call of duty hasn’t been on a Nintendo system in about a decade, but that’s about to change. Xbox announced that they signed a deal with Nintendo to bring the shooter series to Nintendo systems for the next 10 years.
Microsoft Vice Chairman and President Brad Smith tweeting a “binding” deal.said that hardware Nintendo will accept call of duty game day and date as any other system with “full feature and content parity”. Smith says “Xbox games” in general, but it seems, at this point, that’s focused specifically call of duty. However, Microsoft Studios does publish Ori and the Blind Forest: Definitive Edition on the Switch in 2019, so there’s at least some precedent for Xbox games appearing on Nintendo’s console. call of duty nor has it appeared on Nintendo systems since 2013’s Call of Duty: Ghost.
This deal follows up on what Xbox Head Phil Spencer said tweets out in December 2022. He noted that Xbox had signed a deal to bring Activision’s marquee shooter to the Switch for 10 years. Spencer also followed up by saying that Microsoft committed to bring call of duty to Steam, though Valve President Gabe Newell told Kotaku he didn’t need a deal because he trusted Microsoft’s intentions to put the game on as many platforms as possible. Call of Duty just returned to Steam with the year 2022 Modern Warfare II having not graced a PC storefront since 2017’s World War II.
Smith said in December 2022 that Microsoft had offered Sony the same 10-year deal, but turned it down. Sony has disputed Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard, seeing the deal could be harmful to developers and lead to price hikes. Smith also held down a contract with Sony at a press conference in Brussels and noted that Sony could spend its energy fighting back or “sitting with [Microsoft] to close the deal” to address his concerns. Microsoft also previously said that it is “committed to Sony that [it] will also make [Call of Duty games] available on PlayStation outside of existing and future agreements so Sony fans can continue to enjoy the games they love.”
And as a side note, Spencer tweeted that Xbox has signed a 10-year agreement with Nvidia that will allow players to stream Xbox PC games and Activision PC games through GeForce Now.
It appears that this deal will be used later in 2023 for the widely reported next entry in the series. it’s 2023 call of duty the title was allegedly originally DLC for 2022’s Modern Warfare IIbut plans changed and the expansion turned into its own installment.