If these statements are true, then it pretty much confirms that COD and other major Activision franchises will continue releasing on PlayStation for the foreseeable future...or at least until the money MS is wiling to sacrifice by not releasing on PlayStation is offset by some other area such as substantial GamePass revenue/adoption (which may very well happen if all future COD games became GamePass accessible from Day-1 going forward).
FYI, as been pointed out numerous times in the Era topic linked in this OP, Microsoft had the same verbiage regarding Bethesda in court. Look at Starfield and TESVI now, permanetely exclusive. Funnily enough, they keep using the word "desire" too, lol.
Although, I
personally believe CoD stays multiplatform for the rest of this gen; MS is known to play the long game and has repeatedly said as such. PS5 will coast off of PS4s success and Microsoft will coast off of
that and use PlayStation to literally fund their games while making Xbox the home of CoD, Game Pass explode in subs/popularity and CoD extras to be including in Game Pass Perks. It's in their best interest to keep it on PlayStation in the short term while
pretending it to be a consession they agree with, before the consession is even mandated (if at all, looking unlikely regulators will mandate anything).
Other major franchises? Ehhh, notice how everything surmounts to CoD for both Sony and Microsoft. Existing GaaS, Diablo 4 and OW2 with the other odd title available on PS5, sure, but other then that it gets
extremely doubtful.
Also, Microsoft lawyers almost literally obliterated Sony's statements with these facts, lol. Of course these companies are saying things on their best interests but Sony keeps looking worse and worse here. You know it's bad when their own fansites make scathing headlines about them, like PushSquare. Still sure the usual suspects will enter this thread to damage control and shit on Microsoft, though. Or am I too late?
Not if Sony has a marketing deal for years that block COD from appearing on a competitor's subscription service.
Microsoft isn't going to let the biggest franchise stay off of Game Pass for many years because of a marketing agreement. They're being lenient and
choosing to honor contractual agreements, when they don't have to and the fine for breaching would be pennies compared to $70B, but:
- This wasn't brought up in their rebuttal whilst it would've been extremely relevant, unless it happens to be the redacted statement. It would've been a perfect retort to Sonys crocodile tears if Microsoft proved Sony had a clause for CoD+Game Pass and used it against them
- the RE8 block is a clause on the contract, not the basis for the marketing agreement
- Sony had many marketing contracts with games that appear on Game Pass (NBA2K, etc)
-
Sony has had the marketing for CoD since before Game Pass was a thing. This last part keeps bring mentioned across forums everywhere but people are forgetting this.
- ABK games rarely released on subscription services at all, let alone Game Pass.
I can see MW2 not coming right away,
maybe, but that's about it.