Information reaching Kossyderrickent has it that Microsoft now officially owns two of the biggest FPS franchises of all time: Call of Duty and Halo.
The future of console gaming, as big business, hinges in no small part on Friday’s resolution of Microsoft’s $69 billion acquisition of the video game publisher Activision Blizzard. This was a hard-fought upheaval. For more than a year and a half, Microsoft found itself in a three-way, transatlantic regulatory shoot-out with the Federal Trade Commission in the U.S., the Competition and Markets Authority in the U.K., and, briefly, the European Union. There were harsh words and hard feelings and, recently, all sorts of scandalous revelations in a massive leak of mishandled documents regarding Xbox, its competitors, Activision, and other potential acquisition targets.
What will we even be doing on video game consoles 10 years from now? What kinds of games will we be playing? What new monetization schemes will we be grousing about to our friends and in various subreddits and comment sections? There are so many concurrent innovations in the development and distribution of video games these days, and while not every one of these story lines (VR … NFTs …) has culminated in some big, game-changing breakthrough in video game culture, the cumulative shift in how players, as consumers, interact with publishers is very real. War has changed.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III is the final Call of Duty title partnered with Sony PlayStation.
The PlayStation x Call of Duty deal started in 2015 with Black Ops III.
It will end in 2024 – 9 year partnership.
