Gaming

Microsoft promises Call of Duty for Nintendo consoles in surprise 10-year deal

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Nintendo fans hoping that the ultra-popular Call of Duty series would eventually come to the Switch got an unexpected boost last night. That's when Microsoft's Xbox chief Phil Spencer announced that the company had reached "a 10-year commitment to bring Call of Duty to Nintendo following the merger of Microsoft and Activision Blizzard King." The announcement comes alongside a similar announcement promising to keep Call of Duty on Steam for the same period of time. If the "10-year commitment" part of those announcements sounds familiar, it's probably because it's the same length of time Microsoft has reportedly formally offered to keep the Call of Duty franchise on PlayStation consoles. That followed a September offer to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation for three additional years, which Sony called inadequate in public statements. But Spencer has gone much further in his public statements, saying in October that Microsoft would continue to ship a PlayStation Call of Duty "as long as there's a PlayStation out there to ship to."
The Nintendo announcement is significantly more surprising, though, considering that Call of Duty hasn't appeared on a Nintendo console since Call of Duty Ghosts hit the Wii U in 2013. That game came one year after Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 became a surprise launch title for the ill-fated console.

Switching things up

From a business perspective, the bestselling Switch is a much more appealing target for Activision and/or Microsoft than the Wii U ever was. But the limited hardware power of the Switch makes Call of Duty something of an awkward fit for a series that's always aimed for top-of-the-line presentation on modern consoles and PCs. Then again, limited hardware power didn't stop a series of scaled-down Call of Duty conversions for the Nintendo DS up through 2011's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare - Defiance. Other developers have turned to streaming versions to get their high-end games available on the Switch, especially in Japan. Modern FPS titles from Warface and Doom have seen low-res ports squeezed onto the Switch in recent years with mixed results. But persistent rumors of a more powerful "Switch 2" in the coming years would definitely make any potential Call of Duty ports less of a development lift.
The possibility of a Switch version of Call of Duty hasn't exactly come out of nowhere for Microsoft. At an October Wall Street Journal Live event, Spencer said, "When I think about our plans, I’d love to see [Call of Duty] on Switch and playable on many different screens." In practically the same breath, though, he said that "this opportunity is really about mobile" and the 3 billion potential customers who could play Call of Duty on a smartphone. "Microsoft is committed to helping bring more games to more people—however they choose to play," Spencer said in his Tuesday night announcement.

Talk, talk, talk

Of course, a brief statement offering to make Call of Duty "available on Nintendo" isn't an actual announcement of a specific Switch game project in the works. But Spencer probably won't have the power to actually launch such a project until and unless the Activision deal closes, meaning an eventual Switch release could be years off. "You can imagine if [the deal] closed on [some date], starting to do development work to make that happen would likely take a little bit of time," Spencer told The Washington Post. "Once we get into the rhythm of this, our plan would be that when [a Call of Duty game] launches on PlayStation, Xbox, and PC, that it would also be available on Nintendo at the same time." Talk is cheap, of course, and this particular talk comes as Microsoft is working overtime to fight off potential action blocking its proposed Activision merger from a number of international governments. A Call of Duty-shaped olive branch to Nintendo, even if it never results in an actual game release, could help influence those regulators. Bloomberg recently reported that Spencer plans to sit down with Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan today ahead of a reported closed-door meeting at the FTC tomorrow where the federal regulator will further consider the antitrust implications of the proposed $68 billion deal.
Regulators aside, Spencer hinted in a separate interview with Bloomberg that the Nintendo deal might be a way of putting public pressure on Sony, which has reportedly not yet accepted Microsoft's 10-year Call of Duty offer. "There’s been one game industry participant that’s really been raising all the objections, and that’s Sony, and they’ve been fairly public about the things that don’t meet their expectations," Spencer told Bloomberg. "From where we sit, it’s clear they’re spending more time with the regulators than they are with us to try and get this deal done." "Any day Sony wants to sit down and talk, we'll be happy to hammer out a 10-year deal for PlayStation as well," Microsoft vice chair and President Brad Smith said in a tweet last night. "Our acquisition will bring Call of Duty to more gamers and more platforms than ever before. That's good for competition and good for consumers. Thank you, Nintendo."

A yawn from Steam

Away from the console wars, Microsoft's extended Call of Duty commitment also applies to Steam. "We are pleased to confirm that Microsoft has committed to continue to offer Call of Duty on Steam simultaneously to Xbox after we have closed the merger with Activision Blizzard King," the company said in a statement provided to Ars. "Continue to offer" is doing a bit of work there, since Activision did not, in fact, offer a Steam version of its Call of Duty games between 2017's Call of Duty: WW2 and this year's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. In the intervening years, the franchise's newest offerings were only available on the Battle.net platform. In a statement provided to Kotaku, though, Valve founder Gabe Newell said the agreement offered by Microsoft "wasn't necessary for us." He said:
We’re happy that Microsoft wants to continue using Steam to reach customers with Call of Duty when their Activision acquisition closes. Microsoft has been on Steam for a long time and we take it as a signal that they are happy with gamers' reception to that and the work we are doing. Our job is to keep building valuable features for not only Microsoft but all Steam customers and partners. Microsoft offered and even sent us a draft agreement for a long-term Call of Duty commitment but it wasn’t necessary for us because a) we’re not believers in requiring any partner to have an agreement that locks them to shipping games on Steam into the distant future b) Phil and the games team at Microsoft have always followed through on what they told us they would do so we trust their intentions and c) we think Microsoft has all the motivation they need to be on the platforms and devices where Call of Duty customers want to be.
In any case, we've come a long way since January, when Microsoft and Activision were only offering vague assurances that they would "continue to support [player] communities" on "a variety of platforms." Now, all indications suggest that Microsoft plans to go the full Minecraft route and make Call of Duty Microsoft-owned but not Microsoft-exclusive.