Nintendo has officially signed a 10-year legal agreement with Microsoft to bring Call of Duty to Nintendo on the same day as Xbox and PlayStation. The deal includes full feature and content parity, allowing Nintendo users to experience Call of Duty the same way as Xbox, PlayStation, and PC players.
The announcement was made by Brad Smith, the Vice Chair and President of Microsoft, who took to Twitter saying, "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."
Although the tweet specifically targets bringing Xbox games to Nintendo, the attached statement only references Call of Duty. "Microsoft and Nintendo have now negotiated and signed a binding 10-year legal agreement to bring Call of Duty to Nintendo players," reads Microsoft's statement. It goes on to state that Call of Duty will be available on Nintendo platforms on the same day as Xbox, with full feature and content parity.
Microsoft's statement then closes out: "We are 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."
The news of this agreement comes amidst Microsoft's ongoing saga in attempting to acquire Call of Duty's publishing company, Activision-Blizzard. The gigantic $70 billion deal was announced all the way back in January of 2021, but continues to be assessed by regulators around the world.
Today's announcement also coincidentally coincides with an EU regulator hearing later today, in which Microsoft will attempt to defend the proposed Activision-Blizzard deal. Various regulators around the world are concerned that Microsoft's acquisition of Activision could lead to a lack of competition within the market, but today's announcement could work in Microsoft's favor.