Phil Spencer announces Call of Duty deal with PlayStation

Hdcase@beehaw.org to Gaming@beehaw.org – 60 points –

"We are pleased to announce that Microsoft and @PlayStation have signed a binding agreement to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation following the acquisition of Activision Blizzard. We look forward to a future where players globally have more choice to play their favorite games."

https://twitter.com/XboxP3/status/1680578783718383616

No word on how long the deal is for, but my guess would be 10 years.

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I doubt any company would want to give their competitor 20-30% of their profits, so in my mind it isn't a matter of if, but a matter of when they start locking all their franchises off from PS. What will be most interesting to me will be how will they do it. Will they just drop franchises so they don't have to face the backlash for turning a franchise into an exclusive? Will they just make up a new "franchise" with a new name but similar gameplay? Will they just slowly one by one exclusive them off to try and reduce blowback? Do it all at once to get it out of the way?

This generation has already been mostly played out and I don't see large changes making a large difference, but once the next generation comes around in another 3-5 years I imagine they will want to be in a place where they can leverage all these franchises to get people excited to buy their new box over their competitors. And you do that with exclusives.

Meanwhile, Minecraft trundles on as a multiplatform title 9 years after its acquisition. 🤷

minecraft also a large number of things going for it.

  1. It was(is) a single game
  2. It was already multiplatform, and only the most suicidal company would take a game that was multiplatform and make it exclusive. Not including the backlash as players lost access to a game they paid for, but there would also be untold number of refunds that would need to be done, lawsuits (most likely) to handle, etc.
  3. It already had a very large (and most importantly) young userbase that they could monetize on dozens of platforms.
  4. If you followed the proceedings of everything that is going on you'll have read that they actually wanted to make the new minecraft legends xbox exclusive. While the emails didn't say what ended up making them change their mind, I would imagine being in a certain legal fight might have played a large role in it.
  5. Exceptions happen, but I imagine that exception would be the appropriate word rather than norm. But I'd love to be proven wrong.

Pull a Titanfall to Apex(bad example but you know what I mean) now you don't really have a CoD franchise. It's like Battlefield is no longer the Battlefield we remember, just the names. They can just spin up another franchise "from the legendary CoD developers, blah blah...", BUT it's not CoD.

Honestly the franchise is probably due for a shakeup at this point anyway. You can only release the same game over again each year for so long. I used to be a diehard Battlefield fan but have only played maybe 10 minutes worth of 2142 after owning it for 6 months or more.

You can only release the same game over again each year for so long.

I've been saying this about COD for forever. The thing is, they shake it up just enough to stay relevant. They'll remake an old title, add BR, mess with movement. If anything, FIFA and Madden are enough proof that you don't need to change the formula. As long as it continues to print money, nothing will change.

Good thing Microsoft is known for taking popular IPs and making them better and not beating a dead horse until they shrug their shoulders.

/s