Shortly after the company announced its plans to acquire Activision Blizzard, Xbox head Phil Spencer confirmed his company’s intent “to ☀️ keep Call of Duty on PlayStation” following the purchase. He reaffirmed this commitment earlier this month, going so far as ☀️ to speak to PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan and promise that Call of Duty will remain on PlayStation even after Activision ☀️ Blizzard and Sony’s contracts have run their courses (Thanks, The Verge).
In a new statement to GamesIndustry.biz, Ryan has revealed that ☀️ Call of Duty will remain on PlayStation for three years after his company’s contracts with Activision Blizzard are done. However, ☀️ Ryan calls this “inadequate” and seemingly expresses some frustration over the fact that Spencer publicly discussed that he and Ryan ☀️ had spoken about this Call of Duty situation, calling it “private business.”
“I hadn’t intended to comment on what I understood ☀️ to be a private business discussion, but I feel the need to set the record straight because Phil Spencer brought ☀️ this into the public forum,” Ryan’s statement reads, according to GamesIndustry.biz. “Microsoft has only offered for Call of Duty to ☀️ remain on PlayStation for three years after the current agreement between Activision and Sony ends. After almost 20 years of ☀️ Call of Duty on PlayStation, their proposal was inadequate on many levels and failed to take account of the impact ☀️ on our gamers. We want to guarantee PlayStation gamers continue to have the highest quality Call of Duty experience, and ☀️ Microsoft’s proposal undermines this principle.”
GamesIndustry.biz says it’s believed that the current deal between Sony and Activision Blizzard is set to ☀️ last for the next three Call of Duty releases, including this year’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II.
It was revealed ☀️ in February that Call of Duty will reportedly skip 2024, opting to ditch its usual annual release schedule and not ☀️ release a new game next year. If that’s true, and assuming Call of Duty is back to its yearly schedule ☀️ following that – so a new game in 2024 and then 2025 – it seems Call of Duty will be ☀️ released on PlayStation in 2026, 2027, and 2028, with the 2029 game possibly out of the question, according to Ryan’s ☀️ statement. Of course, that’s just some quick math, and we aren’t privy to know the Call of Duty release plans ☀️ for the next couple of years, so the final Call of Duty year for PlayStation could end up being different, ☀️ but that’s a solid estimate.
