Poll: How does Call of Duty show up on PlayStation going forward?
- Thread starter Governergrimm
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Couldn't you say this about every single exclusive ever made? If you can't, that's the same reason why CoD would go exclusive.
For some reason I doubt that MS will prevent the mainline COD from releasing on PS consoles. The majority of the player base and sales are on that platform. So it will significantly reduce the overall sales of the game if that happens. Other games might grow to take its place. I think just adding COD to game pass is already a big win for MS. That will give their platform a big advantage without gutting the franchise reach. But for other AB IP, it will be a different story. I think those will become exclusive on MS consoles or platforms.
Sony will lose their marketing deal after 2023, when it supposedly ends. All of those perks and benefits will be exclusive to Xbox. Mainline COD games will continue to release (bi-annual hopefully) on Playstation at retail price, but day one on Game Pass. Expect GPU COD specific perks for seasonal boosts and other things that Sony didn't have access to during their marketing period.
Warzone will also remain multiplatorm. Warzone 2.0, if it ever happens, will be multiplatform as well.
Warzone will also remain multiplatorm. Warzone 2.0, if it ever happens, will be multiplatform as well.
Completely agree.
COD isn't the same as any other IP that MS have acquired. Nothing involved in the Bethesda deal is remotely the same (no, not even Starfield).
There's going to be a negotiating table with the COD money on it and a seat for both MS and Sony. Maybe it ends with Sony paying a huge premium or allowing GamePass on PS5, but there's a deal to be made. And I think it's in mutual interest that one gets done.
Couldn't the same be said for previous gen owners compared to current gen owners? At some point, franchises make the decision to leave massive userbases behind for smaller userbases to move the game into the current generation. I don't think Xbox will have a problem leaving the massive PlayStation userbase behind knowing it will be building out its new userbase going forward with curious Gamepass users and PlayStation -> Xbox converts due to some people wanting to play COD no matter what the console is.
So Microsoft paid $70 billion for a marketing deal and day 1 on game pass 😅
Sony had a CoD marketing deal, which depending on the details of it could keep it on the platform for a few years after MS takes over.
I guess what I'm confused is the difference between these two
Because isn't Warzone already on PS4/5 ?
No, they spent $70 billion dollars for Activision Blizzard and all that it includes. Which isn't just Call of Duty, which makes the majority of it's money from MTX across all platforms.
I know Activision made it seem otherwise the last year or so but they have a ton of other games than Call of Duty
I think the difference is that Warzone would continue even on PS6 if that were to happen.
They get tons of IPs, tons of studios (many of which are going to be working on exclusives), tons of successful mobile developers.
I guess so? That's the only thing that makes sense in my head.
In which case I don't know.... I don't think MS would allow it.
The vast majority of their value comes from King and Call of Duty and Microsoft will obviously leverage COD to increase their game pass numbers in the console space.
I'd say partial. Existing contracts will obviously be honored, like Bethesda, even if that means timed moneyhat exclusive DLC. Then Warzone which makes billions off of microtransactions will be the trojan horse that makes people who want the full CoD experience jump into the Xbox ecosystem.
I expect CoD Xbox Series S bundles on 2024 which are going to fly off shelves like nothing we've seen before for a pack-in bundle.
I expect CoD Xbox Series S bundles on 2024 which are going to fly off shelves like nothing we've seen before for a pack-in bundle.
Sure, but I don't believe they will, and I say that as someone who doesn't own a Playstation, nor care to. There are ways to incentivize people to come to Game Pass for COD in the same way the marketing deals incentivized a huge audience to abandon Xbox for Playstation to begin with. Even content creators like XclusiveAce, who believe it will always remain multiplatform, are now buying Xboxes for the benefits that will inevitably come with it.
Maybe I'm wrong. I guess we'll see eventually.
OP
OP
It's a bit of my own word salad adding ambiguity to cover deals we don't know about. We don't know all deals or time frames of the deals involved. I don't believe they have any contracts through 2030 but I don't know all of Activision's financials.
Warzone will stay on PS, maybe other MP modes, too. They make a lot of money off them and PlayStation is what? More than 1/3 of the Userbase?
Xbox players will get advantages though. Free cosmetics, ingame currency, exclusives modes. Maybe the single-player campaigns will release exclusively on Xbox.
Xbox players will get advantages though. Free cosmetics, ingame currency, exclusives modes. Maybe the single-player campaigns will release exclusively on Xbox.
The correct answer is handily winning the poll. Which is nice to see given the discourse in some threads seemed to move in another direction.
Warzone will continue on, boxed retail releases will be exclusive once whatever the marketing deal is up.
