Microsoft may have acquired Call of Duty publisher Activision more than a year ago, but the Xbox owner vowed to uphold any existing deals that the franchise had with PlayStation owner Sony - and the last of those deals has now officially come to an end.
Yep, as pointed out by CharlieIntel, last year's Modern Warfare 3 had one final PlayStation exclusive DLC deal from when the game launched on November 10th, 2023. That exclusivity window lasted one year - meaning the DLC is free to launch on other platforms from November 9th of this year.
Of course, that date has now passed, meaning PlayStation's timed exclusive content for MW3 is now done and dusted. With this game in particular, we're only talking operator packs and customisation options, but still - they should now be free to appear on Xbox and PC in the coming months.
The Call of Duty franchise once had similar deals in place with Microsoft — from 2009's Modern Warfare 2 right up to 2014's Advanced Warfare — although at the time, those deals were limited to map packs arriving one month early on Xbox. Exclusivity benefits then moved over to PlayStation with Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 - ranging from timed exclusive map packs to cosmetic DLC drops, and even entire game modes locked to PlayStation platforms for more than a year.
In recent times, Xbox's Phil Spencer has said that the team has made a conscious effort to move away from engaging in "slimy platform things" such as these deals - so we're not expecting any sort of Xbox exclusive Call of Duty DLC to be a thing with Phil at the helm of Microsoft Gaming.