Xbox continues to try and prove to PlayStation it won't pull the Call of Duty mat out from under it should its Activision Blizzard deal be approved. The more Xbox tries to sweeten the deal, the more it seems there's nothing it can do to get PlayStation onside. In fact, one Activision executive has claimed Sony boss Jim Ryan admitted there's no deal he'd ever agree to.
Activision Blizzard EVP Lulu Cheng Meservey reminded those following the saga that Xbox has offered PlayStation multiple deals, each with increasingly improved terms, but its rival keeps refusing. In a follow-up tweet, Meservey claims Ryan told her he has no interest in striking a deal to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation, they just want to make sure the merger doesn't happen.
“I don’t want a new Call of Duty deal. I just want to block your merger,” are the exact words Meservey credits to Ryan. When asked by The Verge's Tom Warren when exactly Ryan said this, Meservey claimed the comment was made on February 21. The timing adds up as that was the same day behind-closed-doors meetings between all parties involved were happening in Europe.
Europe and the UK have been the stage on which a lot of the merger challenges have been made in recent weeks as regulators in that part of the world are the ones most likely to stop the deal from being finalized. Following news Xbox and Nintendo had struck a deal to bring Call of Duty titles to the latter pending an approved merger, the UK's CMA hit back, claiming it remains unconvinced the popular series is capable of running on Nintendo hardware.
Every time Xbox has tried to convince PlayStation it won't be negatively affected by its Activision acquisition, PlayStation has detailed a new fear. The most recent of those fears is that Xbox will give PlayStation a buggy version of Call of Duty in the future, potentially convincing people to move over to Xbox for the better version of the games by doing so.