Microsoft Signs 10 Year Deal to Bring Call of Duty to Nintendo Players

Microsoft announced today that it has signed a 10-year deal to bring Call of Duty games to Nintendo’s consoles. The announcement comes right ahead of a closed hearing between Microsoft and EU and national antitrust officials regarding the company’s $68 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard.

Microsoft said that the “binding 10-year legal agreement” will make future Call of Duty games available to Nintendo players “the same day as Xbox, with full feature and content parity.” However, the announcement didn’t explicitly mention the Nintendo Switch: With its aging hardware, the portable console may actually struggle to deliver the “feature parity” that Microsoft promises to Nintendo gamers.

We’ve now signed a binding 10-year contract to bring Xbox games to Nintendo’s gamers. This is just part of our commitment to bring Xbox games and Activision titles like Call of Duty to more players on more platforms. pic.twitter.com/JmO0hzw1BO

— Brad Smith (@BradSmi) February 21, 2023

In the announcement, Microsoft said that it’s “committed to providing long term equal access to Call of Duty to other gaming platforms, bringing more choice to more players and more competition to the gaming market.” Back in November, Microsoft also said that it had offered Sony a 10-year deal to continue shipping Call of Duty games on PlayStation consoles, but Sony reportedly declined the offer.

The tweet from Microsoft President Brad Smith actually went slightly beyond the scope of Microsoft’s Call of Duty deal with Nintendo. Smith mentioned “a binding 10-year contract to bring Xbox games to Nintendo’s gamers” (emphasis ours). “This is just part of our commitment to bring Xbox games and Activision titles like Call of Duty to more players on more platforms,” the exec continued.

As of today, Minecraft is probably the biggest IP that’s available on other gaming platforms, but it’s not the only one. Microsoft now owns the developers of blockbuster shooters such as Doom Eternal and Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, two games that have been released on the Nintendo Switch before Microsoft acquired Bethesda/Zenimax Media last year.

Smith’s comments don’t exactly suggest that we’re going to see the end of Xbox-exclusive games like the upcoming Starfield, Redfall, and Forza Motorsport. However, Microsoft’s various studios are already shipping games on the Nintendo Switch, and we’re likely going to see more of that in the future.