Machiavellian said:
Do not worry, Sony is not going to ask for forever but 25 years or something like that probably would not be out of the question. Basically long enough to not matter. Also the promise of one man well it means nothing. Phil could get fired, get caught in the sex scandal with Sarah Bond, quite and form his own company who names it. A new head of Xbox would not be beholden to whatever Phil made commitments to. The funny part is, would Sony accept at this time a contract with MS or are they willing to ignore anything from MS until the CMA makes a decision. It could be that the CMA accept the situation like Brazil and Sony gets no guaranteed agreement from MS or any conditions from the CMA which would be funny in itself. Actually the balls in Sony court to get things in writing now or risk actually getting nothing. Maybe they are holding out hope that the CMA will just reject the deal which in that case they win. Should be fun to see how this all shakes out. |
Sony, Imo, won't accept anything, full stop, they won't even accept forever.
Sony straight up said in their complaint to CMA that it doesn't matter if CoD remains multiplatform because Microsoft can do incentives to make people switch to Xbox such as exclusive content, Game Pass would extend to that point too, I think what Sony ultimately wants is for either this deal to collapse or to block CoD on Game Pass and if regulators block CoD on Game Pass, then Microsoft is going to court.
Doesn't really matter if Sony doesn't accept the terms though or it shouldn't matter to any regulator doing their job correctly, it's if regulators think they're good enough. Also, any commitment that Phil makes is a commitment that Microsoft is making too, he isn't making these decisions alone, I don't think it would matter all too much if Phil ever left if Microsoft wants CoD to remain multiplatform.