A footnote in Microsoft's submission
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to the United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland'due south Contest and Markets Authority (CMA) has let slip the reason behind Telephone call of Duty's absenteeism from the Xbox Game Pass library: Sony and Activision Blizzard take a deal that restricts the games' presence on the service.
The footnote appears in a section detailing the potential benefits to consumers (from Microsoft's indicate of view) of the Activision Blizzard catalogue coming to Game Pass. In it, Microsoft says that it plans to accolade "existing contractual obligations that Activision Blizzard may have with other platforms" in the effect of its $68 billion acquisition
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going forrard.
What existing contractual obligations are those? Why, ones like the "agreement betwixt Activision Blizzard and Sony," that places "restrictions on the ability of Activision Blizzard to place COD titles on Game Pass for a number of years". It was apparently these kinds of agreements that Xbox's Phil Spencer had in mind
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when he spoke to Sony bosses in January and confirmed Microsoft's "intent to honour all existing agreements upon acquisition of Activision Blizzard".
Unfortunately, the footnote ends there, and then there'due south not much in the way of particular about what these restrictions are or how long they'd remain in outcome in a potential post-acquisition world. Given COD'southward continued non-appearance on Game Pass, yous've got to imagine the restrictions are adequately pregnant if they're not an outright block on COD coming to the service. Either way, the simple fact that Microsoft is plainly willing to maintain any restrictions on its own power to put beginning-party games on Game Laissez passer is rather remarkable, given that making Game Laissez passer more highly-seasoned is ane of the reasons for its acquisition spree.
The irony of Sony making deals like this one while fretting about COD'due south future on PlayStation probably isn't lost on Microsoft'due south lawyers, which is no dubiousness office of why they brought information technology up to the CMA. While information technology'south admittedly reasonable to worry about a world in which more and more than properties are concentrated in the hands of singular, giant megacorps, it does expect a scrap odd if you're complaining almost losing access to games while stopping them from joining competing services.
We'll detect out if the CMA agrees when it completes its in-depth, "Phase ii" investigation
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into the Activision Blizzard acquisition, which is some way off yet. For now, we'll take to content ourselves with poring over these kinds of corporate submissions for more interesting tidbits like this one. So far, nosotros've already learned that Microsoft privately has a gloomy forecast for the future of cloud gaming
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