The next three Call of Duty games will still be on PlayStation
Despite the recent acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft, the CoD franchise won’t be an Xbox exclusive – yet.
The $69 billion purchase of Activision Blizzard came as a shock to us all, with Microsoft taking on the company that is responsible for major franchises, including Call of Duty.
Before the deal went through, Activision had already committed to bringing the next three CoD games over to the Sony console, according to anonymous sources.
According to Jason Schreier (via Twitter), this includes the CoD game we expect to see released this year, which is expected to be another entry in the Modern Warfare sub-series and developed by Infinity Ward.
The following game will be developed by Treyarch, which is an Activision-owned studio, though not much is known about the genre of the title.
Schreier also believes that Warzone 2, which is planned to release in 2023, will join both Call of Duty 2022 and Call of Duty 2023 on the PS5 console.
It is not clear what will happen after these three titles are released, beyond them being included on Xbox and Windows platforms.
The recently appointed chief executive officer at Microsoft Gaming, Phil Spencer, revealed that he had been in talks with Sony about the future of Activision’s IP.
Spencer says that Xbox is planning to honour all existing commitments and that Sony is valued in the industry.
However, it is not clear what the aforementioned agreements are; considering how popular the CoD games are, and how they usually hit among the top three bestselling games for PlayStation, it would be a huge blow to Sony if the games suddenly became Xbox exclusives.
Past the next three titles, over the next two years, the fate of the franchise is not clear.
Do you think that Microsoft will turn the Call of Duty franchise into an Xbox exclusive? And would that turn you away from the PlayStation console? Let us know what you think on Twitter.
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
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We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.