Microsoft’s 10-year partnership with Nintendo will bring previously Xbox-exclusive games like Call of Duty to the Switch. But it seems the company is still not satisfied with its reach and is aiming to provide access to its games on a much larger scale.
Microsoft finalized another deal with NVIDIA yesterday which will allow Xbox games to also be released on NVIDIA’s GeForce Now cloud service. Similar to the Nintendo deal, Call of Duty will be available on NVIDIA’s cloud service when the Activision Blizzard acquisition goes through.
According to GamesIndustry.biz, Microsoft’s vice chair and president Brad Smith announced its deal with NVIDIA during the press conference in Brussels. This conference was conducted after the company attended the closed hearing regarding its Activision Blizzard acquisition at the European Commission.
“Nvidia’s GeForce Now service already has 25 million players. We are bringing Call of Duty to 150 million more people who don’t get it today,” Smith said, mentioning Microsoft’s promise to bring the game to Nintendo consoles.
But it seems Microsoft’s deal with Sony will not happen in the near future. “We haven’t agreed on a deal with Sony, but I hope we will,” Smith said.
Sony is trying its best to block Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard acquisition. Regulators from Europe (the European Commission), the U.K. (the Competition and Markets Authority), and the U.S. (the Federal Trade Commission) are also taking steps to block it on grounds of the move being “anti-competitive.”
Both parties fear that there will be a mass exodus of players from PlayStation to Xbox if Microsoft decides to make Call of Duty an Xbox exclusive, or tune the game to perform better on its platform.
While Microsoft is trying to convince otherwise, the future of the acquisition still hangs in uncertainty.
