Report: Microsoft is willing to put Call of Duty in PS Plus
The company has made another concession to appease PlayStation, Bloomberg reports
Microsoft has offered Sony the right to include Call of Duty within its PS Plus subscription service, Bloomberg reports.
This is in addition to the deal that would guarantee Call of Duty comes to PlayStation, Nintendo and Steam platforms for at least the next ten years.
One of the concerns from regulators around this deal is the impact subscriptions and streaming may have on the future of gaming, and whether Call of Duty (in particular) would give Microsoft an unassailable advantage over its competitors in these areas.
Microsoft has responded by saying it doesn't view subscriptions as a standalone market in games, and that it is just one business model. It also points out that there are successful subs services out there already, including PS Plus, that currently do not feature new Call of Duty titles.
Although offering Call of Duty into PS Plus may remove a reason to leave PlayStation and subscribe to Game Pass, it would potentially boost subscriptions as a business model, which fits with Microsoft's strategy to grow this area of the business.
Sony is more cautious around the subscription business model, and told us back in March that it believes putting brand new PlayStation games into a subscription service would result in a drop in revenue, and would therefore lead to a cut in the investment it would make into those games.
However, it is open to the industry changing and that its plans may change in the future.
"The way our publishing model works right now [putting new games straight into PS Plus] doesn't make any sense," PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan said. "But things can change very quickly in this industry."