If Sony keeps refusing Gamepass on PlayStation, that will only provoke MS into buying more studios. The sooner Sony swallows their pride and accepts Gamepass (with a cut of the subscription for themselves, of course), the sooner Microsoft probably stops buying major studios and focus on more organic growth.

Some of the acquisitions Microsoft has made have been about increasing their first party offerings alone. But I'm convinced a huge part, if not the majority reason they bought Zenimax and Activision/Blizzard was to force Sony to submit to Gamepass.

If Sony continues to be stubborn then I suspect Take-Two, EA, and maybe even Ubisoft will be swallowed up soon by Microsoft (in the next 2 years). Then Sony will be begging MS to let Gamepass on PS devices out of fear that their hardware sales will plummet (which would then cause their first party sales to plummet).

When 360 was the CoD machine, Sony had Killzone,Mag and Resistance. Sony has enough studios and manpower to revive those or make new IPs that help counter CoD.

SEGA created Phantasy Star to counter Nintendo having Final Fantasy. CoD may make money but the games are largely mediocre. Can be good fun. Infinite Warfare had a really fun campaign. Sony could also make a deal with EA for Titanfall 3. CoD also just isn't a juggernaut it once was. Whatever happens Sony has lot's of options. Nintendo has sold a 100 million consoles without CoD. Sony can do the same.

Personally speaking? Nothing at all. I haven't touched Call of Duty in years.

I will say though, that Phil tweet is definitely interesting, and not as vague as most of the Bethesda talks were. I don't recall any specific Bethesda title being singled out like Call of Duty.

Well... that depends. If you were a COD-only type of player who bought a PS5 to play that one game on, you don't really have the same type of loyalty that a Sony gamer does. Those types of people would have gotten a PS5 because they felt it was the better choice to play that one game on. But after this deal, that choice looks a lot more shaky so yeah, I could totally see them selling off their PS5's, making a small profit, then buying an Xbox instead.

As for the people who don't have any next-gen consoles yet, and are still playing COD on PS4... I don't know why they would bother with a PS5 now. Sony gamers, sure. But the people who only play COD? No. It just doesn't make much sense. 

Yeah, I'm starting to think this as well. This might be a leverage point. 

Yes I would offer that to. But to trade so they keep it away. And if they are still threatening me to still put COD on my console I would sweeten the deal more and offer grand turismo. Then I'll leave pretending to be all sad and jump for joy as soon as I walk out the door that all that sim trash is gone. 

Doesn't matter to me. As someone who owns all consoles, this trade would not result in the game coming to gamepass. So even if Sony did make a trade, which would at least make sense for CoD to be on PS, it really doesn't affect me in any way as I will still be paying retail value for whatever game they bring over one way or another.

He mentioned nothing of future Call of Duty releases, he just said keep CoD on Playstation.  This could be as little as keeping servers for old games up alongside continued support for Warzone, all the way to all CoD games coming just as they always had.  It was extremely vague and every bit as useless as his Bethesda comments.

Given MS track record and how they have handled every other acquisition however, it is safe to say the former of the two above is most likely to happen.  Continued Warzone support, all new mainline games exclusive to XBox and PC (outside of any existing contracts that may or may not actually exist).

However in this case, if contracts do already exist, unless MS buys their way out of them...it will be a few years even after the acquisition before we really know what MS plans to do with CoD exclusivity.

Before you start insulting someone by calling them naive and their thoughts fan fiction, it's a good practice to fully read, not just scroll read, any written statement before replying.

I said "probably stops buying major studios and focus on more organic growth."

If it still is confusing, let me elaborate further on what was (I thought clearly) implied:

Microsoft will continue to buy mid and smaller studios as they see fit, and will occasionally still buy someone major, but not at the same rate they have been as they will focus more on growing the studios they've already acquired or built.