The back-and-forth between Microsoft and Sony over the former’s $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard continues. This time, Microsoft chief communications officer Frank Shaw has taken to Twitter to accuse Sony of misleading EU regulators over Microsoft’s plans for the Call of Duty franchise in the event the acquisition goes through.
“I hear Sony is briefing people in Brussels claiming Microsoft is unwilling to offer them parity for Call of Duty if we acquire Activision,” wrote Shaw (via VGC), before claiming that “Nothing could be further from the truth”. He goes on to reference Microsoft’s much-ballyhooed “10 year deal to give [Sony] parity on timing, content, features, quality, playability, and any other aspect of the game”.
That’s an offer that Microsoft’s been dangling in Sony’s face since at least November, but it hasn’t been taken up yet. Well, not by Sony, anyway. Nintendo inked a basically identical parity deal with Microsoft in December, despite CoD’s total lack of presence on Switch.
Shaw goes on to say, well, a lot of things Microsoft has said before across countless tweets, press releases, competition authority filings, and op-eds in the Wa…