GamesIndustry.biz's Christopher Drink first highlighted the notable pact on Twitter while covering Microsoft's media briefing today for the website. Microsoft president Brad Smith reportedly believes that this new deal with Nvidia--along with a 10-year Call of Duty partnership with Nintendo--will help get their Activision Blizzard acquisition approved by various government regulators.
"Xbox remains committed to giving people more choice and finding ways to expand how people play," said Xbox head honcho Phil Spencer in a press release. "This partnership will help grow Nvidia's catalog of titles to include games like Call of Duty, while giving developers more ways to offer streaming games. We are excited to offer gamers more ways to play the games they love."
Microsoft has also supposedly offered a 10-year Call of Duty deal to Sony to keep the FPS franchise on PlayStation platforms. But the two companies don't appear to be close to agreeing on those terms.
In addition to European regulators, Microsoft is also facing resistance from the US government's Federal Trade Commission. No settlement talks regarding Activision have taken place as of last month.
Microsoft unveiled its plans to purchase Activision back in January 2022 for nearly $70 billion. If the acquisition actually goes through, it would be the biggest gaming acquisition in history and the biggest acquisition Microsoft has ever made.
Microsoft has formalized its 10-year deal with Nintendo, which will see Call of Duty launched on the Japanese company's platforms on "the same day" as Xbox. According to Microsoft, these Call of Duty games will be available with "full feature and content parity" on Nintendo systems, if its deal to acquire Activision Blizzard is approved.
"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," Microsoft said in a statement, that was tweeted by company president Brad Smith.
A 10-year deal has been one of Microsoft's main talking points of the pending acquisition, as regulators across the globe have discussed the impact that this deal will have on Xbox rivals PlayStation and Nintendo. Microsoft had previously mentioned a decade-long commitment to keeping Call of Duty on other platforms as a means to alleviate anticompetitive fears, extending the offer to PlayStation, but this has done little to calm concerns from regulator bodies.
This new legally binding deal does come at a crucial time for Microsoft, as it'll be appearing in the European Commission court to defend itself against antitrust allegations this week. One of the three major regulator bodies that Microsoft needs approval from for the acquisition, Microsoft's official commitment to bring "Xbox games and Activision titles like Call of Duty to more players on more platforms" is seen as a remedy to these concerns, as Call of Duty being owned by the company has been a significant point of focus for regulators.
Meanwhile, in the UK, the regulators overseeing the deal that side have proposed that Microsoft drops Activision and the Call of Duty series from its acquisition plan. Back in the US, the FTC has sued Microsoft in an attempt to block the deal, and the case is pending. The EU body is expected to make its final decision in April.
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