Microsoft is currently in court with the FTC over its challenge to halt the planned acquisition of Activision Blizzard, and as expected, things are getting pretty spicy. After just a single day in court, we've already had some pretty juicy revelations, including the reveal that Activision Blizzard once threatened to remove Call of Duty from Xbox Series X/S consoles entirely if Microsoft didn't offer it a special revenue share.
According to Xbox vice president Sarah Bond (thanks The Verge), a deal to put the Call of Duty series on Xbox Series X/S consoles stalled after Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick demanded a greater revenue share than what it had agreed for the previous generation. Activision apparently refused to prepare its Xbox dev kits unless Microsoft offered up a revenue share similar to what PlayStation had been offering, and that Kotick "intended to not place Call of Duty on Xbox" if it didn't agree.
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"It was clear that Call of Duty would be on PS5 and that would not have been good if it was not also on Xbox if it was launching at the same time," said Bond. It's unclear as to whether Activison Blizzard would've put Call of Duty on Xbox consoles eventually, but it very much sounds like Bobby Kotick was at least prepared to pull the series from Xbox, at least for a little while.
While this is a pretty big bombshell to drop during this suit, it's very likely that Activision Blizzard did exactly the same thing with PlayStation too, as this entire situation reeks of a publisher throwing its weight and power around to demand special treatment. Activision Blizzard knows that Call of Duty is masive for both PlayStation and Xbox, and likely used that leverage to get what it wanted, despite what appears to be Microsoft's best arguments against it.
In other big news that has dropped during this suit, it was also revealed that MachineGame's upcoming Indiana Jones was originally set to release on PlayStation systems before Xbox stepped ameneded a contract with Disney after it acquired parent company ZenimaxMedia. We also saw an acknowledgement from Microsoft that Xbox has "lost the console wars", admitting that the system is behind PlayStation and Nintendo Switch due to their ability to take advantage of their vast library of exclusives.
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