In a huge victory for Xbox, PlayStation has unexpectedly agreed to a deal on sharing Call of Duty if the Activision Blizzard acquisition goes through. Before this, PlayStation had reportedly denied any offer that Microsoft put before it, seemingly in a bid to stop the merger from going ahead at all.
This removes a huge hurdle for Microsoft, addressing a major concern that regulators had with its acquisition. It's not currently clear what prompted this very sudden change of heart on PlayStation's end, but it's likely that this is in relation to Microsoft winning its case with the FTC, which failed to adequately argue that the deal would harm the gaming industry.
With this in mind, it's looking all the more likely that the deal will be approved in the US. This would leave the UK as one of the last hurdles before Activision Blizzard officially comes under the Microsoft umbrella.
It also means that, in the event of the deal going through, consumers won't have to pick up an Xbox or gaming PC to keep playing Call of Duty. Microsoft has already reached similar deals with Nintendo and various streaming platforms, as regulators were concerned that Call of Duty is too big of a franchise to be made exclusive to any one platform.
This agreement also comes after months of back-and-forths between Sony and Microsoft, during which fans of both platforms fought each other on their behalf on social media. Some of the arguments made during the various legal disputes include PlayStation's Jim Ryan saying that Game Pass is bad for developers, and Microsoft saying that Sony should just make its own Call of Duty.
We're not yet privy to the details of this deal, so it's not clear what convinced Sony to give up on its dispute. It had previously expressed concern that it would be given sub-part ports of Call of Duty, made with less development time and therefore including more unaddressed bugs. It's likely that the final offer included some kind of guarantee regarding the ports' quality, just as it did on Nintendo Switch. Admittedly, many of us aren't certain if the Switch will be able to keep up with Xbox and PlayStation in this regard, so it remains to be seen how this deal pans out in practice.