As Microsoft attempts to ensure its acquisition of Activision Blizzard is approved, the company looks to make its products available on other platforms. This includes its closest competitors: Nintendo hardware and the NVIDIA GeForce NOW cloud gaming service.
Microsoft announced two 10-year agreements today to ensure Xbox and Activision games are available on competing platforms.
Call of Duty Confirmed For Nintendo Systems for The Next 10 Years
The first is a binding contract confirming Microsoft’s previous intention to bring Call of Duty to Nintendo consoles. The Call of Duty franchise has not appeared on a Nintendo console in a decade.
“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,” said Microsoft’s Brad Smith in a statement. “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.”
In the original announcement, Phil Spencer confirmed that Call of Duty will continue to be available on Steam.
While Microsoft has signed a contract ensuring Call of Duty is available on Nintendo systems after the Activision Blizzard acquisition, the same isn’t true for Sony. Brad Smith mentioned on stage during a Microsoft press conference in Brussels that he had a 10-year agreement with Sony. He is ready and eager to negotiate with Sony, but there is no agreement at this time.
Sony has expressed concern that if Microsoft were to own the Call of Duty franchise, it could result in the games not releasing on their platforms. But despite Microsoft repeatedly stating that isn’t their intention, Sony has been publicly dragging their heels, apparently afraid to relinquish their position without an in perpetuity contract.
“It’s not about at some point I pull the rug underneath PlayStation 7’s legs, and it’s ‘ahaha you just didn’t write the contract long enough,’” said Spencer recently. “There’s no contract that could be written that says forever.”
“As long as there’s a PlayStation, we’ll ship Call of Duty there.”
Xbox PC Titles Will Be Streamed to NVIDIA’s Cloud Service
In bigger news, Brad Smith also announced the debut of Xbox PC games appearing directly on a competing service. A 10-year agreement is announced between Xbox and NVIDIA. It will bring Xbox PC games to NVIDIA’s GeForce NOW cloud gaming service. This features over 25 million members in over 100 countries.
With this agreement, Xbox PC titles can stream from GeForce NOW to PCs, macOS, Chromebooks, smartphones, and other devices. In addition, when Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard is approved, it will also include Activision Blizzard PC titles.
“Xbox remains committed to giving people more choice and finding ways to expand how people play,” said Phil Spencer. “This partnership will help grow NVIDIA’s catalog of titles to include games like Call of Duty, while giving developers more ways to offer streaming games. We are excited to offer gamers more ways to play the games they love.”
This article was produced by Boss Level Gamer and syndicated by Wealth of Geeks.
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