When Microsoft acquired Zenimax and therefore Bethesda, a question very quickly emerged from the lot: will Bethesda games become Xbox exclusives? After a few days of uncertainty, Microsoft has announced that the agreements signed with Sony for Deathloop and Ghostwire Tokyo will be honored, but that titles such as Starfield or other Bethesda productions will be exclusive to the Xbox ecosystem (console and PC).
So when Microsoft announces having agreed to buy Activision-Blizzard for nearly 60 billion euros, the players are again asking the question. With this upcoming takeover, the finalization of which should occur around the end of June 2024, there are many licenses that will fall into the hands of Microsoft: Call of Duty, Sekiro, Crash Bandicoot, Tony Hawk Pro Skater, World of Warcraft, Starcraft, Diablo, Overwatch or Hearthstone.
So many licenses that will become Microsoft Game Studios games. But then PlayStation and Switch gamers will they be deprived of the next Call of Duty or Diablo IV? A person, close to the file, spoke to our colleagues from Bloomberg to indicate that this will not necessarily be the case, but maintains the vagueness on the licenses which could be concerned.
Microsoft aims to continue to make (release) some Activision games on PlayStation consoles, but will also keep some exclusive content for Xbox.
It’s hard not to imagine a cross-platform release for Call of Duty, especially since the canonical episodes are now all linked to Call of Duty: Warzone, the free-to-play Battle Royale. Also, it’s hard to imagine a competitive title like Overwatch 2 not being released on Sony consoles. On the other hand, it is more than likely that Microsoft claws back benefit of DLC release, which were previously at the heart of agreements between Sony and Activision-Blizzard. We only have we just have to wait for the finalization of the agreement to find out which licenses will become Xbox exclusives.
