In the wake of regulatory scrutiny over the Activision Blizzard acquisition, Microsoft has attempted to make its plans a bit clearer, confirming that Call of Duty will continue to be a multiplatform game. While some do doubt how true this is, Microsoft is continuing to reiterate this statement.
In a recent interview with the Same Brain podcast, Xbox head, Phil Spencer, touched on the subject of Call of Duty once again, but this time around, Spencer made Microsoft's stance as clear as possible, saying: “as long as there is a PlayStation out there to ship to, our intent is that we continue to ship Call of Duty on PlayStation”.
Spencer also likened this to Microsoft's approach to Minecraft. Many of us already made that connection. When Microsoft acquired Minecraft back in 2014, the company kept the game multiplatform and extended that to spin-off games as well. With Minecraft being such a massively popular game, it didn't make sense to try and push everyone over to Xbox or PC. Microsoft will treat Call of Duty similarly, so we would not expect to ever see an Xbox-only version of Call of Duty.
Of course, all of this hinges on Microsoft getting the Activision Blizzard acquisition approved. Given the state the company was in before Microsoft made its buyout offer, I would be worried about Activision Blizzard's future if the deal fell through.
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KitGuru Says: If this applies for Call of Duty, then it should apply for all of Microsoft's major franchises picked up through acquisitions. Something like Fallout 5 or The Elder Scrolls VI should also be multiplatform. I'd also like to see Microsoft keeping all Blizzard games multiplatform too, with the exception of PC-only games like WoW. Whether or not that will end up being the case remains to be seen.