The wrangling between Microsoft and Sony over the $69 billion Activision Blizzard acquisition (opens in new tab) continues. This time, Microsoft's chief communications officer, Frank Shaw, took to Twitter to accuse Sony of misleading EU regulators about Microsoft's plans for the Call of Duty franchise if the acquisition goes through.

"I hear Sony is briefing people in Brussels that Microsoft is not willing to offer Call of Duty parity if we buy Activision," Shaw wrote (via VGC), arguing that "nothing could be further from the truth." He further referred to Microsoft's much-publicized "10-year deal that gives [Sony] parity in timing, content, features, quality, playability, and everything else."

This is an offer that Microsoft has been dangling in Sony's face since at least November (opens in new tab), but has yet to be addressed. Well, not for Sony anyway. In December, Nintendo signed a parity agreement (opens in new tab) with Microsoft that is essentially identical to Microsoft's (opens in new tab), despite CoD's complete lack of presence on the Switch.

Shaw further continues to say many of the things Microsoft has said before through countless tweets, press releases, submissions to competition authorities, and a Wall Street Journal op-ed (opens in new tab), Shaw said, "Microsoft has been a leader in the market for years. says that with PlayStation leading the market, it's a puzzling choice to immediately exclude one of Activision's biggest series from the platform. And remember how generous Microsoft was with "Minecraft," he added. [If Sony is whispering to EU regulators that Microsoft wants CoD all to itself, that's definitely dirty talk. But a 10-year deal is not perfect equality, and even if Phil Spencer said that Microsoft would put CoD on PlayStation "as long as there is a PlayStation (opens in new tab)," Sony would be remiss not to focus on what the company actually wants to put on paper .

Furthermore, there is no doubt that EU regulators are well aware of the saga so far. I can't imagine that there are many Brussels bigwigs who would actually fall prey to untruthful stories about what Microsoft intends to offer Sony.

I'm sure they would. While the conflict over Activision doesn't seem to be going away anytime soon, Microsoft is going through a bit of a rough patch at the moment, having received an antitrust warning from the EU (opens in new tab), laid off 10,000 people a few weeks ago, and, to top it all off, had to withdraw the unconstitutional charges it filed with the FTC (opens in new tab) Open in new tab) that was filed with the FTC. Who knows what will happen next?