Today, during an episode of the Official Xbox Podcast, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer promised that Call of Duty fans on PlayStation and Nintendo platforms can rest easy following the closure of the $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard.
During the podcast, Spencer actually started by talking about PC players, mentioning that they should already feel like they're part of the overall gaming platforms that Xbox focuses on.
Microsoft has been on that journey for a whole with its first-party studios and the Xbox app on PC, and there's a lot of work to continue to do there.
Then he continued by mentioning that he wants Call of Duty Players on PlayStation and in the future on Nintendo consoles to feel "100% part of the community."
I don't want you to feel like there's content you're missing out, there's skins you're missing out, there's timing that you're missing out on. That's not the goal.
The goal is 100% parity across all platforms as much as we can for launch and content.I say "as much as we can" on parity because clearly some platforms have resolution and frame rate differences just based on perf, but there's nothing else.
We have no goal of somehow trying to use Call of Duty to get you to buy an Xbox console.
Spencer then added that he wants the Call of Duty nation to feel supported across all platforms, also explaining that Xbox has been on the losing end when parity wasn't guaranteed.
We've been on the other side of some of those skins and times... even this beta wasn't on Xbox the first week.
I just don't think that helps the community. I don't think that helps the game. So the focus, if you're a PlayStation player, a Nintendo player, a PC player, or an Xbox console player, I want you to feel 100% part of the Call of Duty nation.
He also confirmed that he believes that next year is an accurate time frame for Activision games to be included in Xbox Game Pass. Simply enough, the regulatory process was so full of uncertainties that Microsoft and Activision didn't have the time to work together on it yet.
Now that the deal has closed that work is starting, but there is some work to be done, and Spencer implied that it'll take some time.
