Xbox has "a desire to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation"

Will Call of Duty stay on PlayStation consoles now that Microsoft has announced its plans to purchase Activision Blizzard? In a new tweet addressing players' concerns about the game going Xbox-exclusive, Phil Spencer has basically said 'don't worry, CoD isn't going anywhere'.

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Following an official statement released by Sony yesterday (Jan 20, 2022) in which the PlayStation platform holder said it expects Microsoft to honour existing "contractual agreements" with PlayStation, Phil Spencer has tweeted his assurance that Microsoft "values [its] relationship" with Sony and that it's "[the company's] desire to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation".

"Had good calls this week with leaders at Sony, Spencer wrote in a tweet. "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."

The wording here is interesting; Spencer doesn't commit to specific games, or even timelines. It could be the case that we'll see Warzone remain on the platform – Microsoft has previously said it doesn't want to break up pre-existing communities – and new Call of Duty games could be Xbox exclusives.

Microsoft, of course, has honoured pre-existing contractual agreements before: when Xbox announced the acquisition of Bethesda parent company, Zenimax, in 2020, both Arkane's Deathloop and Tango Gameworks' Ghostwire: Tokyo were confrimed to still be PS5 exclusives. It's worth noting that, shortly after, Microsoft announced hugely anticipated sci-fi RPG, Starfield, will be an Xbox exclusive, though.

This news comes as "high-level employees" at Activision have reportedly discussed ditching Call of Duty's current yearly release schedule. If this does happen, it'd buck a trend that's been in place since 2005. But with more games going down the service route now and shooters, in particular, working well with seasonal content models, maybe its time to give the old CoD formula a bit of a refresh?

Now that the IP is owned by Microsoft, there's certainly no better time to start experimenting, right?

We've published a list of dream games we'd love to see come from the Xbox/Activision Blizzard acquisition, and if you still have burning questions about how it's all going to shake out, you can check out our list of questions about the acquisition that we've tried our best to answer.