Phil Spencer has provided his most definitive statement yet regarding the future of Call of Duty, promising Call of Duty will continue to release on Sony’s consoles “as long as there’s a PlayStation out there to ship to.”Microsoft’s planned $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard is currently undergoing heavy scrutiny by regulators, especially in the UK. One major sticking point is the future of the Call of Duty — Microsoft previously committed to keeping the first-person shooter franchise for “at least several more years” beyond Sony’s current agreement with Activision, though this apparently wasn’t good enough for PlayStation boss Jim Ryan, who called the offer “inadequate on many levels.” Now, Phil Spencer’s most recent statement suggests Microsoft will keep Call of Duty on PlayStation permanently, much in the same way Microsoft has done with Minecraft.Call of Duty to follow Minecraft publishing modelSpeaking on the Same Brain podcast, Spencer said, “We’re not taking Call of Duty from PlayStation. That’s not our intent. Our intent is not to do that, and as long as there’s a PlayStation out there to ship to, our intent is that we continue to ship Call of Duty on PlayStation — similar to what we’ve done with Minecraft since we’ve owned that.”We’ve expanded the places where people can play Minecraft, we haven’t reduced the places. And it’s been good for the Minecraft community, in my opinion, and I want to do the same as we think where Call of Duty can go over the years. “For Xbox itself, players who have invested in our console, I think the biggest addition you’re going to see is some great games coming to Game Pass. This isn’t going to be about pulling those communities off of other platforms, but I want it to be a great place for people to see those games.” UK regulator, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), recently launched a ‘Phase 2’ investigation into the deal and published its concerns about the deal. In response, Microsoft criticised both Sony and the CMA in a published response, where it was also revealed that an existing deal between Sony and Activision blocked Activision from placing Call of Duty titles in Xbox Game Pass for several years.Elsewhere, Spencer said he’s confident that the deal will be approved by regulators and that Microsoft’s output of first-party Xbox games this year has been “a little light.”What are your thoughts on Spencer’s latest promise? Let us know down in the comments.
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