Call of Duty's release on PlayStation has an expiration date

Xbox's Phil Spencer confirms that Call of Duty will eventually leave PlayStation hardware, aligning with previous nebulous statements about the future of the franchise on competing hardware.

Call of Duty's time on PlayStation hardware is on a countdown clock. Microsoft has confirmed that Call of Duty's release guarantee on PlayStation has an expiration date.

"In January, we provided a signed agreement to Sony to guarantee Call of Duty on PlayStation, with feature and content parity, for at least several more years beyond the current Sony contract, an offer that goes well beyond typical gaming industry agreements," Microsoft's Phil Spencer told The Verge.

The comment is an interesting one and follows multiple previous statements seeming to confirm otherwise.

Just a bit ago Phil Spencer directly responded to concerns from the UK's Competition and Markets Authority with a long blog post saying:

"We've heard that this deal might take franchises like Call of Duty away from the places where people currently play them. That's why, as we've said before, we are committed to making the same version of Call of Duty available on PlayStation on the same day the game launches elsewhere."

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Gamers believed this meant Call of Duty would always come to PlayStation. Apparently this is only referring to the games that are guaranteed in that years-long span and not in perpetuity.

This aligns with the non-answer that Phil Spencer gave Bloomberg when outright asked if Call of Duty would come to PlayStation forever:

"So how far does this go? Does this mean Activision games, that Call of Duty that you'll be able to play on any platform in perpetuity?" Bloomberg's Emily Chang asked Spencer in a recent interview

Spencer replied:

"I don't know what means in forever, like when you think about how long. It's not for any kind of nefarious business reason, it's just like what did platforms mean 10 years ago, like I think the definition of some of these things might change over time. But our expectation is we want more people to play."

Finally we have Microsoft's official comment made in February 2022:

To be clear, Microsoft will continue to make Call of Duty and other popular Activision Blizzard titles available on PlayStation through the term of any existing agreement with Activision. And we have committed to Sony that we will also make them available on PlayStation beyond the existing agreement and into the future so that Sony fans can continue to enjoy the games they love. We are also interested in taking similar steps to support Nintendo's successful platform. We believe this is the right thing for the industry, for gamers and for our business.