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 heavy 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.
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“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”.
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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.
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.
