The year-long argument continues as many watch the regulatory process for the Activision Blizzard deal for Microsoft. While Microsoft intends to spend $70 billion for this new arrangement, the Xbox firm remains adamant and vocal on keeping Call of Duty on competing platforms. Even in a recent statement, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer said Nintendo Switch is a system the firm is eager to bring the IP to finally.
Predominantly, Spencer has expressed interest more so in the established PC & mobile platforms that comes from the purchase. However, the firm has pressed that current popular series will remain multiplatform following the arrangement. Spencer shared he wrote a letter to leadership at PlayStation which would keep Call of Duty on the platform years after the deal. But President & CEO Jim Ryan argues that it is “inadequate” to say the least.
According to a recent interview on Same Brain #59, Spencer responds to questions that the plan isn’t to remove Call of Duty from PlayStation. You can view the segment in the video below:
“Yeah, we’re not taking Call of Duty from PlayStation,” Spencer explains. “I know that- which isn’t exactly what you asked just to like punch that one in the nose, that’s not our intent. Our intent is to do that and as long as there’s a PlayStation to ship to, our intent is that we’d continue to Call of Duty on PlayStation similar to what we’ve done with Minecraft since we’ve owned that and expanded the places where people can play Minecraft.”
In the previous statement on bringing Call of Duty to Nintendo Switch, Spencer used the same terminology with Minecraft as the example. “This opportunity is really about mobile for us. When you think about 3 billion people playing video games, there’s only about 200 million households on console.”
Are your opinions on the Activision deal any different following Spencer’s latest statement?