Microsoft has made progress in their unending quest to finally close the billion Activision Blizzard deal by getting Valve and Nintendo to agree to terms.
Every week brings more news to the table regarding the largest deal in gaming history between Microsoft and Activision Blizzard. Today, they’re won a decisive victory with Valve and Nintendo agreeing to terms that would sate the other two platforms for a total of 10 years, but there’s an elephant missing from the room in Sony, as these new agreements put pressure on the house of PlayStation to accept similar terms. Head of Xbox, Phil Spencer announced the agreement on Twitter in the tweet below.
VP of Microsoft, Brad Smith echoed Spencer’s sentiment by adding to the Tweet chain with “Our acquisition will bring Call of Duty to more gamers and more platforms than ever before. That’s good for competition and good for consumers. Thank you @Nintendo. Any day @Sony wants to sit down and talk, we’ll be happy to hammer out a 10-year deal for PlayStation as well,” regarding their stance on working with Sony in the future on any Call of Duty title release.
President of Valve, Gabe Newell praised the decision as an easy choice according to Kotaku, while saying:
We’re happy that Microsoft wants to continue using Steam to reach customers with Call of Duty when their Activision acquisition closes. Microsoft has been on Steam for a long time and we take it as a signal that they are happy with gamers reception to that and the work we are doing. Our job is to keep building valuable features for not only Microsoft but all Steam customers and partners.
Microsoft offered and even sent us a draft agreement for a long-term Call of Duty commitment but it wasn’t necessary for us because a) we’re not believers in requiring any partner to have an agreement that locks them to shipping games on Steam into the distant future b) Phil and the games team at Microsoft have always followed through on what they told us they would do so we trust their intentions and c) we think Microsoft has all the motivation they need to be on the platforms and devices where Call of Duty customers want to be.
– Gabe Newell, from Kotaku
While the company that built the Xbox and Game Pass continues to strike every chord imaginable to meet the expectations of the gaming industry with their Activision Blizzard deal, Sony seemingly continues to reject the deal. Fans will just have to stay tuned on this never-ending news stream involving Activision Blizzard until its final conclusion.
