Call of Duty’s PlayStation Deal Only Includes 1 More Game

PlayStation has accidentally revealed when the marketing deal it has with Call of Duty will end. It’s no secret Call of Duty is a juggernaut franchise and generates absurd amounts of money every single year. With that said, for the last thirteen years, Xbox and PlayStation have been bidding to make special deals with Activision for the series. These deals center around marketing and exclusive content, though the latter has become less prominent in recent years. It’s massively helpful for these platform holders to be able to market their consoles and Call of Duty every holiday season, making their console seem like the best place to play the biggest video game franchise out there.

With that said, PlayStation secured the marketing rights to Call of Duty, taking it away from Xbox in 2015 with Call of Duty: Black Ops 3. It has since used these to get early access to DLC, modes, and even 30 days of early access to the Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare Remastered campaign. It’s always kept mostly confidential when these deals expire, but Sony slipped up and gave us an exact answer. As part of the ongoing legal drama with Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision, it was accidentally revealed by PlayStation when the current deal ends. Sony submitted a bunch of documents with information that was intended to be redacted, but was still readable, prompting them to be pulled, but not before The Verge spotted them. With that said, we now know PlayStation’s deal with Call of Duty will end with the next game, which is expected to release later this year and is rumored to be Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.

As for what will happen after that remains to be seen. If the Activision/Xbox deal falls apart, Sony could renew. Microsoft could also make an attempt to bid on these rights as a way to make up for not totally swallowing up Activision. Of course, if the deal goes through, it can be guaranteed PlayStation won’t get those marketing rights ever again.

What do you think of the Call of Duty marketing deals? Let me know in the comments or hit me up on Twitter @Cade_Onder.