Don’t expect new PlayStation or Xbox until 2028 at the earliest
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Company documents submitted to competition regulators indicate that the next generation of Playstation or XBOX will not start until at least fall 2028.
Documents that Microsoft and Sony are submitting to the competition regulators in various countries made some headlines about the two companies war over the purchase of Activision Blizzard and control of Call of Duty. Regardless of sensational statements, it seems that both agree that we will not see a new generation of their consoles until autumn 2028 at the earliest.
As part of the documents submitted to the regulator in the United Kingdom, the CMA has expressed its concerns about the impact that the purchase worth 68.7 billion dollars would have on competition: “This would especially affect the launch of the next generation of consoles, where gamers make new decisions about which console to acquire.” The current machines were launched in November 2020, with a slower start-up than expected due to supply shortages that are still gradually recovering.
In response to the CMA, Microsoft assures that this generation will still take many years and that this impact is simple speculation: “The two parties [Microsoft and Activision] do not dispute that a percentage of gamers will evaluate their consoles at the beginning of the new generation. But they point out that this only happens about every eight years. The next generation is not expected before fall 2028 at the earliest.” Playstation 4 and Xbox One launched in the fall of 2013, and their successors followed seven years later, with mid-cycle powerhouse revisions, the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X.
Microsoft has offered to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation for 10 years
The document mentions that Microsoft offered to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation “at least until the end of 2027,” a commitment that has been extended to 10 years with the latest offer. Microsoft also argues that “Sony has plenty of time to adjust to this business strategy .”
For its part, Sony responds that “even assuming SIE has the skill and resources to develop a successful Call of Duty like saga, it would take many years and billions to create a competitor, and one example is EA’s Battlefield which shows that these efforts will likely not be successful. After the transaction, Xbox would become the only store to find the best-selling shooter series on consoles (Call of Duty, Halo, Gears of War, Doom, Overwatch ) and would be free of a real competitive pressure.”
There are still 16 governments reviewing the deal between Microsoft and Activision Blizzard in detail, and what seemed like a guaranteed takeover is getting complicated, according to some sources.
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