It has been over a year since Microsoft announced its intention to acquire Activision Blizzard for $69 billion. This has been met with resistance from rivals such as Sony and regulators from the EU, the UK, the US and more. Microsoft has proposed a deal that might help assuage worries about reduced competition in the gaming market if this deal does go through.
Microsoft President Brad Smith announced that his company has signed a 10-year contract with Nintendo that will ensure that Xbox and Activision titles will be available to gamers using Nintendo hardware. The big ticket item is Call of Duty, but the contract covers other games as well.
Announcing this today is no coincidence – Microsoft representatives including Smith and Xbox head Phil Spencer met with EU regulators today to discuss the proposed acquisition. Activision sent its CEO, Bobby Kotick, Sony sent its own gaming chief Jim Ryan.
In addition, EA, Steam, Nvidia, Google and others had representatives attending, as did a number of national watchdogs that are concerned about what a Microsoft-owned Activision Blizzard might mean for the gaming market.
Microsoft having Nintendo on board puts pressure on Sony to accept a similar deal. Jim Ryan called a previous 3-year proposal “inadequate on many levels”. To put things in perspective, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War was the second most-played game on PlayStation (second only to Fortnite) when the deal was announced a year ago.
The Microsoft/Nintendo contract states that new Call of Duty games will release on Nintendo hardware the same day they do the Xbox and PlayStation. And these won’t be some cut back versions either, Microsoft is promising “full feature and content parity”.
