Phil Spencer Again Addresses Call of Duty on PlayStation

Microsoft gaming CEO Phil Spencer has again reiterated that his firm has no plans to stop selling Call of Duty to users of Sony’s PlayStation console family. The statement can be seen as just the latest step in convincing regulators to approve its $67.8 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, the makers of Call of Duty.

“We’re not taking Call of Duty from PlayStation,” he said on a recent episode of what I guess is a tech podcast. “That’s not our intent. Our intent is not to do that, and as long as there’s a PlayStation out there to ship to, our intent is that we continue to ship Call of Duty on PlayStation — similar to what we’ve done with Minecraft since we’ve owned that.”

The Minecraft comparison is a good one and is perhaps overdue: when Microsoft acquired Minecraft maker Mojang in 2014, fans feared that the software giant would try to limit the successful game to its Xbox platform. And sure, Microsoft did bring Minecraft to Xbox, but it also brought the title to other new platforms and expanded the Minecraft universe with new titles like Minecraft Earth and Minecraft Dungeons.

Since Microsoft announced its plans to acquire Activision Blizzard, I’ve argued what Spencer and Microsoft have argued: that Microsoft would be crazy to take Call of Duty away from PlayStation, its biggest market. But nice to see Spencer just talking common sense.

“We’ve expanded the places where people can play Minecraft, we haven’t reduced the places,” he continued. “And it’s been good for the Minecraft community, in my opinion, and I want to do the same as we think where Call of Duty can go over the years. For Xbox itself, players who have invested in our console, I think the biggest addition you’re going to see is some great games coming to Game Pass. This isn’t going to be about pulling those communities off of other platforms, but I want it to be a great place for people to see those games.”