This was a good read:
You mentioned not having a contract or a deal for Minecraft. We do have some reporting. Our own reporter, Tom Warren, had it that you promised Sony three years of Call of Duty. Sony said that’s not good enough. You recently have a quote that says, “You will have Call of Duty on PlayStation for as long as there is a PlayStation.” Which is a great quote by the way, because of the implied threat that it contains. I appreciated that.
It’s true. You’re like, “One day there won’t be a PlayStation. I’m coming for you.” I appreciated that about it. Have you made that promise to Sony, that you will ship Call of Duty on PlayStation as long as there is a PlayStation?
I mean, when I’m standing out publicly saying it, I would assume anybody at Sony would see that.
Well, they can’t hold you to that. I mean, they can’t take you to court because you said it. I mean, saying that to me in my show, it’d be great if they filed a lawsuit based on Decoder. That’s a huge win for me, but you have to write it down for them.
No, you don’t. That’s what I’m saying. I support
Minecraft. I support the players on PlayStation who want to play our games like
Minecraft. We don’t expand
Minecraft Dungeons and
Minecraft Legends out of any contract we have with Sony, but the contract we have with our customers. That is what’s important.
I understand in the optics of this deal that we might want to make — and I’m totally open to doing this — a contractual commitment to Sony for some number of years that says, “Okay, we’re going to continue to ship
Call of Duty on PlayStation.” I’m totally open to that. No issue at all. This idea that we’re going to write a contract that says “forever” doesn’t make sense to any lawyer. There is obviously a business relationship between the royalty exchanges and other things. You’re not going to give up any ability to do what you need to do and the flexibility with the business in the future.
When I’m saying things like, “As long as there is a PlayStation,” there was no implied threat at all. I hope there’s a PlayStation forever. I do. I think PlayStation and Nintendo are great for the gaming industry. Hopefully I have been consistent in saying that. All I mean is that at some point you have to have the ability to run your business, and not just the console business. It’s not about pulling the rug out from underneath the PlayStation 7’s legs at some point, like, “Haha, you just didn’t write the contract long enough!”
There’s no contract that could be written that says “forever.” Our model is we want to be where players are, especially with franchises the size of
Minecraft and
Call of Duty. I think our
Minecraft history is coming up on eight, nine years and it shows in practice how we will support our customers. That’s what I want to do with
Call of Duty.
This idea that we would write a contract that says the word “forever” in it is a little bit silly, but to make a longer-term commitment that Sony and regulators would be comfortable with, I have no issue with at all. I do think there’s going to be a time horizon, just like anybody writing a contract would suggest there should be and will be, but it has nothing to do with any kind of “strategery” there. We think
Call of Duty will be on PlayStation as long as players want to play
Call of Duty on PlayStation. That’s not a competitive threat against PlayStation. That’s just a kind of pragmatic way of looking at it.
DriedMangoes