Image via PlayStation

The news of Microsoft acquiring Activision Blizzard is massive, and information technology's triggering lots of questions in gamers' minds. Ane such question revolves around the perennial console war: volition Activision Blizzard games still be on PlayStation consoles?

The curt answer is a murky "we don't know yet," but that'southward not very sufficient. By examining the diction of the news and the by trends of other acquired Xbox studios, we can beginning to make much more educated predictions.

PlayStation is, understandably, not named in the official Microsoft declaration — though Sony itself is. "When the transaction closes," the printing release says, "Microsoft will become the world's tertiary-largest gaming visitor by acquirement, behind Tencent and Sony." With PlayStation still ahead of Xbox in that regard, it would brand business concern sense for Xbox to hamstring its competition past making more games available only on its platforms.

Looking at the previous acquisitions of Bethesda and ZeniMax Media, we can see a few examples of this. Titles like Deathloop and Ghostwire: Tokyo were already well into development by the time Xbox scooped their developers up, and then they remained timed PlayStation 5 exclusives. It'south safe to assume that the same will apply to many Activision Blizzard projects that are already far along. On the other paw, Starfield will launch exclusively on Xbox Series X/S this fall, and Xbox boss Phil Spencer views The Elder Scrolls Half dozen every bit an exclusive also. Don't be surprised to see this same mentality applied to more games in the future.

All of that said, there's even so a window earlier Activision Blizzard games volition fall under Xbox jurisdiction. According to Bobby Kotick's own announcement, he expects the acquisition to be finalized "erstwhile in Microsoft's financial 2023 yr ending June 30, 2023." Furthermore, Bloomberg reports that Activision Blizzard games will release as normal on all platforms, but with Xbox-sectional content. So no matter how the deal shakes out for Activision Blizzard games on PlayStation, no changes volition come into outcome until after the financial year 2023 window.