Microsoft’s charm offensive with COD deals has reportedly paid off with the company signing a 10-year agreement with Nintendo to bring Call of Duty titles to the Switch video game system. It’s the latest move in a campaign to persuade antitrust regulators that the firm can be trusted with the wildly popular Call of Duty franchise.
Nintendo
Microsoft’s charm offensive with COD deals has reportedly paid off with the announcement that it’s agreed to bring Call of Duty titles to Nintendo platforms in a ten-year deal. It’s a move that appears to be designed to reassure European antitrust regulators that the company won’t withhold Activision Blizzard titles from competitors or unfairly leverage those games as more consumers stream and pay for them online.
The deal follows similar announcements made by Microsoft President Brad Smith last week to bring COD titles to Nvidia’s GeForce Now and PC gaming platform Steam. It’s a move that could prove critical for the Redmond firm’s future plans to change the way people play video games through subscriptions and streaming services.
As we discussed earlier, Nintendo’s Switch is not as powerful as a next-generation PS4 or Xbox One, meaning that it wouldn’t be able to run Call of Duty titles without significant hardware modifications. However, Microsoft has said that it’s willing to work with Nintendo to make that happen, and it’s unlikely that this will prevent the deal from going through.
Nvidia
Microsoft’s charm offensive with COD deals has reportedly paid off with the announcement of a 10-year deal for Xbox PC games to appear on Nvidia’s GeForce Now cloud gaming service. This deal is essentially the same as Nintendo’s, although NVidia has said it will only bring COD to Switch if Activision Blizzard’s acquisition clears.
Nvidia’s data center business has been booming lately and the company’s AI accelerators are one of the big income generators. TrendForce recently estimated that ChatGPT, a popular open source AI chatbot, will need over 30,000 Nvidia graphics cards.
Similarly, the University of Florida has teamed up with Nvidia to build an AI-centric data center. This new computing system will allow faculty and students to accelerate research in a variety of areas, including drug discovery, astrophysics, natural hazards modeling, and more.
Sony
Microsoft’s charm offensive with COD deals has reportedly paid off, according to a new report. In a recent press conference, Xbox boss Phil Spencer said that he intends to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation “as long as there’s a PlayStation out there.”
This comes weeks after Sony lambasted an “inadequate” offer to extend COD’s cross-platform access for three years past the current agreement, and as regulators continue to scrutinize Microsoft’s $69 billion acquisition of Activision.
That’s a big deal for gamers, given that PS4 has an install base of 106 million units as of last month. It’s also a big deal for PSVR, which has generated a significant amount of revenue since its launch in January.
But Microsoft’s promise to keep COD on PlayStation isn’t just a PR play. It’s a very real one, and it could potentially help the company maintain its dominant position in the gaming industry. If it fails to keep this promise, it’ll be up to American regulators with actual teeth to punish it.
FTC
The Federal Trade Commission is taking aim at Microsoft’s $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, claiming it would enable the software giant to suppress competition in video game consoles and cloud gaming. It’s a significant milestone for FTC Chair Lisa Khan, who has signaled that her agency is willing to take big swings against technology companies.
According to the FTC’s lawsuit, Microsoft will use its monopoly position on Xbox systems to prevent competitors like Sony and Nintendo from getting access to the Call of Duty titles they develop. It will also withhold titles like Starfield, Redfall and The Elder Scrolls VI from Sony and Nintendo and other rival platforms, the FTC alleges.
But it’s not entirely clear whether the FTC can win its case. Microsoft has avoided antitrust scrutiny in recent years, partly because it’s become less of a monopoly in several key markets, and has moved to diversify away from Windows PCs.
