
Head of Microsoft's gaming division Phil Spencer has today been asked a lot about the future of Activision Blizzard under the Xbox banner. One question, in particular, that came up was in regards to Call of Duty, and whether or not the company would continue to release the series on PlayStation.
As long as Sony is willing to cooperate, it will happen according to Phil Spencer.
Phil Spencer: "If what you’re trying to propose is that Sony might change the terms of how we ship games on our platform, then that would prohibit us from shipping on their platforms.”
The FTC, later on, asked Spencer if he could promise under oath to bring Call of Duty to Sony's PlayStation cloud service, but was cut off by the judge before a response could be provided.
Reports prior to this hearing suggest Sony refused to sign Xbox's initial 10-year Call of Duty offer and in an email dating back to January last year, PlayStation boss Jim Ryan mentioned how he was confident Call of Duty would continue to be on PlayStation "for years to come".
Sony has also raised concerns about Call of Duty becoming a second-rate experience on PlayStation under Microsoft ownership.
So, Call of Duty would definitely continue to be delivered on PlayStation under Microsoft ownership. What are your thoughts about all of this? Comment below.
[source theverge.com]
Comments 53
Thanks to Pure Xbox for reporting the truth today. On PS the only news about the FTC trial are...
"We've Lost the Console Wars," Says Trillion Dollar Underdog Xbox
This is exactly what he said.
“I would raise my hand, I would do whatever it takes,” he told Judge Corley in court. “My commitment is, and my testimony is, that we will continue to ship future versions of Call of Duty on Sony’s PlayStation 5"
There will be more questions raised about this as he specifically mentions playstation 5 instead of saying playstation platforms like he does with other statements on other questions.
To those who still care about consoles;
Nintendo beats Xbox by a country mile when it comes to console sales as well, yet Microsoft makes more money in gaming than they do.
What will you do when the same is true of Sony? How will your brains process that eventuality? Sure, they'll sell more boxes, but they won't be top dog. How will you cope?
I mean, you can just go on like nothing in your lives has changed, but you won't.
So, what will you do?
@Banjo- Those people on that just like to rile up the echo chamber of undesirables. And they eat that crap up.
I've always said with crossplay and gamepass they don't need to make CoD exclusive for it to drive console sales, the PS5 sales is just cherries on top.
UltimateOtaku91 wrote:
I would also be that specific after Sony threatened to withhold PS6 dev kits over trade secret concerns. He won't put himself or Microsoft in a position where Sony can force his under-oath statements to become a lie.
NO! Keep Call of Duty on Xbox and Nintendo Switch! Make lamestation pay. Bring back Sega consoles and kill fony!
@YonkoBuggyTheClown IDK, why are you here on an Xbox news site instead of playing all those great PC games? Between my Nintendo & Xbox consoles I've never been bored enough to go out of my way to be toxic towards a random community different from mine. Reaaaally says a lot about you as a person.
Phil really did sweep the floor with the FTC today at the trial several times. My favorite was:
— FTC: “Mr. Spencer is unwilling to commit under oath to keep releasing Call of Duty on PlayStation.”
— Phil: “I commit under oath to keep releasing Call of Duty on PlayStation.”
— FTC: 🤡
The FTC just sound like a massive Playstation fanboy account at this point, begging for games to remain on Playstation all whilst they themselves are paying to keep the likes of Final Fantasy and Silent Hill 2 off of Xbox
This was the mic drop moment. FTC lawyer looks worse than Amber Heard. Y'know, I'm hoping the FTC now see how corrupt Sony is and that xbox is great for the consumer. I loved it when the Judge shut the FTC lawyer down, had some Judge Judy vibes haha.
@Kaloudz I saw that hahahaha. If anything this shows FTC are mouthpieces for Sony. Makes me wonder if money was exchanged
All them ppl on ps that said xbox has kept a ps5 version of Minecraft off playstation ....Sony fault for not sending them a Dev kit
I wonder how many will fess up and say yet again they were wrong
This goes to show ppl on both sides throw crap at eachother but none of us really know what is going down
I don't know about anyone else but I'm hoping for more court cases in the future so we can get the real info lol
@Kaloudz Jim probably has pictures of them doing a satanic ritual with PS5's strapped to their heads, so probably not ahha.
I do believe FTC went in there with the mindset of punishing MS, only to find its MS that's keeping the wolves at bay. I hope they absorbed what he said, because the lawyer didn't seem to understand anything about gaming, and it's that lack of understanding which has lead them here, held by the hand of Sony. I hope they see now, they've been played.
@Zoidpilot4 yeh they even screwed up with the stadia witness , he even said cloud/pc/consoles are all one market ....no doubt the CMA would have been watching that and thought oh no there goes our argument
@Kaloudz u never know maybe Microsoft will call him back as a witness against the cma to say exactly the same thing
One question : are pc /consoles /cloud all one market ?
