Head of Xbox Phil Spencer Has a 'Desire to Keep Call of Duty on PlayStation' - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 01 February 2022 / 3,317 Views
Microsoft made a huge splash last month with the announcement it is acquiring Activision Blizzard in a deal worth $68.7 billion. This has lead some to wonder if Activision Blizzard games would become Xbox console exclusive in the future or if some would still come to PlayStation consoles.
Microsoft Gaming CEO via Twitter revealed he had calls this week with the leadership at Sony and confirmed Xbox's intent to honor agreements when the Activision Blizzard acquisition is complete. He also says their intent is to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation consoles.
"Had good calls this week with leaders at Sony," said Spencer. "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."
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
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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Interesting he didn't clarify which CoD, think that alone tells us a lot.
The call of duty games that will be staying on PlayStation: Warzone and the back catalogue
The call of duty’s that would only come to PlayStation with heavy strings attached: the future standalone releases
And I think his use of the word “desire” here is telling. Microsoft clearly wants something out of PlayStation to keep the future titles on that platform, and I am not sure Sony will want to pay that price, whatever it is. The obvious candidate seems to be gamepass
Removing existing games from the platform was never in the question, this is so clearly not about that lol
I keep seeing people mentioning this idea of Gamepass coming to Playstation. It’s just not going to happen.
This is pretty clear to me :)
- Existing COD + existing contracts are going to be honored.
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And they have the desire to have COD on Play Station... But will only happen if Sony let GP on the system
And it was probably one thing they 'talked' about during those calls :)
The 'desire' part is pretty obvious ahah
It sounds like to me, the CoD franchise will go the route of Minecraft and stay the multiplatform for future releases, I could be wrong, but I think that's what will happen. Other franchises like; Overwatch, Diablo, Crash, Spyro, etc. will probably be exclusive after the deal finishes.
I think inevitably mainline CoD won't be on PS. For the foreseeable future we can only assume that Sony tied up marketing agreements for CoD, which is not unexpected since this has been done in chunks of 4 - 5 years, rather than yearly.
That said, Warzone is most likely stay, so it comes down to what kind of CoD player you are: battle royale OR SP with traditional MP.
That could be a possibility too. Sony may have a CoD deal lasting X amount of releases and then after that anything can happen. We'll just have to wait and see.
Only time will tell what happens next...
Lets see for how long he will think this way or if this is just about Warzone.
The way I see it, there are two ways this statement can be interpreted:
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At face value, which is to say he means future call of duty franchises are launching on PlayStation, business as usual more or less. Maybe they negotiate a slightly lower cut than the 30% PS normally gets. Or
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He is talking mainly about Warzone, and he’s going to use the future standalone titles are a bargaining chip for fairly severe concessions out of Sony, far more than just a slightly reduced cut. Anything from having platform fees waived to launching gamepass on PlayStation, with the expectation that Sony will decline. He can then say “well we desired to have COD on PlayStation and we kept that promise with warzone, but Sony made it not possible for the future titles” or something to that effect.
Based on what happened with Bethesda I tend to lean towards the latter, but over the last few hours I have heard compelling arguments for the former. It could go either way
The key word here is -desire-. They can say they desire all they want without that really being a commitment, and if the game don't launch they will say that it wasn't possible and give some silly reason like to protect the userbase from hackers, hate discourse or whatever the game needed to be played on Xbox Gold or whatever name and Sony didn`t allow it.
You need an EA account to play EA games, and an Ubisoft account to play Ubisoft games (or that's at least true of some of them).
Perhaps a day will come where you need a free Xbox account to play Bethesda/Activision titles on PlayStation. I think you already need a free Xbox account to play some Microsoft first-party games on PC, so this isn't far-fetched to me at all.
I don't know if it is mandatory, but I was in a party yesterday with a Minecraft PS4 edition installed and it had the opinion to enter with MS credentials.
I didn't need to log in with my Microsoft account in Minecraft on my Switch.
We were able to play without MS account, just said it offered the option.
He may “desire” it. Nadella may not.
he dont have a choice, he needs to butter up anti trust regulators, saying these thing publicly will make them think MS will play fair with competition and allow the acquisition to go thru.
Desire or commitment?
A lot of Activisions money comes from sales of CoD or other games whether directly or in microtransactions on other platforms, MS head aren't going to let Xbox division spend 70billion just to ditch a large revenue stream. Infact I would say it would be beneficial for them to look into adding Warzone to Switch.
this is true but you're at the start of a new generation here. The switching costs between console manufacturers are at their lowest
We won't be at the start of the generation when this comes into play. Likely PS5 will be a 50m units minimum by the time an Xbox exclusive COD would be ready (fall 2023 at the earliest)
Also because it sells the most on Playstation. they would loose billions.
You do know thats mostly since the xbox360 CoD players skipped X1 and went with PS4 right?, they will go where ever the game is and if the game becomes exclusive it makes their choice between a PS5 or Series s/x that much easier.
