Call of Dutyhas been in bed with PlayStation for quite a while now. Even amongst the trials and tribulations of Activision Blizzard being acquired by Microsoft, the most recent beta for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 was exclusive to PlayStation platforms for the first few days. Call of Duty on PlayStation has also had a number of exclusive DLC packs over the years, and does so with Modern Warfare 3 as well due to preexisting contracts penned between Sony and Activision Blizzard.
Now that Activision Blizzard is officially part of the Xbox family, it seems like the days of platform exclusive benefits are coming to an end. Speaking on the official Xbox podcast, Phil Spencer has claimed that he wants Call of Duty to have “100 percent parity” across all platforms, meaning key features - such as any potential early access periods, betas, or DLC packs - will launch on all available platforms at the same time.
“For Call of Duty players on PlayStation, and in the future Nintendo, I want you to feel 100 percent part of the community,” says Spencer. “I don’t want you to fell like there’s content you’re missing out on, there’s skins you’re missing out on, there’s timing that you’re missing out on. That’s not the goal. The goal is 100 percent parity across all platforms…”
Spencer goes on to explain that there obviously won’t be full technical parity between platforms, as some consoles simply won’t be able to hit the same resolution and frame rate as the Xbox Series X, but that future Call of Duty launches and extra content coinciding with said launches will drop on all consoles at the same time. Xbox won’t have any exclusive perks now that it owns Activision Blizzard, and Spencer states that he has “no goal of somehow trying to use Call of Duty to get you to buy an Xbox console.”
Of course, Spencer is being a little sneaky there, as the potential of Call of Duty coming to Xbox Game Pass will be a big enough draw for a lot of people to switch sides. We still don’t know whether Xbox and Activision plan to drop big titles like Diablo 4 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 on the service on the day of launch like with other first-party Xbox titles, but we do know thatwe won’t see any Activision Blizzard games comes to the service until 2024.
That’s also when we’ll seecontroversial Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick finally leave the company, but it’s unknown as to whether Microsoft is looking for a potential replacement. If they are, they’d struggle to find someone much worse.
