The gaming industry is in a constant state of flux, even if all appears to be calm. The recent news that Xbox was purchasing Activision Blizzard has led to many gamers asking if Call of Duty will become an Xbox exclusive title.
It is a very good question, as the previous acquisition of Bethesda by Microsoft led to Bethesda games becoming Xbox exclusive titles. There are some differences in these purchases, however. The Bethesda purchase is actually quite small compared to the Activision Blizzard purchase, which cost times as much money at a cool $70 billion. This means Microsoft needs to make a lot of money back, and fast, for the purchase to make sense.
The indication from the Bethesda purchase is also that Microsoft will be keeping live service games as they are, with both Fallout 76 and Elder Scrolls Online being supported on PlayStation, for example. Call of Duty is a multiplayer game and is perhaps one of the biggest examples of a live service game in the world. Each individual installment is no longer standalone, but is almost like an expansion of their current platform, being bolted onto their multiplayer and battle royale infrastructure.
It also seems difficult to imagine Microsoft leaving billions of dollars a year on the table from just this one game when you consider how much money it generates on the Sony platform. Still, right now it is impossible to know, as Xbox has not made any definite statements either way. Right now, it honestly wouldn’t shock us to see the company going in either direction, but we will need to wait until Xbox is willing to reveal their future plans.
