Microsoft has announced that it has entered into a 10-year agreement with Nintendo to make call of duty available on Nintendo consoles if the Activision-Blizzard acquisition goes through. As a reminder, the takeover of the publishing house by call of duty and World of Warcraft of Microsoft worth $67.8 billion has yet to be registered.
The deal is similar to what Microsoft offered Sony. In fact, the company would have offered its historic competitor a ten-year contract to make each new version Blow off Duty will be immediately available on PlayStation consoles without a pass for the Xbox version.
The public nature of this information, announced on Twitter by Phil Spencer, head of Xbox, is not due to coincidence. The Xbox maker hopes to put pressure on the PlayStation maker, which according to Microsoft CEO Brad Smith, “the strongest opponent” Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision-Blizzard. While US market regulators are seriously studying the takeover offer, Microsoft is showing a transparent approach, saying it does not want to introduce a monopoly in the video game industry.
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Indeed, recent reports have indicated that the FTC (the US trade regulator) is preparing a legal challenge to prevent the takeover deal between Activision-Blizzard and Microsoft. In our country, it is the EU supervisory authority that would have initiated a legal review of this agreement.
For its part, Sony has informed the general public and regulatory authorities about it “worries” on the future of franchises as Call of Duty. However, the Japanese publisher would not have publicly responded to Microsoft’s offer of the aforementioned ten-year contract.
On the PC side, Gabe “Gaben” Newell, founder and CEO of Valve, assured Kotaku that no such contract was necessary to secure it call of duty remains on the Steam platform. He explains to have “confidence” in Microsoft’s intentions
In an interview for KotakuValve co-founder and chairman Gabe Newell made it clear that such an agreement to hold call of duty on Steam was not necessary:
“Phil [Spencer, ndlr] and the Microsoft Games team has always followed up on what they’ve told us, so we’re confident in their intentions.”