Activision has announced a couple of exclusive bonuses that only PlayStation owners will receive when playing Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War in multiplayer. Call of Duty has been one of a few multiplayer-focused franchises to customarily offer exclusive content with one platform over the other, whether it’s exclusive maps, missions, expansions, or other kinds of bonuses.
This usually comes as part of a promotional deal where the platform holder will excite the game in exchange for putting the console’s logo in the trailer and other ads. The game may come out on other console platforms, but it gets a major boost on one.
Call of Duty has spent time in both Sony and Microsoft’s camp over the past years, usually dealing with whatever console was out in front as far as fan preference and mass adoption. Two generations ago, a large number of shooter fans gathered over the Xbox 360, and Call of Duty was one of the overpowering forces to come out every year.
Activision partnered with Xbox for the first two years of the Xbox One, but the colossal sales of the PlayStation 4 made it switch sides. Since then, Activision has offered PlayStation exclusives which continue until the PlayStation 5 era.
As announced on the PlayStation Blog by James Mattone, an Activision representative, there are four levels of freebies for PlayStation users of Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War. Right off the bat, those that bought the multiplayer Battle Pass with 20 level skips will get an extra five skips for free.
In addition, teaming up with other PlayStation players will earn every player in the party an additional 25% weapon experience in every match. Monthly 24-hour long double experience events as well as two additional loadout slots will also be exclusively given to PlayStation owners.
This is really an interesting tactic by Activision, and it may be an essential one. Call of Duty will no longer be premium DLC, so it’s absurd to provide early access or special arenas like in the past. The developers could offer one of a kind cosmetics, but that’s presumably not seen as sufficient of an incentive to get fans to choose the PlayStation over the Xbox Series X as their console of choice.
Experience buffs and the like will absolutely achieve this goal but it also raises the question of fairness, particularly as Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War is cross-platform. Xbox owners will have to compete with opponents that have more loadouts available and probably more weapon unlocks quicker, and there’s nothing they can do about it.
In the end, outside of those playing on the most extreme competitive levels, the additional experience rewards and other freebies for Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War likely will not be that unfair.
