"After months of bickering and haggling, Microsoft and Sony have signed a deal that will keep the "Call of Duty" series available on PlayStation for 10 years after the company's acquisition of Activision Blizzard.

"I am pleased to announce that Microsoft and PlayStation have signed a binding agreement to continue to offer Call of Duty on PlayStation after the Activision Blizzard acquisition," Xbox boss Phil Spencer "We love our players around the world. 'We look forward to a future where players around the world will have more options to play the games they love.'

"From day one of this acquisition, we have been committed to addressing the concerns of regulators, platforms, game developers, and consumers," said Microsoft President Brad Smith. 'Once this acquisition crosses the finish line for approval, we will continue to focus on ensuring that Call of Duty continues to be available on more platforms and to more consumers than ever before.'

Neither Spencer nor Smith stated the term of the deal, but Microsoft confirmed to The Verge that it is for 10 years. Microsoft also made it clear that the deal only covers the Call of Duty series and not other Activision games. In January 2022, shortly after Microsoft announced the proposed acquisition, the company offered Sony a deal in which "all existing Activision console titles, including future versions of the 'Call of Duty' franchise, will remain with Sony." However, this agreement was only for five years.

Microsoft initially offered Sony a 10-year deal for "Call of Duty" in November 2022, and when that was rejected, the company went on a spree of contracts with other platforms, from Steam and Nintendo to lesser-known players such as Boosteroid and Ubitus The company was not the only one to do so. Of course, these deals were intended to overcome Sony's opposition to the Activision deal by showing that Sony's concerns about "Call of Duty" becoming an Xbox console exclusive were overblown.

This strategy reportedly helped the EU make the decision to approve the acquisition, but the bigger push in this regard came from Jim Ryan, CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment. In an email written shortly after the acquisition was announced and revealed at an FTC hearing in January, Ryan dismissed concerns that Call of Duty would be an Xbox exclusive, writing, " I am confident that we will continue to see CoD on PS for years to come: ...... I am not happy and hope this does not happen, but we will be fine.

Sony may also have felt pressure to sign the deal after Microsoft won in court against the FTC last week, effectively paving the way for the Activision deal to go through; the FTC still has a pending case against the deal, but until that case is resolved The request for a preliminary injunction to block this acquisition was denied.

In light of this decision, the UK's Competition and Markets Authority, which rejected the acquisition earlier this year, has indicated that it intends to resume talks to address concerns and pave the way for approval in that country. In other words, the proverbial writing was on the wall, and Sony may have seen it and decided that a pretty good deal was better than no deal at all.