening to everyone. Even likes of crash or spyro won't sell that much so Sony won't lose anything if they don't come on their machine
That's because most don't have an issue with the deal besides a vocal minority on here. Majority of PC, Nintendo, Xbox, and multi system owners are okay with it because it actually benefits to them for the deal to pass or at least don't see any drawbacks. Most of us also see this benefit ABK studios and the employees.
Overall, there are more positives to the deal than negatives. Sonys biggest issue is CoD leaving and that's not going to happen. It's getting the Minecraft treatment. Sonys just pissed Xbox will have marketing rights and Game Pass day 1 releases.
This deal has a lot less to do with Sony and than some of you want to believe.
- It's about growing Game Pass on Console but mostly PC.
- Getting a presence for mobile. One of their plans is to create a new store front. This is honestly a good thing when it's only Apple and Google dominating.
- Growing their cloud gaming presences.
-
And of course getting people to buy an Xbox. It's important of course but it's only one goal out of the many they are working towards.
CoD isn't leaving PS regardless of what deal is in place and no matter what you want to believe evil MS is planning. It doesn't make sense to take it off PS and they know that and you know it too deep down. They will treat it like the Minecraft franchise and put it on everything they can. Minecraft doesn't have any deals in place yet it's on everything.
Id rather see this happen than have the market leader dictate the market while hording iPs from other platforms.
More benefit from this deal going through.
I'm generally not in favour of corporate consolidation, but I am in favour of this deal. ABK has a bad history with staff working conditions, and Microsoft's HR team will probably clean house. Plus they're not standing in the way of unionization, which is very important. And Game Pass may grow to compete with the iOS and Android "walled gardens". So there are important benefits to this deal going through, IMO.
