Will Microsoft’s Record-Breaking Activision Deal See Call of Duty Fuel the Xbox-PlayStation War?

Xbox recently announced a massive acquisition deal, with Microsoft set to buy Activision Blizzard for a record $68.7 billion. This is the biggest of its kind in the gaming industry so far. However, Xbox will have a monumental task ahead when it starts working on the publisher’s most prestigious IPs.

Among them, none is as important as Call of Duty. One of the most popular franchises in a community of millions of gamers across the globe.

This deal can have various implications for those involved in analyzing the acquisition of a controversial firm at the moment. But from a gaming fan’s perspective, it has a lot riding on itself. Especially when it comes to the developers’ team working on the next Call of Duty project.

Why the emphasis is on Call of Duty is because it’s the most valuable asset Activision has had for more than a decade now. Granted, the publisher is going through a bad phase right now, but the gaming franchise has witnessed a lot of success under Activision’s label. Barring a few failures, most of the entries have been impressive.

Another reason for the success of Call of Duty games has been their appeal to PlayStation users. Despite the fact that other platforms, including Xbox, do support the titles, PlayStation sales contribute to a lot of what the series makes with each new entry annually.

Following the acquisition by Microsoft, however, the situation will be tricky for Xbox CEO Phil Spencer in terms of his vision for Call of Duty and also his console.

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Call of Duty may birth a new battle between Xbox and PlayStation

As is already known, the games under the series do better on PlayStation than Xbox every year. Simply put, the sales from PlayStation bring more money for the Call of Duty brand.

With the new deal, it will be interesting to see how Microsoft and Xbox will handle the series. While making the announcement, Phil Spencer mentioned that Xbox will expand further with the vast catalog that Activision Blizzard offers, with the likes of Warcraft, Crash Bandicoot, Overwatch, Guitar Hero, and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater.

But it might not be the case, moving forward. A higher possibility is that Microsoft won’t just expand the Xbox family, but make Activision’s titles exclusive to its console as well. Which means they may end up getting limited to just Xbox and PC, not coming to the PS console at launch.

And that might just add more fuel to the war between Xbox and PlayStation. Moreover, COD fans won’t like such a scenario either in the future.

Majority of players today tend to enjoy Call of Duty more on PlayStation platform than Xbox devices. It’s not hidden from even the people at Microsoft managing the Xbox line-up. Although the console has sold pretty well, it hasn’t succeeded in pulling Call of Duty lovers from Sony’s consoles.

If there happens to be a case of Xbox exclusivity, the franchise itself will suffer. Because it won’t make a huge amount of money for Microsoft, no matter what. The Windows maker will need to find a second route eventually; it may not like it though.

Will Xbox share Call of Duty with PlayStation?

For any company, making profits, at the end of the day, is more important than anything else. Microsoft is no exception to this. Going with this approach, it may decide to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation, even after the acquisition of Activision Blizzard.

This means that Phil Spencer may have to go with the flow and release new Call of Duty games for both PlayStation and Xbox simultaneously.

But then there will be a matter of conflict. Despite having full control of the franchise, it will need to make a compromise on its ambition of making Call of Duty an Xbox exclusive. And if they do allow the game on PS consoles, PlayStation will have an advantage.

Only time will tell how the gaming saga will proceed with regard to the new acquisition. Although, what matters for any series is the fans, and Microsoft will need to keep that in mind while announcing its next major step post-acquisition.

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