Microsoft, Sony make deal to keep Activision Blizzard game franchise on PlayStation following acquisition

Microsoft and Sony have reached a deal to keep Call of Duty, a popular video game franchise made by Activision Blizzard, available on PlayStation following Microsoft’s planned acquisition of the video game development company.

“We are pleased to announce that Microsoft and @PlayStation have signed a binding agreement to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation following the acquisition of Activision Blizzard,” Phil Spencer, the head of Xbox, said in a tweet Sunday. “We look forward to a future where players globally have more choice to play their favorite games.”

Microsoft and Activision Blizzard appear likely to move forward with their $68.7 billion merger after a federal appeals court denied a bid by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to temporarily halt the deal Friday.

The FTC has expressed concerns that the merger could harm competition in the gaming market, suggesting that Microsoft is likely to pull Activision’s popular titles from Sony’s PlayStation systems and make them exclusively available on its own Xbox console systems.

The deal with Sony seems designed to at least partially assuage such concerns.

“From Day One of this acquisition, we’ve been committed to addressing the concerns of regulators, platform and game developers, and consumers,” Brad Smith, the vice chair and president of Microsoft, said on Twitter in response to the announcement.

“Even after we cross the finish line for this deal’s approval, we will remain focused on ensuring that Call of Duty remains available on more platforms and for more consumers than ever before,” he added.

However, the Microsoft-Activision merger still faces an additional hurdle from the United Kingdom’s Competition and Markets Authority, with just days until the agreement between the two companies is set to expire.