In January 2022, Xbox’s parent company, Microsoft, announced plans to purchase Activision Blizzard. While the announcement left some wondering what the deal meant for the future of their favorite franchises, we now know for sure that Call of Duty won’t be leaving PlayStation consoles anytime soon. On Sunday, Phil Spencer confirmed that the company has no plans to take the franchise off of the PlayStation consoles.
Microsoft announced plans to purchase Activision Blizzard for roughly $68.7 billion last winter. At time of publication, the deal is still pending and in review with anti-trust regulators in the United States and abroad, however Spencer has already started talking about Microsoft’s plans for many of the company’s games. In an interview with the Same Brain podcast, Spencer reiterated that there is no plan to take the Call of Duty franchise off of PlayStation.
“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 people can play Minecraft.” He said in the video, “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 about where Call of Duty can go over the years.”
Since the first game was released in 2003, Call of Duty has gone on to become one of the world’s biggest video game franchises. Year after year, Call of Duty games regularly sit at the tops of sales charts. When Activision released Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, which included its take on a battle royale genre, it claims its sales exceeded $600 million within the first three days of its release. Although it appears the tides of interest have turned somewhat — the recent Call of Duty: Vanguard didn’t sell as well as previous titles and the number of players dipped over the summer — it continues to be a regular fixture on the annual release calendar.
Activision released its latest installment of the franchise, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, on Oct. 27.