Microsoft says it hasn't "pulled any games from PlayStation" following recent Redfall comments
Sony has repeatedly expressed concerns over Microsoft taking games like Call of Duty away from PlayStation.
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After recent comments from Redfall game designer Harvey Smith about Microsoft not wanting Redfall on PS5, the company has stated it hasn't "pulled any games from PlayStation."
In a recent interview with IGN France, Smith spoke about the transition to being owned by Microsoft, noting that once acquired it "was a change with [a] capital C," (thanks, Eurogamer). "They came in and they said 'No PlayStation 5, we're focusing on Xbox, PC and the Game Pass'." This comes after repeated pushes from Sony that Microsoft is taking games away from PlayStation. Now, in a statement to Eurogamer, Microsoft has said it isn't doing that, as evidenced by Bethesda published titles like Deathloop and Ghostwire: Tokyo still being on PS5.
"We haven't pulled any games from PlayStation," starts the statement from Microsoft. "In fact, we've expanded our footprint of games that we've shipped on Sony's PlayStation since our acquisition of ZeniMax, and the first two games we shipped after closing were PlayStation 5 exclusives. We did the same thing since our closing of Minecraft as we extended the reach of that franchise.
"All of the games that were available on PlayStation when we acquired ZeniMax in March 2021 are still available on PlayStation, and we have continued to do content updates on PlayStation and PC. We have always said that future decisions on whether to distribute ZeniMax games for other consoles will be made on a case-by-case basis."
Now obviously, both Deathloop and Ghostwire were only console exclusives for a limited time, the former now available on Xbox and the latter coming to the platform soon. Sony is more talking about titles like Starfield, which is exclusive to Xbox on console, but a PlayStation release was never announced anyway, so whether Microsoft is really taking anything from Sony here is up for debate.
Most of this stems from the fact that Sony wants Call of Duty on PlayStation, but Microsoft has been trying to form a deal to keep the series on PlayStation consoles. The UK's Competition and Markets Authority also recently concluded that Microsoft would not have the incentive to keep CoD off competing consoles if the merger takes place, but all of this is still up in the air.