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Xbox head and Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer has revealed that assuming the company’s in-progress acquisition of Activision Blizzard goes through, the Call of Duty franchise will remain on PlayStation as long as there is a PlayStation platform for the series to release to.
This news comes by way of a new interview between Spencer and the Same Brain YouTube channel, where Spencer said Activision Blizzard would keep releasing Call of Duty games on Sony consoles “as long as there’s a PlayStation out there to ship to,” as reported by Eurogamer.
“We’re not taking Call of Duty from PlayStation,” Spencer said. “That’s not our intent. Our intent is not to do that. As long as there’s a PlayStation out there to ship to, our intent is that we continue to ship Call of Duty on PlayStation, similar to what we’ve done on Minecraft since we’ve owned that. We’ve expanded the places people can play Minecraft, we haven’t reduced the places, and it’s been good…for the Minecraft community, in my opinion, and I want to do the same as we think about where Call of Duty can go over the years.”
He also touched further upon the ongoing acquisition, citing that it’s currently in the regulatory phase, which is a phase where Spencer and others talk to regulators about the acquisition, answer their questions, and more.
“I’m pretty confident in the deal closing,” Spencer told Same Brain in the interview. “Spending time with regulators, I think they’re asking good honest questions about a big deal, as you mentioned, [the] biggest deal Microsoft’s ever done, the biggest deal I’ve ever done.”
He says if everything goes according to plan, the acquisition should be past regulatory phases and ready to go through in June of 2023. In the meantime, Sony has been criticizing the deal, citing publicly that Xbox acquiring Call of Duty as a first-party franchise would be unfair to PlayStation players. It’ll be interesting to hear if Sony and PlayStation have anything to say in response to Spencer’s latest about the acquisition and Call of Duty.
In the meantime, read about Microsoft’s intent to acquire Activision Blizzard and then check out all of the exclusive PlayStation bonuses for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II (ironic, right?).
[Source: Eurogamer]
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