Some Activision games will remain on the PlayStation, sources close to Microsoft say

Microsoft should become the new owner of Activision Blizzard and its franchises in mid-2023. This automatically raises the question of whether Call of Duty, Overwatch, Warcraft, and other Activision Blizzard franchises will become exclusive to the Xbox - or more precisely, will they be dropped from the PlayStation in the future?

We probably won't know such a thing for a while, but it can be assumed that they will decide individually for each franchise. The Bloomberg portal, which was among the first to spread the news about the most expensive acquisition in the history of the video game industry, said that they heard from a source close to Microsoft that the company planned to keep some Activision games on PlayStation but make some Xbox exclusive.

No specific games or series are listed, but if we were to speculate Call of Duty is probably a candidate for a series that would continue to live on Sony consoles. Reason? Call of Duty games have a significant presence on the esports scene, and their greatest popularity is on the PlayStation. Unlike Bethesda’s single-player games, Call of Duty as a franchise is comparatively closer to Minecraft, which Microsoft didn’t remove from the PlayStation after buying ownership of it.

In any case, Call of Duty is a specific case of this story and for the reason that Activision has been in partnership with Sony over the series for years. Players on the PlayStation regularly had the first opportunity to test new Call of Duty games, and some mods were exclusive to them for a full year. The same could now be true on the opposite side.

Overwatch 2 is also a likely candidate for survival on the PlayStation. This game should be an unconventional sequel, which means that all its maps will come to life in Overwatch 1, so the players of the first and second games will be able to play matches with each other. Such a plan was at least a few years ago - but it is possible that it could change.

Microsoft has commented on this issue and stated the following:

Activision Blizzard games exist on a variety of platforms today, and we plan to continue to support those communities in the future. This acquisition is intended to increase the availability of Activision Blizzard content across multiple platforms, including mobile phones.