Call of Duty: Activision Reportedly Wants To Release Next Three Games On PlayStation Despite Xbox Acquisition

ign.com:

Although Activision Blizzard is soon set to become an Xbox company, the future of Call of Duty isn’t exclusive just yet. According to a new report, the next few annual Call of Duty releases are still set to be released on PlayStation.

Bloomberg says that before Xbox announced its $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, the Call of Duty company had already committed to making the next few Call of Duty games available across all platforms, including PlayStation.

According to Jason Schreier, this includes Call of Duty 2022, Call of Duty 2023, and Warzone 2 also planned for 2023.

After these, however, the future of Call of Duty outside of Xbox and Windows platforms is less clear. Xbox boss Phil Spencer tweeted last week that in a call with Sony executives he intends to “honor all existing agreements” between Activision and Sony.

When Xbox acquired ZeniMax Media, the company also reaffirmed its commitments to existing agreements and released Arkane’s Deathloop and Tango Gameworks’ upcoming Ghostwire: Tokyo as PlayStation 5 exclusives. But Bethesda’s Starfield will be an Xbox console exclusive.

Sources familiar with Activision’s deal say that, for the next two years at least, Xbox will honor its commitments to release annual Call of Duty games on PlayStation. But after that Microsoft will examine the future of the franchise.

This includes determining whether or not to maintain the annual release schedule Call of Duty has kept over the years. Activision leads have reportedly discussed spacing out new releases.

The effects of the Activision Xbox deal will ripple for the years to come, but based on how Microsoft handled acquiring Bethesda the signs point towards Xbox exclusivity, though experts are split on the matter.