Microsoft also wants to bring Call of Duty to Nintendo consoles for at least 10 years

Microsoft welcomes Nintendo to the Call of Duty universe – if the Activision-Microsoft merger goes through.

It’s been almost a year since the news of Microsoft’s planned acquisition of Activision Blizzard hit like a bomb. However, this gigantic deal is still not over the stage, various regulatory authorities are still looking at the project, too after various objections by competitor Sony.

Arguably the most important game franchise that would change hands in a takeover is certainly Call of Duty. That Microsoft wants to offer the series on as many platforms as possible has already been communicated in the past, but now there is a new and quite concrete statement from Xbox boss Phil Spencer on the subject.

On Twitter, he mentioned an agreement that had apparently already been made with Nintendo:

link to Twitter content

“To Nintendo” of course means the release of CoD games on Nintendo systems, i.e. the Nintendo Switch and any successor consoles. The English word “commitment” can be translated in different ways in this context, but there seems to be a negotiated agreement.

No mention of Sony – no rapprochement yet?

Spicy detail: In a follow-up tweet, Spencer also mentions that future Call of Duty games will also be released on the PC at the same time as the Xbox versions. An agreement with Sony, however, is not mentioned.

The background here is probably the bickering between Sony and Microsoft on this topic. Microsoft had already made an offer to Sony in the past, but this was rejected as insufficient. Apparently, both parties then – even after an improved offer – not yet closer. Microsoft itself still has the unchanged intention of keeping CoD on PlayStation for as long as they exist:

No details on Nintendo versions yet

It is already clear behind the scenes that Call of Duty will come to Nintendo consoles in the future, even if Spencer’s tweet does not give any details about it, for example which CoD games will be implemented for Nintendo, whether they are cloud versions acts, etc. Incidentally, it would not be a premiere, because Call of Duty games have already appeared for Nintendo consoles in the past, most recently CoD: Black Ops 2 on the Wii U.

The prerequisite for this is, of course, that the merger of Microsoft and Activision Blizzard actually comes about. But when that will be is currently not really foreseeable.

What do you think of Phil Spencer’s announcement?