Microsoft"s ongoing purchase of Activision Blizzard for $69 billion has stretched on longer than the company wanted, primarily due to hurdles set up by some regulators as well as Sony. Despite these roadblocks, the Redmond tech giant has signed yet another Call of Duty deal with a firm.
Following 10-year distribution deals with Nintendo and Nvidia earlier, Microsoft has signed a similar deal with Boosteroid. For those unaware of it, Boosteroid is a game streaming platform that allows you to stream titles at 1080p and 60fps across various devices starting at €9.89/month. Microsoft has described it as the largest "independent" cloud-streaming company with over four million customers across the globe.
Naturally, this deal will only tangibly take effect if Microsoft"s acquisition of Activision Blizzard is approved by regulators such as the European Commission, UK"s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC). As such, signing these sorts of deals prior to the acquisition being approved serves as a way to convince regulators that approval will actually result in Call of Duty (and other Activision Blizzard titles) becoming accessible to more gamers.
It is interesting to note that Microsoft made a similar 10-year deal offer with Sony earlier. However, this was declined by the PlayStation-maker. Recently, Sony has shared some rather extreme ideas regarding the negative effects of the deal going through, going as far to claim that Microsoft may intentionally introduce bugs in Call of Duty on PlayStation in order to sway gamers from the platform. Microsoft president Brad Smith informed the Wall Street Journal that no active negotiations are currently taking place with Sony.
Source: WSJ (paywall)