Stadia : yes
Thank you case over put cod on game pass lol
@Kaloudz they also thought you needed a license to stream games.
Yeah, thar redfall comment hurt my brain. I was expecting the lawyer to get all low key and whisper to Phil "What is xbox?" And Phil be too taken back by his stupidity to answer, so the lawyer picks up a cup from the table and is all like "is this it?"
@Martsmall surely that ends CMA then. It must do
@Kaloudz Lol. I worded that horribly, huh? What I meant was what will Sony fanboys, of which I am definitely not one, do when Microsoft eventually becomes number one in terms of revenue in the game industry. The metrics are changing and Sony is seeing that. It is no longer about console sales like the fans keep thinking.
I have been thoroughly enjoying this public whooping of the FTC and the outing of all the trashy things Sony has done. And yes, I do have a PS5. Sony needs their medicine though, and Microsoft has brought the prescription. Sony is about to start churning some generic games in the foreseeable future because of a need to retain players through Live content, which the rest of the industry saw half a decade ago. Only now, the audience is starting to tire of the model. Now is not the time to start churning out Live Service games. As usual, Sony is playing ketchup to Microsoft's A1.
And now, just as Sony uses Microsoft's games to diminish their presence in the game industry, Microsoft will use Sony's playerbase to bolster their library and increase their presence.
So, when Microsoft becomes number 1 in revenue, a metric Sony is starting to care about more and more over "console sales," how will the fans process this? The PS fanbase is my favorite because they are the most unironically and categorically insane.
@NintendoEternity I hope to God that this is an ironic post. 🙂
@Kaloudz I've got a vision in my head of the CMA watching and saying quick scratch his name off our witness list !!
@Zoidpilot4 hopefully matey we will just have to wait and see
@UltimateOtaku91 mate, can you actually read the question the judge asked Phil directly first before picking just on his answer? She specifically asked him about PS5 and he directly answered her question.
Do you expect Phil to say, "Yes COD will ship on all PlayStation consoles until the end of time when the earth seizes to exist in year 3759" without knowing what that would mean contractually and so on? Come on....
Does anybody care about games anymore? Literally this site and PS have so many toxic fanboys it’s unreal. Slagging each other off and both think one is more insane than the other. I want my box to beat the other box - it’s actually really pathetic. The best outcome for all of this is for the deal to be blocked however unlikely, not because I don’t think MS should be able to buy up studios but because I think MS need to focus on nurturing their studios so they can deliver excellent games. Starfield is looking great at the minute so something to be really excited about as is the rest of the Xbox line up. Sony doesn’t have any kind of secret edge over MS other than that they really support their studios and deliver great games. MS can beat them back with a stick if they actually stuck with what they have and acquiring the odd studio after working with them for a while and building really strong relationships with them. Xbox has lost its identity and is now trying to buy its way to the top which they don’t need to do. They have ***** tons of talent behind them and if they doubled down on their studios over the next 5 years we would see a totally refreshed Xbox Studios with some stellar IP and highly rated games to really get stuck into. The whole console war drives a lot of us insane because like me people probably want as much choice as possible when it comes to games. I might get a lot of hate from the “hardcore fans” but the IP MS are sat in at the moment is far better than the vast majority of ABK content.
@Moonglow This worldwide legal action that Sony started and backfired is showing the frustration and hatred many people feel inside.
@Tharsman Correct. I'll use your comment to clear fanboy misinformation. I know he's saying on several threads that Phil pledged to bring Call of Duty to PS5 only but it's not true. At least once, Phil specified, "Playstation platforms". Phil also said, "if Sony allows it", referring to the facts that Sony refused the 10-year agreement and also refused to share development kits with ABK in advance.
@YonkoBuggyTheClown Insane is the most accurate adjective. Regarding Sony, I also agree, if they expect to create the next Fortnite, they are heading towards failure. It reminds me when they tried to mimic Wii's craze. Nintendo used to say, "Imitation is the sincerest way of praising" or something like that when asked about Sony. Sony has always been arrogant but not particularly successful except for the Playstation brand.
About Xbox, yes, you are spot-on, they are approaching the video games market with a long-term strategy that involves all possible platforms, subscriptions and a combination of first-party and third-party content. It's good for them but it's also good for the industry because it's not like Sony's aggressive strategy that focuses on damaging the competition and milking their users.
Kaloudz wrote:
FTC should have used Phoenix Wright as their first video game experience. They would have learnt something about video games and cross examination in the process.
People will still doubt it's multiplat going forward.
Some people just don't seem to wrap their head around keeping the best selling franchise of all time on playstation.
The FTC were effectively sounding like they were ready to go 'Right, can you promise that, six month down the line, Starfield will be on Playstation consoles?' then 'And Elder Scrolls 6 will be multiplat?' and 'Can you promise you'll look into Indiana Jones going multiplat again?'
