Despite of Microsoft's recent acquisition of Activision Blizzard, it has now been confirmed that the next three Call of Duty titles will still come to PlayStation consoles.
Reports from Bloomberg confirm that Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard does not mean the end of Call of Duty on PlayStation. This news will surely please fans of the franchise, with a large percentage of CoD's player-base coming from Sony's PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 consoles. The report, from Bloomberg's Jason Schreier, confirms earlier assumptions that Call of Duty's PlayStation market was too lucrative for Microsoft to give up.
This doesn't mean that other Activision Blizzard franchises will not become Microsoft-platform exclusive (so only on PC, Xbox, and platforms that support Game Pass). Instead, we expect that a lot of upcoming games from Activision Blizzard will start to shift to those Microsoft platforms, to further draw customers away from Sony's PlayStation consoles.
What will inevitably happen is that Call of Duty will become an Xbox-first title, with the franchise calling all Microsoft platforms "home". This takes us back to the Xbox 360 / PS3 generation, where Xbox was the go-to platform for Call of Duty, but takes us away from the last ten years, where PS4 was the go-to. This isn't a real problem, but it is a pretty big shift.
Will Call of Duty Become Microsoft/Xbox-Exclusive?
According to Bloomberg, Call of Duty will continue to come to PlayStation until at least 2023, but may thereafter become a Microsoft-exclusive franchise. It seems that Microsoft will release Call of Duty on PlayStation for at least the next two years, so we can expect both the 2022 and 2023 titles to come to Sony's consoles. The third Call of Duty game mentioned is a planned "Warzone 2" that is set for release in 2023.
It's true that not very much is known about any of these titles, but to give you a bite-sized version of what we know, here is a quick summary of what we know is coming over the next few years:
- New Modern Warfare game from Infinity Ward in 2022.
- New Treyarch Call of Duty game in 2023.
- New Warzone in 2023.
NEW: Activision is committed to releasing at least the next three Call of Duty games on PlayStation even after the Xbox acquisition, according to people familiar with the deal. That's COD2022, COD2023, and Warzone 2 (in 2023). After that, it's hazier https://t.co/OpWE7Tk9KV
— Jason Schreier (@jasonschreier) January 25, 2022
In addition to the knowledge that at least the next three games will come out on PlayStation as well as Xbox and PC, Bloomberg has reported that Activision has been in discussions about placing a halt on yearly Call of Duty releases. Instead, they could potentially be spacing out releases to alleviate stress on the developers, and yield higher-quality products as a whole. This decision hasn't been made yet, though, so can't be confirmed.
Microsoft should close the Activision Blizzard acquisition within 18-months, and upon the conclusion of those proceedings, and the outcomes of the negotiations, we will be able to confirm more. We expect there to be some pretty serious changes coming to Activision Blizzard in the future, and possibly the removal of the company's CEO after a pretty disastrous year for the games publisher.
After bombshell sexual harassment and discrimination allegations dropped in the middle of 2021, and the utter embarrassment of Call of Duty: Vanguard, Activision Blizzard has been sitting in a rather precarious situation as of late. Hopefully Microsoft will be able to turn the ship around and give its newly acquired studios the attention that they deserve.