Call of Duty no longer for PlayStation?

Microsoft is buying up major publishers

Created: 01/18/2022, 16:08

By: Omer Kayali

Microsoft buys Activision Blizzard.

©Microsoft

Microsoft announces that it will buy Activision Blizzard, the publisher behind "Call of Duty", "Diablo" and "World of Warcraft".

At the end of 2020, Microsoft caused quite a stir when the company announced it was buying up Bethesda and Zenimax*. And now comes the next hammer news: Microsoft buys the publisher Activision Blizzard * for a total of incredible 68.7 billion US dollars. This was confirmed by Xbox boss Phil Spencer in a recent blog post, after several industry experts had already reported on it on social media. This monumental acquisition is by far the largest ever in the video game industry - and the largest in Microsoft history.

This will take over Activision, Blizzard and all of their subsidiary studios, including Beenox, Infinity Ward, Raven Software, Sledgehammer Games and Treyarch.

The studios are responsible for some of the most popular video games on the market, including "Call of Duty", "Diablo", "World of Warcraft" or "Overwatch".

The question for gamers now is whether all of these titles will be exclusive to Xbox and Microsoft PCs.

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"Call of Duty", "Diablo" and Co. only on Xbox?

Phil Spencer explains in the blog post that after the acquisition closes next year, "

will be available on Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass." This includes both new titles and already published games. "As always, we look forward to adding even more value and more great games to Game Pass," said Spencer.

Spencer is not yet going into individual franchises, but it is quite likely that games like

will appear exclusively on Microsoft's gaming platforms.

For competitors Sony and all PlayStation owners that would of course be a severe blow.

At this point, however, it is not yet clear how Microsoft will deal with exclusive titles.

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