Until by the time the Stadia guy has come on, he's tried to demand Microsoft give Sony Day 1 access to every unannounced game Microsoft develop till 2026.
No wonder the judge told the guy to move on TWICE.
Sony had their chance. With all the bs Sony pulled, they don't deserve cod anymore. Eu approved the deal before Sony signed it because all the other 10 year deals were enough. Ftc should do the same.
@Nickhyazaki Especially since Sony refused to cooperate with Microsoft: no agreement, no development kits, etc.
This is very important as the judge don't consider the cloud platforms to be a deal breaker. It's also what FTC's witness, Google Stadia representative, said. Both the judge and FTC's witness have killed FTC's narrative about Game Pass Cloud dominating the world. Thoughts? @Jenkinss @Kaloudz
@Kaloudz Yeah, the FTC seemed obsessed with PS being the only company deserving respect and protection.
@Kaloudz @Banjo- This will be my last comment until after the trial, then I will come back to this and the sister sites for one last time before peacing out forever. I did come here just to be a troll to those who would rather neigh than play.
But anyway, Microsoft and Nintendo have historically been congenial towards one another (you know, as much as two rival companies can be). Bethesda and Nintendo have historically been congenial towards one another as well.
You see what I'm saying here? If I were Microsoft, I would release my Bethesda titles on the Switch successor, which I'm fairly confident will be capable of running Starfield (if Todd and the team are even remotely thinking about the Steam Deck) and still exclude Sony.
I would punish them by literally releasing select Bethesda titles in the future on every platform but the PlayStation, since it will be true going forward that Microsoft is taking away from Nintendo games that could have conceivable appeared on their consoles.
That is risky though, because if they do that, people will demand a PlayStation port. And they might get the gov involved. I would point to their third party deals and keep it moving though. But Bethesda and Nintendo's communities have an overlap and it would suck to see that go away because of hyper-capitalism.
And to those who think it's unfair or that Microsoft is losing money: tough.
Use that same logic on PlayStation. They are losing a lot of money by not putting Spider-Man and God of War on Xbox. You guys don't realize how foolish your logic is. You are basically asking for a world in which there are no exclusives, yet that is what you pride your very existence on. You try to use anything to justify your cracked and flawed logic that you don't know what the hell you're saying anymore.
Rant over, I guess. What games will you guys be playing in the immediate future? I'm in an RPG kinda mood in anticipation of the release of Starfield and Avowed, so I've been playing RPGs lately. I plan to beat both Pillars games before Avowed comes out and I'll finish Soul Hackers 2 soon. I can't wait to play Persona 5 Tactica, as the Tactics genre is one of my favorites, going back to Shining Force 1-3.
There was a silly rumor going around earlier this year that said Ys 8 would finally be coming to Xboc, and on Game Pass, no less, so I've been waiting for that and eventually Ys 9 to come to Xbox as well. But NIS has a hate b***r for Xbox to this day. They released Raiden 3 and 4 on Xbox, but there was probably a mandate for that. In addition to their strained relationship with Square, they have to build one with NIS. I'll relent and get Ys 9 on PS5 and play it there. I already played and beat 8 on PS4. My favorite game on that console.
Peace.
Edit: I'll be here for a little while if you want to have a conversation, as a matter of fact.
@Banjo- yeah. Maybe the sister sites should have a conversation with each other on how to bring the news.
The titles of the articles on pushsquare alone makes that community foaming at their mouths. Writing stuff like ‘wishy washy, ‘talkative Spencer, Xbox insinuates, etc.’ just only serves one purpose.
@Moonglow Sonys stance on cross play was truly horrendous cant agree more on that one. Couple of counters though.
Spot on with the rest though especially with the Switch mention. One would think both being Japanese there would be more collaboration there.
@YonkoBuggyTheClown whilst you are still around. Its nice to see a level head amongst all the drama.
This whole saga has drawn out a lot of hostility and fanboyism and for lack of a better term slagging off of both sites from either side which in itself is flawed logic part of the same publishing house they are technically colleagues.
I think the deal going through is bad for industry consolidation but a part of me would be glad if it closed if it meant drama over and everyone could get back to enjoying gaming again.
@Moonglow Well said!
@Friendly You are absolutely right. It's embarrassing, the fire gets started by the them. It gives me bad vibes even when I had a PS4 and not an Xbox. The only bad vibes here come from PS trolls. Just to warn you some users only show their true colours on PS, like Ultimate Otaku. I mention it because I noticed he was lying to you.
@YonkoBuggyTheClown I'm playing Soul Hackers 2, as well 👍🏻.
