Call of Duty's PS5, PS4 Exclusive Operator Amusingly Announced Amid War of Words

I don’t think this is in any way akin to purchasing a huge publisher and ensuring their games are fully exclusive to your subscription platform only, day one. So, yeah, lol.

Geez, I wonder who paid for that…
Is this the kind of gaming utopia Jim is trying to protect?

It is unfortunate Phil Spencer says he is worried about the damage big tech would do to the gaming industry while working for a big tech company buying up publishers and giving away their content for pennies on the dollar. He clearly has no self awareness.

Even if Microsoft keeps Call of Duty on PlayStation, it'll be by their choice and can change on a whim. They'll make Sony take unfavorable contracts, and you can be sure it'll be the worst version of the game every time. I personally don't care about Call of Duty, but I know it is the top-selling game series on PlayStation year after year, so it is clearly important to others and the PlayStation brand itself.

My personal view is Microsoft tends to buy their way to the top in every industry they can and finally turned their eyes towards gaming after decades of neglecting their first party. You can be sure if the Activision-Blizzard acquisition goes through, they'll try to get another publisher in a year or two and keep it going until they finally are stopped. They didn't stop after Bethesda, which itself is a much larger acquisition than either Nintendo or Sony have ever done.

Remember, losing the ability to do anti-consumer deals like this, and sour the experience on other platforms compared to theirs, is the real reason Sony is upset.

MS could offer Sony a deal that keeps COD games launching on PS indefinitely, and it still wouldn't be good enough because MS are just going to put COD on Game Pass and it will cause a slide in sales on PS consoles.

That's why, out of all the IPs being taken, they only ever mention COD.

Why is this generic in every aspect game still this big?

It should be a nothingburger if people had standards for once.

@Richnj
They mention it because Call of Duty outsells all the others, probably combined.

@Richnj that's nowhere near accurate. These deals happened after Sony mopped up Microsoft with multiple E3s and Activison jumped ship.
Sony doesn't want that deal to go through because Phil Spencer is like every other crony suit (including the ones at Sony) who is saying what needs to be said to get the deal through. Microsoft is gonna rip COD away from PlayStation so fast it's not even funny and anyone who thinks otherwise ain't paying attention.

If the deal goes through it will be the last time COD is on a PS console, period. It makes no sense for MS otherwise.

@CapGod Because it's comfort food. With the yearly releases and gameplay essentially not changing since 2007, it's got in to a position now where everybody knows what COD is, and when faced with a choice between COD and a brand new game, they keep picking the safe option.

Like how we all stare at the menu for 15 minutes and buy the same thing we always do.

@TheCollector316 Exactly, COD money. That's what I said.

@JSnow2 I never said anything about how Sony got in to the position to make these deals, only that if MS took control of COD, that Sony couldn't keep making these deals. How is that innacurate?

Ghost of Modern

Its almost as if without call of duty the playstation brand becomes obsolete..how i wish there were other games to play..

@arsmolinarc No it won't 😂 , call of duty is big enough that if Microsoft made it exclusive they'd lose money, they'll never make it exclusive when they can milk playstation players, all they will do is give xbox/pc game pass users some free exclusive game pass perks.

@Deityjester I agree - M$ will keep milking Playstation owners who play this drivel for every penny they can.

Either PS will probably get the most expensive and buggy release while the XBox will get smooth, rapid fixed and cheap on GamePass
OR
M$ will operate it like Minecraft and will support all platforms as it brings in shed-loads of cash direct to their coffers without anyone like Sony even getting a sniff.

At the end of the day, if the deal goes through, CoD will be owned by MS, the Studios owned by MS, the Publishing rights owned by MS, the games development and release paid for by MS so it should be up to them to decide where to publish. If they choose 'not' to release on PS - tough!!! Playstation didn't want to pay Insomniac to make Spider-Man and release that on |Xbox - a MUCH bigger IP than CoD...

Maybe Sony forgets, but CoD was associated with Xbox FIRST!! It was through Xbox marketing and promotion that CoD grew from some fun PC game rivalling BF, Medal of Honour etc to the big Juggernaut it became with CoD4 and MW2 in particular on Xbox - that popularity 'spread' to Playstation 3 who had been trying to 'beat' Halo with Killzone & Resistance.

It wasn't until the PS4 era and the end of MS's Marketing deals with A/B that Sony stole in and took over Marketing...

