The list wars have now evolved into the market wars from the looks of recent news trends.

I honestly don't see this being the massive end all to be all for MS that people on the other side of the fence are making it out to be, I'd much rather their conference have something than COD taking up the usual space and I'd rather they spend money on something more worthwhile to them, it's no secret that even with the marketing, COD would still sell more on PS4 which makes it a wasted effort, time and money for MS to bother, it's not like Activision cares for MS anyway when you have Bobby at the helm.

But for reals the downplaying is oh so very real, if MS doesn't have it will be their end but if they have it it suddenly doesn't matter because Sony will sell more anyway, fucked if you do, fucked if you don't and that's what downplaying them deciding against it gets us.

If anything MS should focus more on marketing their exclusives most of the time and the money on multiplats towards some new IP's or bringing more people under their wing like the guys behind ori and fund more future games.

but that would be pretty hypocritical though lol

but yeah id prefer to do it on their own time as well and not at microsoft/sony's conference. I really don't feel a typical showing of COD every year really adds to  any conference really

I'm going to pass on this game. I've bought them all since modern warfare and there all pretty much the same,with slight cosmetic changes. The people that disagree,are just lying to themselves. I like the games,but sometimes you just need a break from things.

I hope not but I can't say that modern Sony would surprise me by doing that.

Ya well I reserve the right to be a hypocrite when it suits me

Agreed all the CoD feels the same.  The only thing that's interested me for this game is the new zombie story mode.  But if its nothing really new as they say then ill pass on this game.

CoD will sell well on PS4 without exclusive marketing. Because it always has.

CoD sales may suffer on Xb one without exclusive marketing because it is going up against Halo 5 for the attention of Xbox FPS fans.

MS might not be all that interested in paying to market a game that's going to be on PS4, and that globally will outsell the Xb one version by a decent margin. And with Tomb Raider and Halo 5 as actual exclusives for the holidays, MS has some unique bundling opportunities, where a CoD bundle might be a case of 3's a crowd. If MS is not so willing to fork out a lot of money to advertise a game that is arguably not doing all that much to push console sales, Activision might be inclined to look at a Sony offer. And Sony might be willing to put up a better deal because their intended centerpiece game has now been pushed to 2016.

So MS is somewhat demotivated to spend money to promote CoD this year. Whereas Sony is probably quite motivated to get a marketing deal for what will be a pretty huge game for the holidays.