Sony Points to Xbox Exclusivity of Starfield As the Reason To Question the Microsoft Activision Deal and Future of Call of Duty

The Sony PlayStation and Microsoft Xbox battle continues at the doors of UK regulators, as part of the latter's attempt to acquire Activision Blizzard.

The blue side has been a major thorn in Xbox's $69 billion acquisition, as the former claims it might lose out on important franchises like Call of Duty. Despite offering a 10-year agreement to keep the popular FPS series on PlayStation consoles, Sony believe that the Microsoft-owned brand won't live up to its promises.

In its various statements to UK's Competition and Markets Authority, Sony has claimed that Xbox will bring forth some or the other issue to Call of Duty's release on PlayStation consoles if they agree to shake hands on a 10-year deal. This includes potential sabotage that might make the PlayStation version of COD titles inferior to that of the ones releasing on Xbox.

And in a new statement to the CMA (via GamesRadar), the Japanese gaming giants have also mentioned that Xbox might not live up to its promise of keeping Call of Duty on PlayStation devices for the next year. The former pointed out Starfield becoming an exclusive Xbox title, after the Microsoft brand acquired Bethesda as part of its deal to purchase ZeniMax media.

In its statement, Sony showcased how Xbox originally said to the European Commission on the lack of incentives to remove future ZeniMax titles from multiple platforms. However, once the deal was approved, Xbox made a huge swing to improve its games library by making Bethesda's biggest game in years to be an exclusive title.

By pointing out Xbox's backtracking from its original statements when it came to Starfield and ZeniMax, Sony is trying to showcase a similar future to the CMA with Call of Duty's future, and it will be interesting to see if this could be a major hurdle that prevents Xbox from receiving the all-important approval for the Activision Blizzard acquisition.