xbox boss phil spencer just confirmed that Microsoft plans to bring Call of Duty to Nintendo in a 10-year deal following the Activision Blizzard King-Microsoft merger. In addition to Nintendo’s deal announcement, Spencer has also confirmed that the Call of Duty franchise will continue to be available on Steam alongside Xbox.
This new agreement with Nintendo appears to be in line with previous statements by Spencer and Xbox about the cross-platform nature of their IPs. Call of Duty, for the most part, has been absent from the Nintendo ecosystem for a while and coming to Switch now is a pretty big deal. While the Switch has been uniquely successful on its own, it could surely use the player boost that a franchise like COD can provide.
It will be interesting to see if Switch sales are positively affected due to COD’s presence, not that the console is in dire need of a sales boost.
Also read: Call of Duty Modern Warfare II is now the biggest launch in franchise history, surpassing $800 million in 3 days
Nintendo packages Call of Duty, more Xbox/Activision IP to make way for Switch?
I’m also pleased to confirm that Microsoft has committed to continue offering Call of Duty on @Vapor simultaneously to Xbox after having closed the merger with Activision Blizzard King. @ATVI_AB @ValveSoftware
—Phil Spencer (@XboxP3) December 7, 2022
While neither party has confirmed more franchises coming to Nintendo’s platform, there’s a good chance Xbox will look to expand the appeal of other games in its catalog by bringing them to Nintendo. Bethesda has been steadily working with Nintendo on franchises like Doom, which have found new audiences through their presence on Switch.
Nintendo Switch is a unique platform for developers as it is not as powerful as Sony or Microsoft, but still has a massive audience. Microsoft, after the Activision Blizzard King merger, will have a lot of intellectual property under its belt, and it makes sense for them to find new audiences wherever they can.
Xbox still has a ton of major releases on the horizon, including Hellblade 2: Senua’s Saga (Ninja Theory) and The Elder Scrolls 6 (Bethesda). It will be interesting to see if those games finally make it to Nintendo in the next few years. Obsidian Entertainment also has great things in store, including the follow-up to The Outer Worlds, which was one of the best-received games of 2019.
It looks like the Microsoft-Activision Blizzard merger will finally take place, as reports suggest the FTC will greenlight the acquisition soon enough. It stands to reason that other regulatory bodies around the world would follow after the FTC’s approval. It looks like Sony still has a bone to pick with the deal, as it threatens the existence of COD on their platforms. It sounds like Xbox could have offered Sony the same 10-year contract as Nintendo, but Sony feels it’s still not as long-term a deal as they’d like.
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