Activision Blizzard CEO slams Sony for its “disappointing behavior” over Microsoft merger

Microsoft continues in its quest to close its proposed $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard. While some government regulators are starting to see things in Microsoft’s favor, that has not stopped Sony from its own attacks against this merger. On Tuesday, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick publicly published an email he sent to his employees with a merger update, and in doing so slammed Sony for its comments about the deal.

The email Kotick wrote mostly repeated the progress that Microsoft and Activision Blizzard had made on the merger. However, he called out Sony for some of the comments that it made against the acquisition. The big one concerned Sony stating Activision could release a version of its hit Call of Duty games on PlayStation consoles “where bugs and errors emerge only on the game’s final level or after later updates“, Sony stated such a scenario would make its console audience go to the Xbox version.

In his email, Kotick wrote:

We all know our passionate players would be the first to hold Microsoft accountable for keeping its promises of content and quality parity. And, all of us who work so hard to deliver the best games in our industry care too deeply about our players to ever launch sub-par versions of our games.

He felt that this was “obviously disappointing behavior”from Sony, and Kotick points out that the publisher has been releasing games for PlayStation consoles for almost 30 years. However, he added that Activision Blizzard would not allow this kind of rhetoric from Sony “to affect our long term relationship”and that it would keep making “the best games possible”for PlayStation consoles.

Kotick concluded his letter by saying that Activision Blizzard and Microsoft will continue to talk with UK and EU regulators about the deal. He made no mention of talks with US regulators, however, who have complained in court that Microsoft has held back on sending requested documents to the FTC.