A retailer has issued a warning to its customers that they should think carefully before purchasing a PlayStation 5. They aren't concerned about the price nor the limited supply of the stock - they mention the fact that Call of Duty might become an Xbox exclusive as Microsoft acquired Activision earlier this month.
It's heartwarming, in a way, that the management are making sure that the general public are aware of the intricacies of the video game industry. The announcement that Microsoft had snapped up Activision for a immense $68.7 billion arrived on an otherwise pedestrian afternoon here in the GAMINGbible office, causing us all to start punching numbers into calculators and wailing over monopolies (not the board game). "Upon close, we will offer as many Activision Blizzard games as we can within Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass, both new titles and games from Activision Blizzard’s incredible catalog," said Xbox head honcho Phil Spencer at the time.
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Now, the news did throw the future of a number of intellectual properties/cash cows/delete as applicable into shadow, such as Call of Duty. Bloomberg asserted that the next three Call of Duty titles will come to PlayStation irrespective of the terms of the present acquisition, however, it becomes "hazier" to tell what will happen to the series after that point. Spencer said that he had intentions to keep PlayStation players happy and Call of Duty will launch across both consoles, and a technicality to do with competition law means that regulators could prohibit Microsoft's acquisition if it tried to turn Call of Duty into an exclusive.
This shop in Belgium isn't willing to risk it, clearly. The staff have printed out a sign saying "Notice to gamers, Microsoft has bought Activision! Choose your machine carefully" and tacked it on to the front of the case holding the fancy fresh colours of DualSense controllers. To hammer the point home, they've written "CALL OF DUTY" underneath this warning.
It's worth perusing the considerable list of intellectual properties that will soon be Microsoft's, like Crash Bandicoot, Overwatch, Prototype, StarCraft, and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. In fact, some might get a new lease on life once they're brought under the company's umbrella. “We’re hoping that we’ll be able to work with them when the deal closes to make sure we have resources to work on franchises that I love from my childhood, and that the teams really want to get,” said Spencer in a chat to The Washington Post. “I’m looking forward to these conversations. I really think it’s about adding resources and increasing capability.” Well, I won't advise you either way, but the trajectories of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X have been significantly shifted resulting from this acquisition.
Featured Image Credit: Triyansh Gill via Unsplash, HazzadorGamin via Twitter, Sony Pictures ReleasingTopics: PlayStation, Xbox, Call Of Duty