Its MS's 'choice'. You don't hear MS dictating to Sony which IP's must be released on Xbox too because they are 'bigger' than PS/Xbox platforms - games like Spider-Man, Street Fighter, Wolverine, Final Fantasy etc - whether they 'own' the IP/Studios or not, they are still 'keeping' IPs from GAMERS. MS is promising not to keep games from Gamers as you don't even need to buy an Xbox to play and can play 'anywhere' with their Cloud opening up games to a wider audience, not reducing them down to just Playstation only gamers...

Hurting Sony's bottom line, the market leader in the console space isn't 'anti-competitive' - its the opposite - its MS becoming more 'competitive' to challenge Sony's dominance. Sony has the studios, the IP's, the platform etc to 'compete' with MS, like Nintendo, and can make their own 'CoD' rival.

Sony won't be putting in any money to 'help' fund development etc of future CoDs so how can they demand Parity, demand it releases etc. They have NO say!! People bought a PS5 primarily on the strength of Sony's own first party exclusives and not for multi-platform games. People will still buy PS for God of War, Horizon, Last of Us, Destiny, Wolverine, Spider-Man, R&C, Uncharted Gran Turismo etc...

@Richnj you realise deals like this only exist because MS started the trend. Sony spent the al ost the whole ps3 era refusing todo deals like this abs vein punished as a result. So they gave in and went where the money was. The first examples of this were titles like gta4 dlc, fallout 3, nee Vegas and skyrim dlc, battlefield games etc.

Also it is anti-competitive. Its classic Microsoft andbits what they eventually do or try todo in every industry and it does little but harm them. They've done this for decades. Here is the gamenplan: buy ip's like COD. Appear all nice and friendly and make them multiplatform for a year or two. Then as next gen consoles sales take off (ps6 etc) make thr big juggernauts exclusive. Bam a whole load of gamers just switched eco system. You keep at this for a short while you now have market dominance in the streaming and console space arguably in many ways on pc aswell. Call of duty is unassailable as market leader that much is clear at this point. You can tell this is the game plan because they are basically giving away games etc they spend billions acquiring and creating. They are a company so you only do that for a reason and the only reason is to force out competitors and/or shrink them to the point they are a shell of their former selves and can't compete. The astronomical infrastructure costs and other associated costs with entering the market means it will be prohibitive for any serious competitors to emerge to challenge themselves. Now games pass isn't profitable not in the way many seem to think and its obvious that's the case with a simple breakdown of what best case scenario costs are. But once you have market dominance and can't realistically be challenged. Guess what? Upngo thr prices. No incentive to bother delivering titles people want but to instead just make loads of long term mp based games with microtransactions and designed to release content over time to ensure people keep their

@sanderson72 they'll do one of those for 3 years then start of next gen go exclusive to force gamers to pick. If people don't switch console it goes multiplat again. If it does goal well. That is that. Call of Duty unlike Minecraft has the selling power to force such a large change in buying habits.

@extermin8or_ It's not about who started it. The practice sucks. It sucked then, it sucks now.

And sells what, 15 million units on PS, out of 117m million consoles. What are the other 100m users playing if they aren't playing COD?

"But once you have market dominance and can't realistically be challenged. Guess what? Upngo thr prices. No incentive to bother delivering titles people want but to instead just make loads of long term mp based games with microtransactions"

Friendly reminder that Sony is market leader, is upping prices, and has like 15 Live Service games in development.

@Richnj a) they had 6 live service games in development and one was gt7. B) I said market dominance not the market leader there is a difference. Sony are the market leader - they clearly have lots of competition however and would still have without MS needing to consolidate and purchase waisting publishers and large studios like Bethesda.

C) a fair portion of gamers will be playing older games, playing nothing or playing ps plus games. Or they will be split into the 20 plus million who buy cod most years and some buy nothing else. Some will get other games too and some won't get cod at all. The audience that won't get cod is irrelevant to this conversation because their mates switching console/ecosystem could impact their choices.

Technically Sony didn't raise their prices it's the same in USD which they likely operate in given SCEI head office is in USA. They adjusted the prices to reflect significant inflation and devaluation of other currencies compared to the dollar thud meaning they are worth less so the prime must increase to be worth the effort.

Once the deal goes through with MS, I'm happy to see the game go to gamepass, and for xbox users to get exclusives bundles just like this. It seems a fair trade off. However out right making the game exclusive is one step too far.