Since the announcement of the takeover of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft, many questions have arisen. Especially with regard to the future of the famous Call of Duty license. Phil Spencer, the leader of Microsoft Gaming, clarifies things.
Call of Duty stays on PlayStation?
Had good calls this week with leaders at Sony. I confirmed our intent to honor all existing agreements upon acquisition of Activision Blizzard and our desire to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation. Sony is an important part of our industry, and we value our relationship.
—Phil Spencer (@XboxP3) January 20, 2022
Via a tweet, Phil Spencer wanted to clarify some gray areas regarding Sony. Now that Microsoft has all the rights to the Activision Blizzard licenses, legitimate questions arose and especially for one of the most lucrative franchises in video games: call of duty. Were we heading towards future Xbox exclusives for the FPS? Today it seems not if we are to believe the boss of Xbox Games Studios:
“I had good exchanges this week with the leaders of Sony. I have confirmed our intention to honor all existing agreements upon the acquisition of Activision Blizzard and our desire to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation. Sony is an important part of our industry and we value that relationship.”
PlayStation players can therefore be reassured, the next titles will probably be released on PS5 from what we understand. With this statement, Phil Spencer has objectively done well in terms of communication and brand image. The path of exclusivity was not impossible and would undoubtedly have resulted in an aggressive but potentially profitable strategy for the green brand despite the fallout from the community. It should also be noted that it discards at the same time some of the criticisms concerning the monopoly that this could have triggered.
As we recalled when we mentioned Sony’s response to this takeover, it is however certain that Call of Duty will now benefit from enormous advantages on Xbox consoles in the future (whereas in the past it was Sony who won all temporary exclusives and other bonuses). Always is itit will still be necessary to clarify the details of this future between Call of Duty and PlayStation (the tweet is not very precise in the end), but the news has at least the merit of appeasing a little bit.