Microsoft promise Call of Duty will remain on PlayStation
After Microsoft's Activision acquisition, we all started to worry that some games might be Xbox exclusives...
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After Activision Blizzard’s acquisition by Microsoft, many fans of some of Activision’s biggest games all suddenly had one worry. Were Activision games now going to become Xbox exclusives? Although there’s been some silence since the initial announcement, it seems that the fallout from this acquisition is starting to smooth out. And as part of that, there’s now finally been answers to some people’s most burning questions.
As part of a very in-depth blog post titled “adapting ahead of regulation”, Microsoft outlined its plans for future games and their development. Four main areas are outlined in this blog post; app stores, access and payments. Where it states that Microsoft will “enable all developers to access our app store as long as they meet reasonable and transparent standards for quality and safety”. It also adds that it will “treat apps equally in our app store without unreasonable preferencing or ranking of our apps or our business partners’ apps over others”. Also, all apps will be held to “the same standards”, whether they are Microsoft’s own or another company’s.
Furthermore, the blog later explains – in response to people’s worries that games like Call of Duty will be available on other platforms: “To be clear, Microsoft will continue to make Call of Duty and other popular Activision Blizzard titles available on PlayStation through the term of any existing agreement with Activision […]. We have committed to Sony that we will also make them available on PlayStation beyond the existing agreement”.
And if you’re worried these could be empty promises, Brad Smith, the writer of this blog, is Microsoft’s general counsel, and has worked on various antitrust cases for Microsoft. He’s overseen negotiations with the European Commission and experienced a variety of issues that have given him some insight into the industry and what decisions are idea.
So hopefully that should sooth any of your fears. For the time being, and foreseeable future, Call of Duty won’t be a system exclusive.
