For sure. Most people don’t even have a Series X or PS5 yet, because they’ve been so hard to find. If the message that COD will now be an Xbox exclusive starts circulating out there, that’s good for Microsoft whether it turns out to be true or not.
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it’s marketing move alone just by announcing the Acquisition, GP pretty much got free marketing
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this TBH
Big difference between this and Bethesda is Activision has a big foothold in the casual audience who most likely will go wherever the marketing goes for the next cod. Bethesda was more the hardcore audience but this is more the people who just play a few games like cod and fifa.
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It’s going to land with even more of a thud now when Sony announces that their big subscription play is bringing back (streamed) PS1 backwards compatibility. 
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yeah this might actually backfire on them if service is not that good.
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I prefer #1 but I’ll go with #2 as to what Sony will actually do.
Once the acquisition is legally finalized, COD will be fully exclusive to Xbox and this is when I see Microsoft removing GOLD making online co-op/multi-player completely free. Exclusive COD AND free MP plus the game is on Game Pass, yeah, you can see this coming from a mile away.
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I have been thinking about this just today lol. I mean if you want to be absolutely sure you can play COD then purchasing an Xbox is the safest bet.
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Brad Sams has a new video out, covering exclusivity. He shows this quote by Phil from Bloomberg. We’ve seen this one before, right? I’m surprised what Brad says.
“I’ll just say to players out there who are playing Activision Blizzard games on Sony’s platform: It’s not our intent to pull communities away from that platform and we remain committed to that.”
Brad says:
That should not come as any surprise. Keep in mind they are paying nearly 70b dollars , they have to make money to justify that expenditure, they can’t just spend that and then clam it all up inside of Xbox, that’s not going to fly and MS has to make money.
Second of all, MS is in the business of making games, yes they sell consoles and yes they do other things but most importantly they want their gamers playing games and they don’t really care what platform. Yes they want everybody on Xbox, yes they want everybody on Game Pass, but for the time being as MS continues its narrative of trying to become the Netflix of gaming they have to make sure that they are keeping and maintaining a good relationship with gamers and that means not pulling every single title off of PS.
Now there will absolutely be exclusives that are going to bring you know, push people towards the Xbox narrative but I can’t see them taking CoD away because that title brings in at least a billion dollars every fall and that would be a huge hit to the value of the brand every single year. Also keep in mind MS has done a pretty good job of bringing its own games to other platforms, look at Minecraft as a perfect example. We see it all over the place, MS is going to continue that narrative. Keep in mind that the end focus is to get people into Game Pass, not necessarily to buy an Xbox console.
He does expect, obviously that timed exclusive stuff for the game will be theirs or parity.
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That’s what I think also but if I was Microsoft(and I doubt they do this), I would give a six month exclusivity to every new map that gets added to warzone for xbox and pc while also throwing in some nice perks for gamepass
some of PS profit is from PS plus, taking that away from them by force would make them lose a lot of money.
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Everybody’s talking about COD being a massive loss but let’s not forget that Overwatch sold 60M units.
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Part 2 of what Brad Sams says
It’s kind of crazy to say this but MS already has a pilot program in place that kind of shows how to do these mega acquisitions. It’s crazy to say this but MS’s Bethesda acquisition was around seven and half billion dollars which is roughly a tenth of the AB deal, has been a pilot program for MS’s mega acquisitions, they were able to acquire Bethesda, bring the assets in house and launch multiple quad A games.
So when they go acquire AB we can look at what they’ve done with Bethesda as a blueprint if you’re wondering how MS is going to play this deal out. It’s a really important point for them to make sure that they continue to keep a broad approach to the titles because they want to become the Netflix of gaming.
He says more after this, but this was about exclusivity. Video is here
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Another thing to put the deal into context.
By the time the deal is done and the ink is dry over the 18 months from talks starting to the deal finalised by next Jul 2023 at the latest. Microsoft will have made $60b in net profit and probably bought back $60b worth of their own shares.
They’ll have had revenue of $210b in those 18 months… And twats on twitter are shouting for Sony to fire back by buying Take2 
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heres the thing about minecraft its used for education something like COD will not be
Brad Sams mentioned Minecraft as the perfect example.
But what you are saying is true.
That’s good. When I think a casual CoD player, I genuinely think of someone who is not going to realize that CoD is exclusive until release day. Someone who will search for CoD on the PS store, or at an actual store, and begin to realize that CoD is not on PS anymore. It’s good for us for influencers to start getting the message out early.
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Oh Grubb
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