It seems that more and more competition and market authorities around the world are leaning towards letting Microsoft buy Activision Blizzard. In recent weeks, we’ve seen both the EU and the UK signal their intention to approve the deal, and yesterday the Japanese counterpart did the same.
Sony has fought hard to block the deal, using pretty much every tool available to them, including arguing that Microsoft could sabotage Playstation versions of Call of Duty in the future. However, their harsh methods have not been appreciated by everyone and several executives at Activision Blizzard (most recently CCO Lulu Cheng Meservey) have commented on what they consider to be unsavory and unfair behavior from 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 blunt about all of 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 our passionate players would be the first to hold Microsoft accountable for keeping its 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 ever launch sub-par versions of our games. Sony has even admitted that they aren’t actually concerned about a Call of Duty agreement—they would just like to prevent our merger from happening.”
Kotick continued his reasoning by explaining that despite Sony’s “distressing behavior”, Activision Blizzard will not compromise on the quality of Playstation games in the future:
“This is obviously disappointing behavior from a partner for almost thirty years, but we will not allow Sony’s behavior to affect our long term relationship. Playstation players know we will continue to deliver the best games possible on Sony platforms as we have since the launch of Playstation.”
Do you think Sony has handled this deal well or should they have acted differently?
