Microsoft FTC Experience: Activision CEO Bobby Kotick on Call of Duty Exclusivity and Other Key Takeaways

Activision CEO Bobby Kotick took the witness stand during the trial portion of the Microsoft FTC today. Kotick has dropped questions about making Call of Duty exclusives, admitted he wasn’t a fan of Nintendo Switch prototypes before the system’s launch, and revealed a launch window for Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile. Here’s everything you need to know from Kotick’s time in court today.

Kotick doesn’t want to make Call of Duty exclusive

Call of Duty has clearly been a big focus of Kotick’s testimony and cross-examination, and when asked if the Activision CEO would ever consider making Call of Duty exclusive to one platform, he said, “No.”

“You’re going to alienate over 100 million monthly active gamers. Half of them play on phones, but the rest play on PC and PlayStation,” Kotick said, “and it would revolutionize if you remove the game from more than one platform.”

“…you will have a revolution if you remove the game from more than one platform.


“The players are very excited…and so with that kind of investment and time and effort, you get a motivated, excited group of people.”

Kotick said removing Call of Duty from PlayStation would be “very harmful to our business”.

Kotick admits he wasn’t impressed with the Nintendo Switch prototypes…and he was wrong

Kotick admitted that when he first saw Nintendo Switch prototypes, he didn’t think it would be popular. He also admitted he was wrong, given that the Switch has now sold over 100 million units. Kotick said it was a mistake not to put Call of Duty on the current Nintendo Switch, and spoke briefly about how Activision will handle future Nintendo consoles.

“We’ll look into it once we have the specifications, but we don’t have any present [plans]. “

Based on Kotick’s comments, it looks like Activision will strongly consider bringing Call of Duty back to Nintendo consoles “once we have detailed specs” for the next console. “It’s probably something we’ll consider,” he added.

Kotick says PlayStation would do well if the acquisition goes through

Kotick said Sony had a “huge competitive advantage” in being able to develop a new IP, and cited The Last of Us as an example of taking a video game IP and turning it into a successful multimedia franchise.

Should the deal go through, Kotick expressed confidence that Sony would remain competitive, saying that Sony has some of the best game developers in the world.

Kotick said, “Sony is the most successful consumer electronics company ever. They have distribution in every country, every small town, everywhere in the world.”

Sony is the most successful consumer electronics company of all time. They have distribution in every country, every small town, everywhere in the world.


Kotick says insulting the PlayStation version of Call of Duty makes no sense

The FTC continues to argue that Activision and Microsoft could ship a PlayStation version of Call of Duty that is not up to the quality level of the Xbox version. Kotick argued that Activision’s developers would not do so, saying that the vitriol that would follow from players—and the consequent detriment to the company—would be well deserved. Kotick also said that the developers take pride in their work and want to make good games. Kotick has never heard of developers making a substandard game for one platform compared to another.

See also  MSI RTX 40 SUPER leak confirms RTX 4080 SUPER and RTX 4070 Ti SUPER with 16GB memory

Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile will be released this fall

At the beginning of his testimonial, Kotick revealed that Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile is coming this fall. Previously, we only knew that the mobile version of Warzone was slated for sometime this year. Warzone Mobile is in internal development at Activision.

For the latest version of the Microsoft FTC trial, read about the budgets revealed for Sony’s AAA titles like The Last of Us Part 2, how Microsoft considered buying Square Enix, and check out the full recap of the trial so far.

Logan Plant is a freelance writer for IGN covering video game and entertainment news. He has over seven years of experience in the gaming industry with minor lines at IGN, Nintendo Wire, Switch Player Magazine, and Lifewire. You can find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *