Welcome to the latest edition of DF Direct Weekly, where finally - finally! - I get the opportunity to share my thoughts on the Microsoft/Activision deal. Readers of this column will know that the biggest industry news unerringly occurs the moment I dare to leave my station and go on holiday - and so it was with this one. Since the deal was revealed, there has been plenty of speculation on the fate of the Call of Duty franchise and whether PlayStation support will continue. On the face of it, Phil Spencer's tweet looks encouraging, but reporting from Bloomberg's Jason Schreier suggests that after the next two CODs and the next Warzone, Microsoft is free of its obligations. So what happens then?
It's not entirely clear based on existing precedents - because we have two of them. Minecraft continues to be supported on all platforms, however, Bethesda's multi-platform run looks to be coming to and end, meaning that hit franchises such as Doom, The Elder Scrolls and the eagerly anticipated Starfield will not appear on PlayStation. COD support for PlayStation could go either way then, but for me, the real question is this: can Call of Duty titles appear day one on Xbox Game Pass even with the current Sony content deals in place? If so, I'd venture to suggest that the Xbox vs PlayStation console 'war' becomes far less relevant compared to the continuing evolution of the prevailing business model in the games business, where deals like this strongly suggest that subscription is the future and securing the best content becomes of paramount importance.