PlayStation was sure it would retain Call of Duty simply because of Sony's presence.
New comments from PlayStation head Jim Ryan were uncovered by reporter Florian Mueller, and they paint a pretty confident picture of the company. Ryan was apparently confident PlayStation would still get Call of Duty releases even if Microsoft's purchase of Activision Blizzard proceeded, purely because of Sony's dominance on the gaming scene.
This here could be the biggest bombshell in the entire evidentiary record: Jim Ryan was apparently certain that CoD would remain on the PlayStation because of Sony's market power. https://t.co/6DLJ7YkMNK pic.twitter.com/7QEA8r81IgJune 17, 2023
It's pretty hard to argue with Ryan's stance here - just look at the extent to which the PS5 is currently outselling the Xbox Series X and S around the world as proof of PlayStation's unavoidable presence in gaming.
Ryan's comments are perhaps a little less of a "bombshell" considering Microsoft literally offered to put Call of Duty on PlayStation devices for a decade. Microsoft was offering damn near anyone a 10-year deal for Call of Duty-related things like game streaming and cloud technology, but their offer to put the franchise on PlayStation for a decade was by far the most noteworthy.
In actual fact, this is the deal that PlayStation and Ryan weren't satisfied with. PlayStation reportedly turned down the deal from Microsoft, and so Ryan's new comments seem to imply that PlayStation was sure it would retain Call of Duty even after they'd turned down the initial decade-long offer from Microsoft. That's a very, very confident stance from PlayStation.
Don't forget, we're still getting a new Call of Duty game this year, according to Summer Game Fest host Geoff Keighley.
