Microsoft confirmed this week that the Call of Duty franchise will still be available on the PlayStation platform in the future. The confirmation came from a blog post on the company’s site talking about regulations, acquisitions, and the various properties Microsoft owned. More notably, this comes after Microsoft announced it was acquiring Activision Blizzard, an acquisition which immediately led to concerns about the publishers games – namely the Call of Duty series – eventually becoming exclusive to Xbox and Windows PC platforms.
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The blog post seen here talked about a number of topics with Activision’s Call of Duty series mentioned towards the end. Microsoft acknowledged the speculations and concerns from players and the Call of Duty community overall that the games might stop releasing on the PlayStation platform. Microsoft’s comments assuaged those concerns by saying the Call of Duty series will continue to be available on PlayStation and that the decision to ensure that happens “is the right thing for the industry” and others.
“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,” Microsoft said. “And we have committed to Sony that we will also make them available on PlayStation beyond the existing agreement and into the future so that Sony fans can continue to enjoy the games they love. We are also interested in taking similar steps to support Nintendo’s successful platform. We believe this is the right thing for the industry, for gamers and for our business.”
Beyond the talks about Call of Duty, Microsoft also said it plans on applying new principals to its Xbox Store on the Xbox consoles. Those new principals will be partially applied starting today with more to come in the future and can be read in full through the blog post.
Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard was the second big acquisition the company’s made recently and was the most surprising one yet given the size of the publisher and the scope of the games it’s known for. Late last year, Microsoft also acquired ZeniMax Media, the parent company of Bethesda Softworks. The more recent purchase of Activision Blizzard will reportedly be reviewed by the FTC soon.
Sony has made its own moves by purchasing Bungie, the developer of the Destiny games and the original Halo titles, but has said that the purchase was not a response to Microsoft’s acquisitions.
