There’s no denying that Call of Duty is one of the world’s biggest video game franchises. Ever since the first installment was released in 2003, fans around the world have been experiencing history—and the future—through the eyes of a first-person shooter.
Traditionally, players have been able to choose whether they want to play on PlayStation, Xbox, and PC. These platforms are where players can experience the franchise’s newest entries: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Call of Duty: Warzone 2.
Enter: Nintendo. While Call of Duty isn’t necessarily foreign to Nintendo’s consoles—the Wii did receive a Call of Duty title back in its day—it hasn’t made as much of a name for itself there as it has on Sony and Microsoft’s consoles. For its part, Nintendo has traditionally favored first-party titles on its consoles over those of third-party developers. It wasn’t until the Wii U and the Switch that the company made a concerted effort to court outside developers of major franchises.
With all that being said, is it even possible to play Call of Duty on a Nintendo Switch?
Can you play Call of Duty on Switch?
At time of writing, it’s not possible to play an official CoD title on a Switch. There are no CoD games published for the platform or available on Nintendo’s digital eShop. Neither Modern Warfare 2 nor Warzone 2 are playable on the Switch, but it does seem like they are coming.
Prior to the Activision bungle, Microsoft president Brad Smith mentioned in February he’d like to put CoD on Nintendo consoles, assuming the company’s acquisition of Activision-Blizzard goes through.
Is Call of Duty coming to Nintendo Switch?
This wish to bring CoD back to Nintendo strengthened further when it was announced Microsoft and Nintendo had reached a 10-year agreement to bring CoD to Nintendo devices. The deal became official on Feb. 21, 2023, when Smith confirmed the news.
“Microsoft and Nintendo have now negotiated and signed a binding 10-year legal agreement to bring Call of Duty to Nintendo players—the same day as Xbox, with full feature and content parity—so they can experience Call of Duty just as Xbox and PlayStation gamers enjoy Call of Duty,” Smith said. “We are committed to providing long term equal access to Call of Duty to other gaming platforms, bringing more choice to more players and more competition to the gaming market.”
Now that the deal is official, a new question exists: Just how will the Switch run the latest CoD games? It’s likely that the game will have to be played via the cloud, like many next-gen titles on Switch, such as Control, Hitman 3, and others.
Related: CoD games coming to Switch as part of 10-year Microsoft and Nintendo partnership
It’s possible that the next mainline entry in the CoD franchise after Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 may be the first to be playable on the Nintendo Switch.
With the 10-year agreement, however, it means that CoD will also be playable on whatever console Nintendo may announce next. And that’s a good thing for gamers everywhere.
