Following the new biggest acquisition in the video game industry, people have been wondering if Call of Duty and other Activision Blizzard IPs will continue to be available on PlayStation. The easy answer is yes, according to Xbox lead Phil Spencer. The real answer is probably not yet known, and definitely a lot more complicated.
Spencer took to Twitter to announce that he had a call with PlayStation leaders. One reason for the call was to confirm Xbox’s “intent to honour all existing agreements upon acquisition of Activision Blizzard and our desire to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation”. Hence, the short answer is yes, Call of Duty will still be on the company’s rival platform.
But the key phrase here is without a doubt the “existing agreements” part. It’s likely that Activision Blizzard has already made deals for a number of the annual Call of Duty titles to be on PlayStation platforms, as well as the free-to-play Warzone. But the same can’t really be said about entries further into the future.
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
It’s much like the Zenimax Media acquisition that saw the company continuing to make Deathloop and Ghostwire: Tokyo timed exclusives for PlayStation. But for newer games like Starfield and The Elder Scrolls VI, these become permament Xbox and PC exclusives.
One could argue that the Call of Duty franchise is already too big on PlayStation to ever take it away, on account on the sheer revenue loss. Though only Microsoft will have the maths for that worked out, and it’s unlikely that the same can be said about the other Activision Blizzard franchises.
(Source: Phil Spencer / Twitter)