I don't think MS will sweat the large PS playerbase too much when this kind of deal seems to be thinking about the next decades rather than immediately trying to recoup the 70 billy spent as fast as possible.
I don't think MS will sweat the large PS playerbase too much when this kind of deal seems to be thinking about the next decades rather than immediately trying to recoup the 70 billy spent as fast as possible.
Not a chance in hell, sorry
This is people going through the Bethesda stages of grief all over again. Telling themselves ES6 and Starfield will still be coming to PlayStation.
Thankfully it seems the poll is much more reflective of the overwhelming likely reality at this point, Warzone remains and current contractual obligations that can't be negated, or would reflect poorly on Microsoft for terminating, are honored, everything beyond that will require GamePass adoption or Microsoft hardware/Windows.
You don't spend 70 billion on a company to just alter a marketing deal and get their flagship game on Gamepass day and date. And the rest of their portfolio isn't worth that asking price either.
Copout answer: nobody knows.
Real answer: nobody knows(not even MS)
I don't think we can assume that MS has the long term strategy for any of these acquisitions set in stone. Obviously if Xbox sales and Gamepass subscriptions soar, then they may happily drop multiplat for everything. If not, they may still play the long game and grow them both at a steady pace while still getting the nice COD revenue from PS. Sure, they have deep pockets to take on any short term loss but they're still a business
Real answer: nobody knows(not even MS)
I don't think we can assume that MS has the long term strategy for any of these acquisitions set in stone. Obviously if Xbox sales and Gamepass subscriptions soar, then they may happily drop multiplat for everything. If not, they may still play the long game and grow them both at a steady pace while still getting the nice COD revenue from PS. Sure, they have deep pockets to take on any short term loss but they're still a business
Depends on how Microsoft feels like punching the numbers, and just how long term their long term plans are.
But also, I can't help but feel like the existing contracts are going to be the biggest sticking point for the status of COD, because if the marketing agreement lasts for a couple years AND says that a Game Pass launch isn't allowed, I can most definitely see the Xbox team negotiating with Sony to allow COD on Game Pass day one. I can't see Microsoft not doing everything in their power to get COD day one on Game Pass once they own it.
But also, I can't help but feel like the existing contracts are going to be the biggest sticking point for the status of COD, because if the marketing agreement lasts for a couple years AND says that a Game Pass launch isn't allowed, I can most definitely see the Xbox team negotiating with Sony to allow COD on Game Pass day one. I can't see Microsoft not doing everything in their power to get COD day one on Game Pass once they own it.
I think CoD is like Minecraft in that it's too big to contain on one console and PC. But I could very well be completely wrong on this.
They literally said as much. They're going to do option two. After that they'll pull it and then use the last option on the list.
I very much, truly, honestly doubt that Microsoft was just flying that blind with this acquisition.
I guarantee there was/is a team of economists, accountants, financial forecasters comprising the acquisition team, all going over every revenue document and forecasting every type of future strategy to determine whether the purchase makes financial and business sense for Microsoft, and what the company's value should be and why.
They might not have every detail set in stone , but I would be shocked if they don't already have a near and longer-term strategy in mind with how they plan to leverage this acquisition to build their brand and generate revenue.
What grief? I don't own a Playstation lol. I play on Xbox and PC. Have for years. Keep telling me about my feelings and grief though, it's fascinating insight into my own mind and emotions lol.
Microsoft needs exclusive content.
Sony is close to rebooting PSNow as a competitor to Gamepass. They're working on ps1, ps2, and PS3 BC. Rumors were going around last year about them teaming up with Netflix.
Long term, keeping CoD on PlayStation would probably be a bad move. Sony will be leveraging all of their existing games, IP, and industry partnerships to bolster their exclusive ecosystem. Microsoft will be looking to do the same.
Sony is close to rebooting PSNow as a competitor to Gamepass. They're working on ps1, ps2, and PS3 BC. Rumors were going around last year about them teaming up with Netflix.
Long term, keeping CoD on PlayStation would probably be a bad move. Sony will be leveraging all of their existing games, IP, and industry partnerships to bolster their exclusive ecosystem. Microsoft will be looking to do the same.
One thing I don't think we can assume is that these marketing agreements are completely ironclad from a Sony perspective either.
I am guessing there are probably at least some out classes and voidable components if Microsoft so chooses. It's not like Activision would have come to such negotiations from a position of weakness, it was Sony trying to smooth talk and deliver some moneyhats to gain competitive advantage. Reasons to believe Activision likely got a friendly deal from their perspective.
