Featured Image Credit: Martin Katler via Unsplash, Activision
Topics: Call Of Duty, Microsoft, Activision, Sony, PlayStation
Topics: Call Of Duty, Microsoft, Activision, Sony, PlayStation
Can you believe it’s only a week as of yesterday that Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision was announced? God, what a week. How many questions about what it all means have surfaced, had every possible angle of speculation thrown at them, and then promptly had some kind of official answer? If you feel like you’re struggling to keep up, you’re not alone.
Well, one of the questions that many people were asking was regarding what’s going to happen to Call of Duty going forward? It’s undoubtedly one of the biggest franchises that Microsoft is set to come into ownership of from the buyout, and so many fans were left wondering if there was a chance that the series could become an Xbox exclusive in the future.
While you're here, be sure to check out some of our favourite COD: Warzone wins and fails below.
Xbox boss Phil Spencer did tweet out about his “desire to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation” only a couple of days after the acquisition announcement, but now it also seems that plan has been doubled down upon, as a new report from Bloomberg claims that it’s currently planned to have at least the next three COD games release on PlayStation.
“Activision is committed to releasing at least the next three Call of Duty games on PlayStation even after the Xbox acquisition, according to people familiar with the deal. That's COD2022, COD2023, and Warzone 2 (in 2023). After that, it's hazier,” Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier wrote on Twitter. “To be clear, this news of Activision's contract with Sony is not related to the timing of when the acquisition closes. This contract was signed before last week's news.”
Again, this news shouldn’t be too surprising, given not only Spencer’s tweet, but also the fact that Microsoft opting to make Call of Duty an Xbox exclusive franchise could put the entire acquisition in jeopardy, thanks to competition law. Sony will undoubtedly be relieved, anyway - it’s claimed that they would lose between $87.9 million and $263.9 million dollars per year if COD stopped releasing on PlayStation. The phrasing of Schreier’s tweet does seem to suggest that things could potentially change post-2023, but it’s certainly nothing fans need to worry about at this stage, anyway.