After Microsoft announced the purchase of Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion, many wondered what would happen to the franchises. Call of Duty, which has been instrumental in console sales for the past few generations. Thus, PlayStation is concerned about what the purchase means for the industry.
Recently, Brazil’s regulatory commission, like other similar bodies around the world, is studying procurement for approval. Thus several companies were called to take their views on the matter. One of these was PlayStation, who noted that Call of Duty games played a large role in console sales and Making the series an Xbox exclusive will backfire in the market. This is what a representative commented.
“The brand has joined forces like Star Wars, Game of Thrones, Harry Potter or The Lord of the Rings. Call of Duty is so popular that it influences players’ choice of consoles, and its community is so tightly knit that even if a competitor had the budget to develop a similar product, they couldn’t compete with it.
Each annual installment of Call of Duty takes three to five years to develop. Since Activision releases one game per year, this equates to an annual investment of hundreds of millions of dollars.
About 1,200 people work on each edition and another 1,500 are involved in publishing and distribution. Therefore, Call of Duty alone has more developers than most video game companies across all their projects, even AAA studios.
No other developer can put the same level of resources and expertise into game development. Even if they could, Call of Duty is so settled that no rival, no matter how relevant, can catch up. Players are less likely to switch to other alternative games, because they will lose those contacts, those skills and even the friends they made playing the game.”
It is important to mention Xbox has stated that they have no plans to monopolize Call of Duty.. However, nothing assures us that this position will change significantly in the future. Likewise, it will be interesting to see what the results of this research are not only in Brazil, but also in other regions such as the UK
On a related note, new details about its multiplayer Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II. Similarly, the first images of the next game in the series have been filtered.
Editor’s note:
Call of Duty is truly one of the biggest features in the industry, and making it an Xbox exclusive would be a huge blow against PlayStation. We can only hope Phil Spencer’s word is kept and Activision’s work is available on more consoles.
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