Xbox boss Phil Spencer has claimed that scrutiny of its proposed Activision Blizzard deal is ‘fair and warranted’, but said he's confident regulators will approve it.
UK’s CMA voiced similar concerns that the deal could harm PlayStation and other game subscription services, should Microsoft make Call of Duty exclusive to its platform.
In the Wall Street Journal discussion, Spencer reiterated Microsoft’s stance that it will continue to release CoD on PlayStation platforms for the foreseeable future. The exec claimed that for its gaming business, the company was more interested in what the addition of Activision Blizzard could do for its mobile growth.
“Our plan is that Call of Duty specifically would be available on PlayStation, which is what you’re asking about, but when I think about our plans I’d love to see it on“But if we circle back to why this deal is important to us, when you’re spending the amount that we’re spending and looking at the opportunity in gaming, this opportunity is really about mobile.
“Most of the dialogue that’s out there has been around consoles, and how Xbox and PlayStation consoles compete with each other. But when we think about three billion people playing video games, there’s only about 200 million households that play on console. The vast majority of people who play, do so on the device that’s already in their pocket, which is their phone.”“more interesting” than what the proposed deal would mean on console between Xbox and PlayStation.
“This franchise will continue to ship on PlayStation natively – it’s not our plan to bait and switch somebody where they’ve got to play in the cloud, or that in two to three years we’re going to pull the game. Our intent is that we would continue to ship Call of Duty on PlayStation as long as that makes sense… tech is always in some form of transition.”