Microsoft reportedly offered Sony a deal to keep the Call of Duty franchise on PlayStation for 10 years, according to a report by The New York Times. The tech giant announced its intention to acquire Activision Blizzard earlier this year for almost $70 billion, but the deal has come under intense scrutiny from regulators such as the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and the E.U.’s European Commission.
According to The New York Times, Microsoft said that on November 11 it had made an offer to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation for another decade. However, Sony declined to comment on this specific claim.
Previously, PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan revealed that Microsoft had only offered to provide three additional years of Call of Duty on the PlayStation platform after existing agreements expired. Microsoft never commented on that claim.
Xbox head Phil Spencer has repeatedly said that Xbox would not pull the Call of Duty franchise away from PlayStation. Speaking to the New York Times after the deal, Spencer emphasized that the agenda for his first call with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella included contacting Sony and committing to keeping the franchise on PlayStation.
Sony took more cautionary measures and reportedly hired a consulting firm for meetings on Capitol Hill in order to fight the merger between Microsoft and Activision Blizzard. The consulting firm’s arguments were reportedly used elsewhere and ultimately caused the CMA to do a deeper investigation into the deal.
If the merger goes through, Microsoft aims to put franchises like Call of Duty, Overwatch, and Diablo onto its Xbox Game Pass subscription service. The deal is expected to close by June 2023.
Imagine tapping a Zelda icon on your iPhone and jumping straight into Hyrule. A new open-source project called nxnative makes that possible by repackaging Switch games you’ve bought into apps for iPhone, iPad, and Mac, with no emulator in the middle.
Why does this run so well on Apple devices?
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”