Phil Spencer debunks all conspiracy theories about keeping Call of Duty off PlayStation

Everyone is trying to poke holes in Microsoft's commitment to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation once it takes control of Activision Blizzard, and Phil Spencer is a little tired of that.

The games boss at Microsoft has clarified, once and for all, what the company actually intends to do with Call of Duty on PlayStation, leaving no room for alternate interpretations.

Speaking on The Verge's Decoder podcast, Spencer was directly asked about some of the ways Microsoft could decide to get out of this agreement down the line. The worry mainly stems from the way Spencer's previous statement was worded.

Though Microsoft has always promised to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation for years to come, Sony said the offer was "inadequate on many levels". Spencer's response was to say that as long as there's a PlayStation to ship to, Call of Duty will be on it.

That, of course, could be a sneaky way for Microsoft to force Game Pass onto PlayStation, should it decide that's the only way the game is going to be shipped years from now, which would put Sony in an impossible situation.

"Native Call of Duty on PlayStation, not linked to them having to carry Game Pass, not streaming," said Spencer. "If they want a streaming version of Call of Duty we could do that as well, just like we do on our own consoles."

"There’s nothing behind my back. It is the Call of Duty - Modern Warfare 2 doing great on PlayStation, doing great on Xbox. The next game, the next, next, next, next, next [game]. Native on the platform, not having to subscribe to Game Pass. Sony does not have to take Game Pass on their platform to make that happen.

"There’s nothing hidden. We want to continue to ship Call of Duty on PlayStation, without any kind of weird ‘aha I figured out the gotcha’."

As clear as this statement is, Spencer also added that no contract can be written to say 'forever', but he's open to making a longer-term commitment that Sony/regulators would be comfortable with.

Short of convincing regulators to prevent the deal entirely, this is likely the best outcome Sony could hope for. By hitting out at Microsoft's apparent soft language, the platform holder is now able to get a much more concrete promise, and in public.

That said, Microsoft clearly intends to bring Call of Duty to Game Pass, something that Sony no doubt doesn’t want to happen, and is likely the root cause of this argument.