Phil Spencer claims PlayStation wants to grow ‘by making Xbox smaller’

In the latest war of words over its proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard, Microsoft’s Gaming CEO has claimed that Sony’s plan for growth is to “make Xbox smaller.”

Phil Spencer made the comments during an interview with the Second Request podcast, where the exec claimed that Sony was the “one major opposer to the [Microsoft Activision] deal.”

“Sony is trying to protect its dominance on the console. The way they grow is by making Xbox smaller,” Spencer said.

“[Sony] has a very different view of the industry than we do. They don’t ship their games day and date on PC, they do not put their games into their subscription when they launch their games.”

The ongoing battle over the deal that would see Microsoft take the reigns of the games industry’s largest third-party publisher has encountered significant pushback from both Sony and regulators on both sides of the Atlantic.

On Thursday the US regulator said it was attempting to block the $68.7 billion deal because it believed it would enable Microsoft to “suppress competitors” to its Xbox consoles and its subscription content and cloud gaming business.

“Sony is leading the dialogue around why the deal shouldn’t go through to protect its dominant position on console, so the thing they grab onto is Call of Duty,” Spencer told Second Request.

“The largest console maker in the world raising an objection about the one franchise that we’ve said will continue to ship on the platform. It’s a deal that benefits customers through choice and access.”

Call of Duty, the monolithic shooter franchise that regularly tops the best-selling lists for console games could, theoretically, become exclusive to Microsoft platforms following this deal.

However, since the announcement of Microsoft’s intention to acquire Activision Blizzard, the company has assured that it wouldn’t lock away the game for at least a decade.

Last week Microsoft president Brad Smith provided more details in a Wall Street Journal editorial on the company’s offer to keep the Call of Duty franchise on PlayStation.

Following this, Spencer took to Twitter to claim that Microsoft had committed to bringing the franchise back to Nintendo consoles after a decade-long absence. 

The last Call of Duty game released on a Nintendo system was the Wii U version of Call of Duty: Ghosts, which was released in 2013 and allowed players to use a Wii Remote to aim with motion controls.