In the latest episode of the official Xbox podcast, Xbox boss Phil Spencer also talked about the future of Activision Blizzard’s king of IPs.
“For Call of Duty players on PlayStation and in the future on Nintendo, I want you to feel 100 percent part of the community. I don’t want you to feel like there’s content you’re missing out on, there’s skins you’re missing out on, there’s timing you’re missing out on. That’s not the goal. The goal is 100 percent parity across all platforms as much as we can for launch and content. I say as much as we can for parity because clearly some platforms have resolution and frame rate differences just based on perf. But there’s nothing else.
We have no goal of somehow trying to use Call of Duty to get you to buy an Xbox console. I want the Call of Duty nation to feel supported across all platforms. We’ve been on the other side of some of these skins and times. Even this [Modern Warfare III] beta wasn’t on Xbox the first week. I don’t think that helps the community. I don’t think it helps the game. If you’re a PlayStation player, if you’re a Nintendo player, if you’re a PC player, if you’re an Xbox console player, I want you to feel 100 percent part of the Call of Duty nation,” said Spencer, who made no mention of Xbox Game Pass. (Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III is out November 10 for the PlayStation 5, Xbox series, PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.)
Spencer also touched on the newly acquired publisher’s IP: “The amount of franchises that we now have in our portfolio is kind of inspiring, it’s daunting. I feel like we have to be great stewards of the content that we touch. These are people’s memories across different platforms, across different decades. And I want to make sure that when we go back and visit something, that we do it with our full capabilities, a motivated team that wants to work on something and make a difference, not just create something for financial gain or create something for a PR announcement and not deliver the product. So I start with the teams and what they’re passionate about and that’s why I’m excited to go on these [studio] visits and then we’ll look at it.
I think we’ve done an OK job as Xbox, I don’t think we’ve done an A+ job of looking at our franchises and revisiting them. It’s always a trade-off between what do you do that’s new and going back and doing something. I think with Game Pass, we have the opportunity to maybe pick a couple of franchises every year and almost do a “revisited” – I just made that term up, so it’s not a brand, it’s not on a box. But you know, I joke about things like Hexen just because I remember playing it as a kid. I don’t have a plan for that, but I think if you look at all the franchises that are part of our teams, there’s an opportunity for us to go back, even if it’s just recognizing the moment and what these things have meant in the history of gaming, and doing something right with it, making it available to people through Game Pass. I think there’s an opportunity – there’s no plan for it – but there’s an opportunity.
Specific to Activision and Blizzard, there are some moments in the history of Activision’s history-you mentioned Tony Hawk, you mentioned Guitar Hero, even things like Skylanders even things like Skylanders – those were moments where the teams kind of innovated outside of the outside of expectations. What do you mean, I’m going to take a plastic guitar and plug it into my console and play? Like, that’s never going to work until it’s worked. And then everybody said, well, of course it would work. You you know, Skylanders, kind of the same way. The most important thing is that we treat them with the respect that they deserve, and we don’t turn it into a way for us to just just to do, like I said, a PR moment or something,” Spencer added. He would bring back Zork (Infocom’s text adventure game) from his childhood, and King’s Quest from Sierra.
So there will be no Sony-exclusive Call of Duty beta next year. (At this rate, there will be an Xbox-exclusive one).
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