Microsoft to bring Call of Duty to Nintendo

Microsoft has publicly committed to bringing future Call of Duty games to Nintendo consoles if its acquisition of Activision Blizzard goes ahead

The Nintendo Switch released five years ago in 2017, and has yet to receive any Call of Duty games. Picture: Nintendo

Xbox head Phil Spencer has said that Microsoft will be bringing Call of Duty to Nintendo consoles in the future, assuming its acquisition of Activision Blizzard doesn’t get blocked by competition regulators.

In a tweet posted on Wednesday, Phil Spencer said that Microsoft has entered into a “10-year commitment” to bring Call of Duty to Nintendo consoles following the merger of Microsoft and Activision Blizzard. He said that Microsoft is “committed to helping bring more games to more people”.

The last time Call of Duty made an appearance on a Nintendo console was over ten years ago, with 2012’s Call of Duty: Black Ops II on the Nintendo Wii U. Spencer stopped short of mentioning the Nintendo Switch in his tweets, but it’s likely that future Nintendo consoles will get access to the series.

Microsoft has entered into a 10-year commitment to bring Call of Duty to @Nintendo following the merger of Microsoft and Activision Blizzard King.  Microsoft is committed to helping bring more games to more people – however they choose to play. @ATVI_AB

— Phil Spencer (@XboxP3) December 7, 2022

In a follow-up tweet, Spencer also confirmed that Microsoft plans to continue offering Call of Duty via Steam on PC as well. This means that players will continue to be able to use Steam to purchase and play Call of Duty games, in addition to Activision Blizzard’s Battle.net client, and presumably Microsoft’s own store.

This kind of public commitment is a clear jab at Sony, who Microsoft says it offered a 10-year Call of Duty deal for PlayStation consoles. It’s not publicly known how Sony responded to the offer, but it seems as if a deal hasn’t been reached between the two gaming giants just yet.

Vice chair and president of Microsoft Brad Smith also took to Twitter to comment on the commitment, with the clearest indication yet that Sony has yet to get on board.

“Our acquisition will bring Call of Duty to more gamers and more platforms than ever before,” Smith said, “That’s good for competition and good for consumers. Thank you Nintendo. Any day Sony wants to sit down and talk, we’ll be happy to hammer out a 10-year deal for PlayStation as well.”

The Call of Duty series has been at the core of many regulators’ investigations into the acquisition. Picture: Activision Blizzard

The news comes during a rocky time for Microsoft, as its attempted $100 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard is investigated by competition regulators around the world. In submissions to those regulators, Sony has expressed concern about Call of Duty, suggesting that Microsoft has incentive to make the series exclusive to its Xbox platform, which it says would be harmful to competition.

Despite the huge focus on the shooter franchise, Microsoft says the deal isn’t “all about Call of Duty”. Instead, according to Spencer, it’s more about Candy Crush developer King, which is also a part of Activision Blizzard. Spencer says that most of the growth in the games industry is coming in the mobile space, which he says is “critical”.

Written by Oliver Brandt on behalf of GLHF.