Microsoft fulfills a promise that it expects the FTC and Britain to notice. The information about Microsoft’s agreement with Nvidia’s GeForce Now has been updated, along with comments by Brad Smith in Brussels about the deals with both Nintendo and Nvidia.
Microsoft seems to have followed through on a pledge to make Call of Duty available on Nintendo platforms, which appears to have been made to alleviate antitrust concerns around its acquisition of Activision Blizzard.
Microsoft President and Vice-Chair Brad Smith tweeted the news early Tuesday morning, stating that Microsoft had “signed a 10-year contract to bring Xbox games to Nintendo’s gamers.
The contract is “just part of our commitment to bring Xbox games and Activision titles” to “more players on more platforms,” Smith wrote.
We’ve now signed a binding 10-year contract to bring Xbox games to Nintendo’s gamers. This is just part of our commitment to bring Xbox games and Activision titles like Call of Duty to more players on more platforms. pic.twitter.com/JmO0hzw1BO
— Brad Smith (@BradSmi) February 21, 2023
Perhaps the official statement embedded in Smith’s tweet is most interesting to players. So that “people may experience Call of Duty just like Xbox and PlayStation gamers enjoy Call of Duty,” the game will be released “on the same day as Xbox, with full feature and content parity.”
There are still many unknowns about how this partnership will function, just as when Microsoft declared its “commitment” to Call of Duty on Nintendo (and Steam). Since the Nintendo Switch uses hardware from 2017 that was already a little obsolete when it launched, providing “complete feature and content parity” on the system would necessitate several major caveats, a significant downscaling, or the arrival of the next Nintendo console.
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Recent UK filings have dropped hints towards a Switch successor, which would make it much simpler to provide a playable port of Call of Duty. A streaming gameplay solution, such as that offered by Control and Hitman releases, is less likely to fly with a game that places a premium on reaction speeds and lag reduction than other high-budget, single-player-oriented games.
Since Call of Duty: Ghosts was made available as a supplementary title for the Wii U, Nintendo hardware has not seen a mainline Call of Duty game.
But Microsoft announced that it will bring Xbox titles (including Call of Duty, if the deal is approved) to Nvidia’s GeForce Now streaming service on the same day as the Nintendo arrangement.
In its most recent “Ultimate” package, GeForce Now has emphasised low-latency game streaming using its Reflex technology, which is especially important for competitive multiplayer online games. Even if GeForce Now isn’t available on the Switch, a white-labeled or GeForce Now-inspired streaming edition of Call of Duty could reach a future Nintendo platform.
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Of course, there are further factors in Microsoft’s partnership with Nintendo and Nvidia. In a December interview with Bloomberg, Xbox head Phil Spencer alluded to the potential leverage a deal with Nintendo could give Xbox over Sony, which has yet to accept a comparable 10-year offer and is also lobbying lawmakers to reject the Activision Blizzard merger.
Spencer has stated that Microsoft will still provide Call of Duty to Sony’s audience “as long as there’s a PlayStation out there to ship to,” despite the lack of an agreement between the two companies.
At the same time that Microsoft’s $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard is meeting increasing opposition from regulators, both companies are making public pronouncements, pledging to do certain things, and otherwise making obvious moves to try to get their way.
The FTC sued in January to block the sale, citing Microsoft’s acquisition of Bethesda/Zenimax as proof of the company’s “pattern of acquiring and leveraging valuable gaming content to stifle competition from other systems.” According to the FTC, Microsoft might impair the game quality or withhold content on competing systems and services if it acquired Activision.
Similar concerns about a loss of competition among systems and quality parity among systems were voiced earlier this month when the United Kingdom’s Competition and Markets Authority came out forcefully against the Activision acquisition.
The proceedings before the FTC and the UK CMA are ongoing and have not yet concluded. Microsoft frequently mentions Call of Duty when arguing with the press about its dedication to other projects outside the Xbox platform.
The Communications Workers of America union president made a similar request to the European Commission on Tuesday, hoping the Activision deal would be approved. Microsoft already stated in June that it would not block collective bargaining attempts by Activision employees, so its endorsement is no surprise. Attempts by union members to organize Activision’s various departments have been fraught with tension for some time.
At a press conference in Brussels addressing European opposition to the deal, but also tagged to the Nintendo and Nvidia deals, Smith said the Activision deal has “never been about spending $69 billion so that we could acquire titles like Call of Duty and make them less available to people.”
Microsoft, Smith said, is focused on “using this acquisition to bring more games to more people on more platforms and devices than ever before, to bring more competition into gaming than ever before.”