It seems that more and more competition and market authorities around the world are leaning in favor of Microsoft buying Activision Blizzard. In recent weeks, we have seen both the EU and the UK signal their intention to approve the deal, and yesterday their Japanese counterpart did the same.
Sony has fought hard to block the deal, using pretty much every tool at its disposal, including to claim that Microsoft may sabotage the PlayStation versions of Call of Duty in the future. Their harsh practices have not been appreciated by all, and several executives at Activision Blizzard (most recently CCO Lulu Cheng Meservey at Twitter) have commented on what they consider to be unfair and unfair behavior by Sony. A couple of hours ago, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick shared a new one open letter to all employees of the company, and he was surprisingly straightforward about all this, writing:
You may have seen statements from Sony, including an argument that if this deal goes through, Microsoft could release deliberately “buggy” versions of our games on PlayStation. We all know that our passionate gamers would be the first to hold Microsoft accountable for keeping their promises of content and quality parity. And all of us who work so hard to deliver the best games in our industry care too deeply about our players to release sub-par versions of our games. Sony has even admitted that they’re not actually worried about a Call of Duty deal – they just want to prevent our merger from happening.”
Kotick continued his statement by explaining that despite Sony’s “obviously disappointing behavior”, Activision Blizzard will not compromise on the quality of PlayStation games in the future:
– This is obviously disappointing behavior from a partner of almost thirty years, but we will not let Sony’s behavior affect our long-term relationship. PlayStation gamers know that we will continue to deliver the best games possible on Sony platforms as we have done since the launch of PlayStation.
Do you think Sony handled this deal well, or should they have acted differently?