@Jaxx420 I hear you. I think an unseen and often unspoken aspect about what is going on now is the fact that the rest of the giants are watching with bated breath, circling Activision (if the deal falls through) and other publishers like sharks in infested waters. They want to know how to navigate through this this whole ordeal because they are going to buy similarly large companies. I forgot who it was between EA, Ubisoft, Take Two and the rest of the other big pubs, but someone expressed an interest in being acquired if there was a suitable offer, and Comcast, a huge and horrible Telecom company in the US expressed a desire to break into gaming by buying a pub, specifically Activision if the deal falls through.
This happened because Sony was a terrible market leader. I hope people remember this going forward. Someone had to stop Sony's borderline illegal practices and Microsoft were the ones that stepped up to the plate. The fact that it was Microsoft, and the fact that it was Activision that they wanted to acquire, who at that time seemed like an untouchable, too big to buy (coupled with Disney/Fox and Warner/Disco) sparked the interest of some very big companies that frankly have no business being in the game industry looking for ways to infiltrate and ruin it.
Sony has been a bad market leader. Instead of driving innovation, they've been complacent. Looking at what the competition is up to, and benefiting from their innovations, all the while making the same stale game over and over and relying on third parties to cover for their lack of talent. Microsoft just decided to buy the talent since it's being walled off from them (to make up for their lack of talent and to retain games on their system, lets not get anything twisted lol). It was a defensive measure that was heard across the waters by other more devious sharks. The gaming industry is bigger than the movie and music industry combined, and the companies that control those mediums have not even taken a whiff in that direction. Until now. The first domino to a truly awful gaming industry that we may not even recognize anymore is about to fall, and remember: Sony is to blame for this one.
@YonkoBuggyTheClown aye not recognised the mistakes of years ago either. I still remember PS3 and "599 US Dollars!" "Get a second job" "this is more than a console its a computer"
Sometimes its who you put in to sell and manage it thats the issue. Phil Harrison/Ken Kuturagi were an issue back then and Jim Ryan is now.
Ironically MS hired ol' Phil too to help spearhead Xbox One marketing. Look how that turned out.
Im not sure Sony would be back to the same old complacencies and bad practice again if lets say, Shu/Kaz/Andrew House et al were at the helm.
@YonkoBuggyTheClown I couldn't agree more with that. Sony is arrogant, aggressive, anti-competitive and the only studios that made different games than the copied-pasted interactive Hollywood films were shut down. They just want to continue dominating the market by means of buying exclusion deals to kick Xbox out of the third-party market. They paid to keep Bethesda's games out of Xbox and then they cried because of the acquisitions. They play dirty and then play the victim. They are absolutely hypocritical. On top of that, they start a worldwide legal action against Microsoft and ABK and then they don't even show up. At least, all of this is leaving their dirty laundry exposed for everyone to see.
@Banjo- The FTC has said they don't care about Microsoft's cloud deals. The quick thinking judge perhaps realized that, and cut off this line of questioning.
If that's what happened then she's really sharp, my hat is off. The games resume on Tuesday!
@Jenkinss I really appreciated your live feed, I hope to read it on Tuesday, too 😁. You seem a very genuine person.
FTC lawyer didn't even know what a Phil Spencer was. It's shady as hell. My favourite take away from it was Stadia dude pretty much debunking CMA's argument.
@Banjo- Yeah it's like I have all 3 current consoles, and I enjoy them all for their own reasons, but I truly hate the Playstation fan scene simply because it's become so toxic and disruptive. Like I am not embarrassed to say I am a fan of Xbox, Nintendo, or PC gaming, but I am embarrassed to say I'm a fan of Playstation as well. One of those products where I might enjoy it but I want nothing to do with the fanbase. There's just so many hateful trolls on that side.
@JayJ I know what you mean. I got a PS4 before and Xbox One and of course there are great games on all consoles but when I read PS I am put off of it: trillion dollar underdog, wishy-washy, talkative Spencer, Xbox insinuates and stuff like that in the headlines and all kind of insults in the comments sections. Toxicity galore.
@Banjo- Yup, Sony fanboyism got really toxic and awful in the PS4 generation for some reason. It's sad because Playstation fans used to be a lot more relaxed and passionate in the PS1-PS3 eras, but for some reason it's like they just passionately hate everything else ever since the PS4 launched.
Seems like every time comments sections or forums are ruined by argumentative/toxic trolls, it's Sony fanboys. It's especially bad when it comes to anything Xbox, like for some reason they are just obsessed with the brand and hating it. It's almost like a political divide these days.
He also said MS didn’t acquire Bethesda to take games away from other platforms. He lied. Ever heard the story bout the boy who cried wolf?
I love how many users are jumping in his quote about losing the console wars. They are solely focused on it and doing MSs work for them. Lolol
MS is playing this game well and making the FTC look ridiculous.
He also promised time and time again that they didn’t buy Bethesda to make their games Xbox exclusive. The man is liar. Nothing more.
Massive yawn!
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