‘Call Of Duty’ will remain on PlayStation

All current and future Call Of Duty games will be available to play on PlayStation, as announced by head of Xbox brand Phil Spencer in a tweet.

“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,” said Spencer yesterday (July 16). “We look forward to a future where players globally have more choice to play their favourite games.”

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.

— Phil Spencer (@XboxP3) July 16, 2023

This formalised Microsoft’s intent to maintain access to Call Of Duty on its rival’s consoles, as stated in another tweet from Spencer published in late 2022. In response, Sony said that there would still be an impact on its bottom line as the power of the Call Of Duty brand might sway players to switch their preferred platform.

However, Spencer asserted that the acquisition of Activision Blizzard – which will be the most expensive video game acquisition ever at a cost of $68.7billion (£53.3billion) – was motivated by Activision Blizzard’s prowess in the mobile gaming sphere.

On July 11, the United States District Court for the Northern District of California ruled against the Federal Trade Commission’s concerns about the takeover and justified that Microsoft has done the due diligence “in writing, in public, and in court” that there would not be a significant effect to competition in the industry.

“To the contrary, the record evidence points to more consumer access to Call Of Duty and other Activision content,” said Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley.

The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority is not convinced, though. “We disagree with the CMA’s concerns and have challenged its decision on appeal,” explained Spencer in an internal memo to Microsoft’s employees. “In order to prioritize work on potential options, Microsoft and Activision have agreed with the CMA that pausing the appeal now would be in the public interest, and both we and the CMA have made a joint submission to the Competition Appeal Tribunal to this effect.”

In other gaming news, Microsoft described Blizzard‘s experiment to ensure Call Of Duty was exclusive to its own Battle.net service on PC as a “resounding failure.”