If Xbox successfully buys Activision Blizzard and Call of Duty franchise, PlayStation players don’t need to worry about missing out on any content. Console exclusivity for certain content or games is one of the main ways that PlayStation and Xbox compete, with companies spending money to get exclusive offers for their platforms. A recent example of this can be found in the wildly successful open world Harry Potter action RPG Hogwarts heritage.
Hogwarts heritage offers pretty much the same experience no matter what platform it’s played on, with one big exception. Hogwarts heritage there’s an exclusive horror-themed quest on PlayStation for players, with the quest expected to remain exclusive to PS4 and PS5 gamers for around a year. This was stated by Xbox head Phil Spencer in a recent interview with Xbox On, where he confirmed that Xbox will not be doing anything like this with Call of Duty if he got control of the IP.
In an interview with Xbox On, Spencer stated that Xbox wants increase the number of places where people can play Call of Duty. “You’re obviously not going to make a game bigger by taking it away from anyone who’s playing today,” Spencer said, noting that 58 games from the Xbox portfolio are already available on the PlayStation Store. Spencer was then asked about the possibility of exclusive content for Call of Duty gamers on Xbox if the acquisition were to happen, but made it clear that it would not happen. Using Hogwarts heritageAs an example of the PlayStation-exclusive quest, Spencer said it’s “not the game we’re trying to play here.”
Spencer acknowledged that exclusive content is “part of the industry,” but Xbox isn’t going to make weapon skins or certain game modes exclusive to Xbox when it comes to Call of Duty franchise. He said that “the same version” of the game will be available on all platforms, and noted that this is why Xbox already works with its multi-platform games. “If you are Minecraft on PlayStation, I don’t think you have a smaller version.’
It is worth noting that both Sony and Xbox secured an exclusive Call of Duty content for their consoles in the past. There was a time when Call of Duty The DLC was available on Xbox for a full month before PlayStation gamers had a chance to get it, and later Call of Duty PlayStation games had exclusive game modes for a whole year. It looks like this practice will end if Xbox succeeds in acquiring Activision Blizzard, but the proposed acquisition still has some major regulatory hurdles to overcome.