Activision CEO Bobby Kotick is living with regrets. According to the latest FTC documents, the CEO, who has been embroiled in a couple of controversial harassment cases over the past few years, says he regrets not focusing on the Nintendo Switch. He has admitted that not bringing Call of Duty to Switch was a bad decision.
Of course, his previous view on Nintendo isn’t surprising. The last Call of Duty games which launched on a Nintendo platform were Call of Duty Black Ops II and Ghosts. These games launched in 2012 and 2013 respectively. However, they also launched the Nintendo Wii U which we all know didn’t have the largest player base.
READ MORE – Final Fantasy XVI Has Sold 3 Million Copies in One Week
Bobby Kotick has admitted that he made an error of judgement when Activision dropped the series from the platform and decided not to support the Nintendo Switch.
“I made a bad judgement. When I had seen the prototype of the Switch, it was different then when I saw the prototype of the Wii [and] I thought it was the most extraordinary video game system ever created.”
Kotick claims that he strongly believed the Nintendo Switch wasn’t going to be wildly successful.
“When I saw the prototypes for Switch, I was concerned because they were trying to accomplish a lot with a console that also had a portable capability. I didn’t think it was going to be wildly successful. It’s probably the second most successful video game system of all time, so it was a bad decision on my part.”
Of course, he isn’t wrong. The Nintendo Switch has sold over 125 million units since its introduction back in March 2017. While Call of Duty is quite a demanding game, we have seen publishers successfully develop large-scale games for the Switch without any real issues. Some games even make use of a cloud-based system to play them.
Kotick was also asked if he would consider bringing Call of Duty to Nintendo’s unannounced next-gen console. He says it is too early to tell. However, Microsoft has already signed binding agreements with Nintendo to bring the series to its hardware should the Activision merger go through. Kotick does seem positive that the franchise will become a staple on Nintendo’s new hardware.
“I think we would consider it once we had the specs but we don’t have any at present. Like I said, I think once we get the detailed specifications—we missed out on the opportunity on this past generation with Switch—so I would like to think we’d be able to do that, but we’ll have to wait until then”.
