Xbox head Phil Spencer is doing his best to reassure Call of Duty fans that the game will remain on PlayStation
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Los Angeles, California on June 13, 2016, where the latest titles for Xbox were introduced one day ahead of the start of the 2016 Electronic Entertainment Expo, or E3, at the LA Convention Center. / AFP / FREDERIC J. BROWN It is unclear what exactly these “existing agreements” between Activision and Sony are, and if that’s thereason Call of Duty may continue coming to PlayStation.
However, the entire structure of Call of Duty releases could be changing. There have been rumblings at high levels that it may be time to retire Call of Duty as a yearly franchise, giving it some time to breathe, and allowing Activision support studios to return to the work of producing other games with other IPs. Spencer has expressed interest in a lot of dormant Activision franchises like Guitar Hero, HeXen and King’s Quest, for instance.
Obviously this statement says nothing about Blizzard, which is in a somewhat similar situation with Overwatch. It does seem somewhat more likely that future Blizzard projects would be Xbox exclusive, but the state of things like Overwatch 2 and Diablo 4 appears to be kind of a mess, and we may not get word on what’s going on there for a while.
So, unless Spencer is being hyper-cagey with his wording here, it does seem like Call of Duty will continue to exist on PlayStation for the foreseeable future, just published under Microsoft, and possibly with bonus benefits on Xbox. More to come.