As the head of Xbox, of course Spencer is going to paint the Activision deal as a net positive for everyone (pic: Microsoft)

As the Microsoft/Activision drama continues, Xbox’s Phil Spencer takes more potshots at Sony for complaining about Call Of Duty.

At this point, the constant sniping between Microsoft and Sony, concerning the former’s buyout of Activision Blizzard, feels like the next evolution of the console wars from the 90s.

Sony has made it no secret that it doesn’t approve of the acquisition, even publicly claiming that Microsoft’s initial offer to keep Call Of Duty on PlayStation consoles was ‘inadequate.’

Microsoft has dismissed the concerns of both Sony and regulators as being unwarranted, and now Xbox boss Phil Spencer has accused Sony of trying to reduce Xbox’s presence in the industry.

Spencer argues that Sony is latching onto the Call Of Duty argument in order to maintain its dominant position in the console market.

It is worth acknowledging that, at the moment, Sony is the number one publisher in the games industry, with over $18 billion (roughly £14.64 billion) in revenue.

Microsoft sits behind Sony, Tencent, and Nintendo in fourth place, which is why it has insisted that the Activision acquisition won’t give it too much of an advantage.

‘Sony is leading the dialogue around why the deal shouldn’t go through to protect its dominant position on console, so the thing they grab onto is Call Of Duty,’ Spencer said on the Second Request podcast.

He reiterated Microsoft’s promise to keep Call Of Duty multiplatform (it even plans on releasing future games on Nintendo Switch) and believes Sony is trying to grow its platform by ‘making Xbox smaller.’

Spencer argues that pulling Call Of Duty off PlayStation makes no sense since that’s the platform that the franchise makes most of its money. Although obviously Microsoft would prefer that wasn’t the case so there’s multiple reasons to think they wouldn’t want Call Of Duty to be on PlayStation forever.

Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 – the possibility of an Xbox only Call Of Duty has been a major sticking point (pic: Activision)

Spencer insists that the Activision deal will benefit all customers, since Microsoft wants to make its games more widely available. This is something that Microsoft has talked up before in the past, with Game Pass available on certain TVs without the need for the console.

However, this also seems at odds with the company’s approach to its acquisition of Bethesda and its parent company ZeniMax. Spencer admitted that there would be Xbox only Bethesda games and that the deal was about ‘delivering great exclusive games for you that ship on platforms where Game Pass exists.’

On Second Request, Spencer was even asked why regulators shouldn’t be worried about Microsoft’s plans for Call Of Duty, when ZeniMax games like Starfield are set to be Xbox exclusives.

Spencer explained that Microsoft has no interest in taking major franchises away from other platforms, implying that that’s the case for key Bethesda IPs like Fallout and The Elder Scrolls.

‘All of the ZeniMax games that we’ve said we’re going to ship on PlayStation, we have shipped on PlayStation,’ he said, adding that it hasn’t pulled any Bethesda games off the platform either.

However, neither Fallout nor The Elder Scrolls has had a new entry since the buyout. Fallout 5 is nothing but a one page design document at this point and while the current gen upgrade for Fallout 4 will release for Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, and PC, that game was multiplatform to begin with.

So, either Microsoft was legally bound to release it on PlayStation anyway or it knew that making it Xbox/PC only would attract a lot of backlash and angry consumers.

Deathloop – Microsoft did ship Deathloop as a PS5 exclusive but it had no choice in the matter to begin with (pic: Bethesda)

Furthermore, last year, Spencer appeared to imply that The Elder Scrolls 6 would be an Xbox exclusive.

It was reported that he ‘sees the same for The Elder Scrolls 6’ when referring to Starfield’s exclusivity and he said ‘In order to be on Xbox, I want us to be able to bring the full complete package of what we have. And that would be true when I think about Elder Scrolls 6.’

Spencer’s defence includes how the first two ZeniMax games Microsoft shipped were PlayStation 5 launch exclusives – Deathloop and Ghostwire: Tokyo. Except that was because it was contractually obligated to do so; Zenimax had already signed a contract with Sony for those games, before Microsoft bought Bethesda, which makes the example irrelevant.

It comes across as if Spencer thinks upholding legally binding contracts is reason enough to take Microsoft at its word, even though it couldn’t ignore those contracts without getting sued.

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At the end of the day, Spencer’s going to say what he needs to say to help push the acquisition through. Microsoft needs to appeal to the regulators, particularly the UK and US ones which have been the most hesitant on approving it.

It’s quite likely that the lack of new Xbox announcements at The Game Awards is in part because Microsoft doesn’t want to reveal anything more about its future plans until the deal is settled, since the fact that Starfield and Redfall are exclusives has already hurt its case.

In fact, the Federal Trade Commission recently said it would be filing a lawsuit to block the Activision deal entirely. If successful, it would completely scupper Microsoft’s 2023 plans.

Meanwhile, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority has other issues besides the Call Of Duty debate, such as Microsoft potentially locking Activision games to Xbox Game Pass or gaining an unfair advantage in the cloud gaming space.

There’s no telling if the deal will even go through anymore (pic: Microsoft)

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As the Microsoft/Activision drama continues, Xbox’s Phil Spencer takes more potshots at Sony for complaining about Call Of Duty.