Today Phil Spencer spoke out about the current Activision/Blizzard acquisition and what the plans are. Phil reiterated that the deal isn’t to remove Call of Duty from other players like PlayStation but to bring more players to the game and is why they announced 10 year deals with Nintedo and Nvidia to bring the game to more devices.

Phil gave the example of Minecraft where they purchased the game and the user base was at about 20-30 million active users with now reaching 120 million active users. They didn’t take the game away from others, but instead worked with the team at Mojang to give them what they needed and to build on their creative game while helping them grow by bringing the game to other devices like Consoles, Mobile devices and more. They want to do the same with Call of Duty and make sure players no matter if they are on a phone, console or PC can play where they want to.

The point of the deal for Microsoft is to grow their presence in mobile gaming, where currently Microsoft does not have much of a presence. With the purchase it will include King which makes Candy Crush and has a massive player base on mobile devices and another example would be Diablo Immortal. Microsoft wants to build their mobile category out and grow in the market they have struggled in for many years.

Phil reiterated that once there was a time they had exclusive rights to Call of Duty content for 1 month and now PlayStation has deals where they can have a game mode for a whole year. Phil doesn’t see this as healthy for the industry and their player base and they will not have exclusive items, skins or modes if this deal goes through.

You can watch this full interview from their posted video.