According to a new report from Bloomberg, the next three games in the Call of Duty franchise will continue to be released on PlayStation consoles. Specifically, that means Call of Duty 2022, Call of Duty 2023, and the upcoming Warzone 2. This report comes after last week’s statement from Sony that it expects Activision and Microsoft to honor its standing agreements for multiplatform games. The company said, “We expect that Microsoft will abide by contractual agreements and continue to ensure Activision games are multiplatform.”
Sony’s statement was a relief for PlayStation Call of Duty fans but gamers ended up with more questions than answers. Most importantly, what are these “contractual agreements” and what happens when the agreements are over? The new report gives fans the clearest look yet at what the future of Call of Duty on PlayStation will actually look like. The report that Call of Duty 2022, 2023, and Warzone 2 will remain multiplatform is “according to four people with knowledge of the deal”.
That shouldn’t come as much surprise to most people. This year’s Call of Duty is well under development for Xbox, PlayStation, and PC. Microsoft’s purchase of Activision is also unlikely to have been completed by the time that game comes out. Next year’s game was questionable but given how far in advance plans for the Call of Duty franchise are made, it’s also not surprising that it will be multiplatform. There have been reports Call of Duty developers want the game to move away from the yearly model. It’s possible that there isn’t a game in 2024. Whenever the game after 2023 comes out, it looks likely that it will be an Xbox exclusive.
However, that leaves Warzone 2. Unlike the mainline Call of Duty games, Warzone is a multi-year free-to-play game. It has been almost two years since the game was released. It’s possible that Warzone 2 remains multiplatform while the mainline games become Xbox exclusives. If Warzone 2 does release in 2023, it would likely be supported for at least three years which is well past when the mainline games would have gone exclusive. Meanwhile, respected leaker Tom Henderson has stated that Warzone 2 is in development for next-gen consoles only. If that’s the case, Activision may support both Warzone games at the same time. The first last-gen hardware and the next on the current generation.
Although there are still a lot of questions surrounding the Activision deal, a picture is becoming clear. It looks like Microsoft may honor the current agreements and then make almost everything Xbox exclusive after. Much like it did with the Bethesda acquisition.
