Call of Duty Xbox exclusivity "wouldn't be profitable", Microsoft says

Making Call of Duty exclusive to Xbox “simply wouldn’t be profitable”, Microsoft has said.

The claim comes as part of a fresh war of words between Xbox and PlayStation, as Microsoft seeks to finalise its eye-opening $68.7bn buyout of Activision Blizzard.

Specifically, it comes in response to Sony’s recent objections to the deal – in which it argued that Call of Duty could not be rivalled, and that the franchise was vitally important to PlayStation as it influenced players’ choice of console.

Microsoft previously said it had no immediate plans to make Call of Duty an Xbox exclusive, and has now doubled down on this by adding that it did not make business sense.

“The reality is that the strategy of retaining Activision’s games by not distributing them in rival console stores would simply not be profitable to Microsoft,” the company wrote in documentation made public by Brazilian authorities.

That’s not to say it could be profitable, Microsoft continued – before adding that such a situation still seemed unlikely due to additional “costs” involved (details of which remain redacted).

Put together, these costs and “lost sales” from not releasing a game on other platforms – for example pulling Call of Duty from PlayStation – meant the whole thing would not be worth it, Microsoft said.

“Such costs, in addition to the lost sales estimated… above, mean that Microsoft would not be able to make up for the losses by earning more via the Xbox ecosystem as a result of implementing exclusivity,” it continued.

“This is especially true considering (i) the ‘gamer-centric’ – rather than ‘device-centric’ – strategy that Microsoft has pioneered with Game Pass, and (ii) the fact that PlayStation has the most loyal users across its various generations, with every indication that brand loyalty accrued in previous rounds of the ‘console wars’ suggests that PlayStation will continue to have a strong market position.”