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Newly-minted Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer has commented on potential future platform exclusivity for Activision Blizzard games, following yesterday’s colossal news that Xbox is buying the company for $68.7 billion USD.
Speaking in an interview quoted by Bloomberg, Spencer addressed PlayStation gamers in particular. “I’ll just say to players out there who are playing Activision Blizzard games on Sony’s platform: It’s not our intent to pull communities away from that platform and we remained committed to that.”
Though perhaps obvious, Bloomberg cites “a person familiar with the company’s thinking” as saying that the Xbox company currently plans to keep making “some of” Activision’s games for PlayStation consoles. However, as was the case with Bethesda and Starfield, expect some Xbox exclusives going forward.
Speaking of Bethesda, Spencer made similar comments after the news broke of Xbox’s $7.5 billion USD purchase of Bethesda in 2020. On that deal, he said “This deal was not done to take games away from another player base like that. Nowhere in the documentation that we put together was: ‘How do we keep other players from playing these games?’ We want more people to be able to play games, not fewer people to be able to go play games.”
However, he also added Xbox wouldn’t necessarily have to go multi-format with them to justify the cost either. “I don’t have to go ship those games on any other platform other than the platforms that we support in order to kind of make the deal work for us.”
So, could we be seeing an Xbox exclusive Call of Duty or Overwatch in the future? For now, we’ll have to wait and see. You can refresh your memory of Josh’s uneasy thoughts on Microsoft’s Bethesda acquisition from eighteen months ago here.
