Microsoft Signs Yet Another 10-Year Xbox Agreement

Despite the disappointing news coming out of the UK this week, Microsoft is forging ahead with its plans to acquire Activision Blizzard. And on Friday, it inked yet another 10-year Xbox deal with a third party to demonstrate its intention to make its games as broadly available as possible.

“Microsoft and European cloud gaming platform Nware have signed a 10-year agreement to stream PC games built by Xbox on its platform, as well as Activision Blizzard titles after the acquisition closes,” Microsoft president Brad Smith announced. “While it’s still early for the emerging cloud segment in gaming, this new partnership combined with our other recent commitments will make more popular games available on more cloud game streaming services than they are today.”

“We are full speed ahead in our mission to bring players more ways to play their favorite games,” Microsoft head of Xbox Phil Spencer added.

Nware is a Spain-based cloud gaming platform. Like similar services, it lets gamers play their own games anywhere on different devices—Windows PC, Android, and Android TV—and without having to own high-end gaming hardware. The service offers various tiers that cost $10.99 to $12.99 monthly. Microsoft has inked a similar deal with other cloud gaming providers like NVIDIA, which runs GeForce Now. Microsoft has also signed 10-year commitments with Boosteroid, EE, Nintendo, Steam, and Ubitus, some for Call of Duty specifically, some for cloud gaming, and some for both.

Also, Smith’s language in the tweet above can be seen as another retort to regulators in the UK CMA, which inexplicably decided to block the Microsoft acquisition of Activision Blizzard after indicating that the software giant had answered its concerns. Smith was quick to highlight that Nware is European and that it’s too early for the cloud gaming segment that is at the heart of the CMA “future crimes” complaint.