An executive of Microsoft's Xbox division said that the company is not worried despite losing the timed-exclusive deal for "Call of Duty: Black Ops 3" to Sony.
He believes the upcoming shooter will still perform well on the Xbox One even though its future DLCs will arrive early for the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 3 consoles.
Early in July, "Call of Duty" publisher Activision announced that it has signed a deal with Sony to bring the initial wave of the game's DLCs to the PlayStation platform first before hitting Microsoft's Xbox.
This marked a significant event for these three companies because for five years, Activision has been a loyal partner to Microsoft. Their working relationship for the "Call of Duty" franchise began in 2010 after Activision agreed to release add-ons and maps for the games to Xbox Live first before debuting them for the PlayStation platforms, Eurogamer reported.
At that time, Activision sided with Microsoft due to the impressive number of Xbox Live members.
But, it seems the table has turned after Activision saw what Sony could do with the latest "Call of Duty" game. Following the success of "Destiny" which also involved a timed-exclusive deal between Activision and Sony for its content updates, the former decided to forge a similar partnership with the latter for "Call of Duty: Black Ops 3."
"The partnership with Sony was the right decision at this time," Activision CEO Eric Hirshberg told GameInformer. "They've been a great partner on 'Destiny,' and they have a ton of momentum with the PS4 and really got behind this thing."
"They wanted to see that deal on their platform," he added. "We're going to make it work."
Of course, Activision's decision to switch partners for the upcoming game probably has some sort of effect on Microsoft. After all, "Call of Duty" is considered as one of the biggest and most successful franchises in the gaming industry.
But for Aaron Greenberg, the marketing executive for Xbox, he believes Activision's timed-exclusive deal with Sony will not have a significant impact on Microsoft's gaming division. He noted that despite PlayStation gamers getting early access to future "Black Ops 3" DLCs, Xbox players will still get to enjoy them eventually, which is after about 30 days.
"We expect 'Black Ops 3' to be a really big title for us this year just like it has been in previous years," he said according to Gamerant. "The fact is that there is no content in 'Call of Duty' that we don't get."
"Call of Duty: Black Ops 3" is scheduled to arrive on November 6 for the Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One platforms.
