The Microsoft/PlayStation Deal Over Call Of Duty Reportedly Comes With A Time Limit

Call of Duty will remain on PlayStation for the time being, after a monumental announcement Sunday from Xbox Head Phil Spencer confirmed a “binding agreement” between his company and its close competitor.

While multiple media outlets heralded the news on the day of its announcement, one industry insider, Senior Editor Tom Warren of The Verge, reported that the deal between the two console companies comes with a caveat. Specifically, he reported that officials at Microsoft had told him the deal would last for 10 years.

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The battle over Xbox’s potential exclusivity deal with Call of Duty had been a major point of contention in Microsoft’s recent legal struggles. Only last week, a five-day hearing between the United States Federal Trade Commission and Microsoft turned up testimony from multiple major players in the gaming industry, including Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick, who had expressed regret over not increasing Call of Duty’s mass appeal by releasing it on the Nintendo Switch and expressing interest in releasing a future CoD title on that platform, although he admitted there were no specific plans at that time.

That lengthy hearing went in Microsoft’s favor, and while the FTC is appealing that ruling, and the acquisition still faces opposition from regulators abroad in the United Kingdom, it’s still being widely regarded as a major victory for Spencer and Xbox in closing the biggest deal in the gaming industry’s history.

While Spencer has a long history of making frequent announcements about his intention to keep Call of Duty open across both Xbox and PlayStation platforms, the “binding agreement” between the two companies seems to go a log way to solidify that commitment. Still, as Warren pointed out, the 10-year expiration date attached to the deal—which he said he confirmed with Xbox head of global communications Kari Perez—was curiously left out of Spencer’s original announcement. Still, Warren notes, it’s not an uncommon occurrence for time limits to be attached to such agreements, and the 10-year expiration date reportedly attached to the deal is congruent with similar deals Microsoft has struck with Nintendo and Nvidia in recent months.

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