10 years is a long time. The landscape could definitely change where they don’t put COD on Playstation after that. Microsoft only started making those offers after there was regulatory scrutiny. I would bet a lot of money there is no new COD on Playstation in 10 years and 1 day.

And nobody is going to point to Spyro, Crash, or Tony Hawk being exclusive as a big loss for Playstation. Blizzard already released Diablo 4. Overwatch 2 is already out. Warcraft/Starcraft arent on consoles. Basically the rest of Activision is just pumping out COD. No word on that Infinity Ward game since last year, which was just an article about hiring for a position and no details on an actual game. Assuming Activision actually revived an old IP theyre sitting on or made a new one it would likely take 5+ years of dev time, at which point Sony would miss out on it anyway with a 5 year deal

I think they meant more with Gold you always have access to those games. With a sub the available games can come and go, so you may lose access to specific games if they leave the service.

The offers were 5 years for all ABK games or 10 years for only COD. When you look at the pipeline of upcoming ABK games, what is even coming out in the next 5 years that would make up for 5 years of lost COD revenue? Plus, if the new consoles are really out in 2028 having COD not playable on the PS6 would be huge for the start of the generation. Sony probably made the right choice here