It would be quite the oversight if they spent 70 billion dollars on a company that's flagship title would be locked out from their flagship service for three years….but they'd still have to spend money to maintain the brand and product at the highest level to retain its value.
They'll honor existing contracts and continue supporting already released games l, just like they honored Bethesda's existing contracts (Deathloop & Ghostwire) and just like how they continued supporting Bethesda's already released GaaS games (Elder Scrolls Online & Fallout 76).
I didn't imply there was no long term strategy in the acquisition. I only mean that the strategy could be flexible enough to take into account where the market goes the next few years.
This is also important.
There's a world where maybe Sony and Microsoft could come to a positive sum agreement where both set aside tit for tat competition and embrace a shared space initiative, where maybe Microsoft allows and ports CoD and Halo to Sony 6 months after release, and Sony agrees to, idk, port Horizon and TLOU3 over 6 months after release, but Sony has largely doubled down on the walled garden approach to marketing their brand, outside of multi-year later PC releases, and while that doesn't mean Microsoft must be a reactionary to that, there is little incentive for them to be spending additional money to help bolster a competitor's brand power of it means eliminating your own brand differentiating strengths at a cost to you.
It is difficult to imagine a world where Microsoft, goes, "yep, let's spend X millions of dollars to develop a port of the newest CoD to PS5 knowing full well it cuts into the value proposition of our Xbox strategy and Sony is actively attempting to adjacently market against us for our lack of blockbuster exclusives."
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Existing contracts and Warzone are a given, not sure how they handle it from there. Maybe they consider it a Minecraft type brand and Playstation still gets yearly releases, but the Xbox/PC versions have exclusive content/modes. It's entirely possible and even likely that they just pull it from Playstation after a certain point, but I don't feel 100% certain.
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Whatever MS thinks will benefit gamepass. Or it could be bigger than gamepass, and at the same time benefit gamepass. For right now keeping everything on gamepass,PC, and xbox would be a good guess.
Activision should be worth more than 70 billion, which is likely why they were bought out, since MS are getting good value for their money. How they move forward with the company will tell the bigger picture. Right now Activision is worth 50-70 billion because of COD, COD is right now the best selling game every year. But maybe MS has a different better strategy moving forward for them, we know it will involve gamepass, and that for them is huge, as it will bring in many subscribers.
Activision should be worth more than 70 billion, which is likely why they were bought out, since MS are getting good value for their money. How they move forward with the company will tell the bigger picture. Right now Activision is worth 50-70 billion because of COD, COD is right now the best selling game every year. But maybe MS has a different better strategy moving forward for them, we know it will involve gamepass, and that for them is huge, as it will bring in many subscribers.
I mean, if their choices are keep CoD multiplat for the whole gen if it comes day one to GP and earn their 30% cut on games and MTX or lose CoD after 2023 or whenever the contract is up, I think they'd allow it to come to Game Pass. They aren't the one in the bargaining position here.
I feel like Elder Scrolls and Fallout offer the example here. Platform/GAAS version continues to be multiplatform. Main entries become exclusive.
Anything could happen though, maybe they see COD more like Minecraft Dungeons and for whatever reason it fits into their strategy to have it be multiplatform. Maybe they'll wait to see how console sales move over the next two years before making a decision.
Anything could happen though, maybe they see COD more like Minecraft Dungeons and for whatever reason it fits into their strategy to have it be multiplatform. Maybe they'll wait to see how console sales move over the next two years before making a decision.
Existing contracts and that's it.
Do you think Sony would be putting CoD on Xbox if they bought the ip? Hell no!
Do you think Sony would be putting CoD on Xbox if they bought the ip? Hell no!
They'll keep supporting Warzone and that's it, similar to how they've dealt with previous acquisitions. I entirely believe Phil's comments are just him being legally (or just as a smart businessman) bound to not interfere with Activision's business by making remarks about COD's future until the deal is through. He can't go setting up this year's Call of Duty to fail on PlayStation.
I think the annual games will still be multiplatform based on that Spencer tweet. Maybe it's timed exclusive or Xbox gets extra bonuses but that's the impression It gave off, not sure why else he would say all that unprompted.
I would have assumed just Warzone after marketing deal ran out before the tweet.
I would have assumed just Warzone after marketing deal ran out before the tweet.
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For people insisting that Warzone will continue to be on PlayStation through the next iteration - how do you envision that happening? Specifically, is Xbox really going to be developing the experience with the PS5 in mind? Do they outsource that development to a third party? Do they partner with Sony to figure out the crossplay implementation and to have the engine developed for both ... but then just not develop the mainline game for PS5?