Xbox boss Phil Spencer recently took aim at Sony over its PlayStation content exclusive deals, which has drawn the attention of former PlayStation executive Shawn Layden. Spencer, while talking about Call of Duty, referred to Sony’s past content deals with the franchise as “slimy platform things.”
Spencer irked by PlayStation exclusive deals but Xbox has a history of them
Layden didn’t have any words to share, but did use gifs on X to communicate his thoughts very clearly.
Layden was also seen interacting with quite a few tweets that were either critical of Spencer’s comments or seemed amused by Layden’s response.
Many have argued that Spencer was making a general reference to platform exclusive deals, but he was specifically talking in context of Call of Duty’s 10 years of content arrangements with PlayStation.
Although Spencer has been a huge advocate of dropping exclusives, Microsoft continues to enagage in exclusivity wars, so his comments are a little baffling. Even if we ignore the Xbox 360 era, Rise of the Tomb Raider was famously taken off of PS4 for a whole year while Spencer was in charge. Games like Starfield and Redfall were in development for the PS5 when Spencer-led Xbox bought ZeniMax and pulled them off of Sony’s platform, and so on.
Let’s not forget Matt Booty discussing spending Sony “out of business.”
