Now that Microsoft are acquiring Call of Duty publisher Activision, the question that everyone has been asking is: Will the popular shooter become an Xbox ecosystem exclusive?
TLDR: Microsoft are yet to reveal if Call of Duty games will be exclusive but once the takeover is complete, the popular shooter series will probably be available only on the Xbox ecosystem.
Microsoft have just announced a deal to acquire Activision Blizzard and all their internal studios including the Call of Duty developers - Infinity Ward, Sledgehammer, Raven Software and Treyarch.
The deal will be finalised in 2023 and Microsoft already confirmed that most Activision-published games will be on Game Pass very soon. But this mammoth of an acquisition also begs the question - Will Call of Duty games be exclusive to Xbox ecosystem or "where GamePass exists" as Phil Spencer, Head of Xbox loves to say it.
Well, at the moment, that is not entirely clear. Microsoft have not clarified that just yet and Activision Blizzard also didn't comment. They only said that they will be continuing to support the already released games across all platforms, which is expected.
When Microsoft acquired Bethesda last year, we've heard a similar story - all games that are now on PlayStation such as The Elder Scrolls Online and Fallout 76 for example will still get new expansions and updates. However, new games will be exclusive to Xbox, which has been confirmed with Starfield and Redfall.
So, will this be the case for Call of Duty? it's really hard to say. Call of Duty is one of the biggest, if not the biggest video game in the world and taking it away from PlayStation perhaps would not be a smart move.
On the other hand, locking such a massive title to the Xbox ecosystem (PC, Xbox consoles, Cloud) would result in a major boost to Game Pass subscriptions and Xbox Series X|S consoles sales.
If we had to guess, we would say that Call of Duty will be exclusive to the Xbox ecosystem, just like The Elder Scrolls from Bethesda is.
This would certainly be a controversial decision but we doubt Microsoft care. The gaming industry is changing rapidly, big companies are on an acquisition spree almost daily and we doubt these corporations will care if someone doesn't like it.