The lastest CODs of that generation only had a difference of 3 millions or so in favor of 360. The competition between the 2 was similiar. PS4 gen was a massacre in favor of PS4 and with PS5 it will remain the same. People dont want xbox is very simple.
This is not about depriving Sony of games; M$ also doesnt not care anymore about the sales their consoles anymore. this is just for the gamepass for android and iphone/iOS/PC users so they can have gazillions of subscriptions.
AND keep Call of Duty on PlayStation?
Interesting wording, as it insinuates CoD games for the future. I can't say I expected that comment. But that undoubtedly means they've already been discussing some form of deal. Basically Sony has to pay in some way to get the rest of the CoD games beyond the ones already bound by contractual agreements. Gamepass on PS5 could be one thing they discussed. But I still don't think CoD is enough to get Sony to accept GP on their system. Even though I would like to have that on PS5 personally.
I personally don't see Sony accepting GP either, given the rumors of Sony working on their own gaming subscription prove to be true.
From what I heard of that rumor, that was supposed to be bundling PS Now into a PS+ subscription tier. Basically, if you pay a bit more than usual for PS+, you also get PS Now included.
If that's the case then I think calling it "Sony's version of GP" has been an exaggeration. I don't really see Sony doing something like GP, because they likely have to lose money for years before making something like that profitable.
I don't care what he does with Call of Duty. What I wanna know is what will he do with Warcraft, Crash and Spyro.
Guys he's referring to the franchise as a whole, the desperation to spin this into war zone only is bizzare... accept that future exclusivity is not a given for the massive IPs which have a large audience on playstation, MS has told us like a dozen times and not once contradicted themselves.
Possible but then Phil would just leave it at the contractual agreement, better yet there would be little reason to make this tweet. But yeah, you're correct in that we have to wait to see how things play out. I've been saying this a lot and people thought it was ridiculous/me being in denial until now. Same will apply to Elderscrolls VI which still has no platform announcments (although I think thats more likely to be a full exclusive)
Interesting he says this after senate approves a big antitrust bill targeting big tech. Also direct criticism on Twitter from one of them over the deal concerning competition. Probably bad timing by MS.
Well yes but by all methods competition authorities have historically used, (HHI, etc) this deal would not be intervened with.
True, but much of the hightened scrutiny presently on big tech is due to some of the historical mergers being approved when they now feel they shouldn't have been. Such as Facebook acquring Instagram. This will be pretty new territory and may be approved with compromises.
The thing that has me wondering is how may console fans well call of duty fans would jump over to Xbox considering gamepass can save the average gamer a lot of money. If you really think about it gamepass ticks all the boxes for gamers n a way to save so much money. now if mummy is gonna get Johnny the new console n she hears you dont have to buy most of the popular games the kids play as she only needs to buy gamepass this is gonna really shift Microsoft into a really good position with the soccer mums and even casual gamers who game on a budget
So for the people saying PS sales are higher for CoD. Wasnt the sales higher on Xbox in the 360 gen?.
CoD fanbase are not exactly loyal to brands, so id imagine if the game was once again made exclusive expect a big jump back to xbox just like they did from 360 to PS4.
The lastest CODs of that generation only had a difference of 3 millions or so in favor of 360. The competition between the 2 was similiar. PS4 gen was a massacre in favor of PS4 and with PS5 it will remain the same. People dont want xbox is very simple.
Halo is selling like crap if not they would already released numbers and saying how an excellent performance the game is having; just tmaybe....... maybe.....it could be because of Gamepass but MS would already say the gazillions of hours played, the quantity of "craigs" killed. But M$ are not showing anything and you know that if M$ had some numbers in favor they will spin those number to make it seem a success.
This is not about depriving Sony of games; M$ also doesnt not care anymore about the sales their consoles. this is just for the gamepass for android and iphone/iOS users so they can have gazillions of subscriptions.
I mean the game has massive revenue. What absolutely can't be understated is that putting it on gamepass massively cuts their revenue already. They're not shy to take big losses to secure future revenue streams.
Which strategy maximises revenue going forward? Which strategy (especially early in the generation) locks the most players into their subscription service? It's exclusivity. I suspect Sony have marketing deals sorted until around 2024
It is prob likely that COD warzone remains on the PS platform along with any contractually agreed release for 2022/3 but then stand alone COD games to become tied into Gamepass exclusivity beyond this timeframe. Otherwise why would you spend close to 70B just to maintain the current status quo. The end game is Gamepass subscription growth..
So what he is saying is that M$ won't pull the CoD franchise off from PS seeing as there has been over a dozen releases?
Bad guy Phil at it again
Fart number 7
News of the month, "Gamer who hates Xbox, hates Xbox news."
I dislike phill and i dislike microsoft eating everything, i dont hate xbox i just prefer other brands. Ya got that?
Correction, guy hates CEO of Xbox, hates Xbox news. Same shiz.
Oh stfu seriously
I mean, you are in an article you don't care about
