Microsoft Agrees to Keep ‘Call of Duty’ on Sony Playstation

Brody Ford, Bloomberg News

(Bloomberg) -- Microsoft Corp. said it has a binding agreement to keep the Call of Duty franchise on the Sony Playstation platform as its planned acquisition of Activision Blizzard Inc. appears closer to completion.

The announcement Sunday of a deal with Sony Group Corp. from the Redmond, Washington-based software giant seeks to address regulators’ concerns that the merger would make more Activision games — such as the massively popular shooting-game franchise — exclusive to Xbox.

“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,” Microsoft gaming chief Phil Spencer said on Twitter.

Read More: Microsoft, Activision Eye UK Rights Sale to Get Merger Done

The deal is for 10 years, a Microsoft spokesperson said. Microsoft inked a 10-year deal last year with Nintendo Co. Ltd. for the availablility of Call of Duty.

A path for the largest-ever gaming deal to close was cleared Friday when an appeals court denied a Federal Trade Commission bid to pause the acquisition.

The main remaining hurdle comes from the UK Competition and Markets Authority, which has agreed to give Microsoft an unprecedented second chance to come up with a remedy after vetoing the merger in April on concerns about the deal’s impact on the cloud gaming market.

Microsoft has offered to sell the cloud-based market rights for games in the UK, Bloomberg reported last week.

--With assistance from Leah Nylen.

(Updates with length of deal in fourth paragraph.)