Not a huge deal. Microsoft has every incentive to keep Call of Duty on the market leading console. Considering we’re about halfway through this cycle based on history, that means Microsoft would have left CoD on PlayStation 5 for another 3-4 years. This deal is very obviously only happening due to the anti-trust case, and because of the aforementioned 3-4 years it basically just says “we agree to put CoD on PS6 regardless of how well it does.”

Of course, when the companies merge, no regulatory body is going to actually keep Microsoft to their word with penalties high enough to care about.

This merger is bad for the industry without a doubt in my mind.

I wonder what they got from Sony. Ideally it'd be some promises about Sony reducing exclusives themselves. Exclusives suck for everyone but the company that owns the exclusive console. I don't personally own an Xbox, but I still want Sony to cut it out with their exclusives.

Digital foundry had an interesting take on this. Cod makes more than 1 billion a year, and cost probably more each year than any other franchise to develop and maintain. If Microsoft made it an Xbox exclusive, they might cut that 1 billion dollar figure in half, and the franchise might bleed more money than MS would make selling more consoles. In fact, the franchise might go negative.

Basically, they can't afford to lose the ps5 playerbase.

I doubt any company would want to give their competitor 20-30% of their profits, so in my mind it isn't a matter of if, but a matter of when they start locking all their franchises off from PS. What will be most interesting to me will be how will they do it. Will they just drop franchises so they don't have to face the backlash for turning a franchise into an exclusive? Will they just make up a new "franchise" with a new name but similar gameplay? Will they just slowly one by one exclusive them off to try and reduce blowback? Do it all at once to get it out of the way?

This generation has already been mostly played out and I don't see large changes making a large difference, but once the next generation comes around in another 3-5 years I imagine they will want to be in a place where they can leverage all these franchises to get people excited to buy their new box over their competitors. And you do that with exclusives.

I am willing to bet that Microsoft knows damn well how rabid the hardcore COD fans are that they wouldn't stop producing the game for a certain console, even just to sell more consoles of their own. It wouldn't be worth it.