Microsoft has been under the spotlight this week after the company made some rather desperate attempts to win over the CMA. If you haven’t caught up yet, regulators have now pushed back against Microsoft’s intention to purchase Activision Blizzard. So much so that some of them, including the UK CMA, have filed lawsuits against the company in an attempt to stop the deal. There’s a lot going on in the background but these regulators believe Microsoft should not own Activision Blizzard as it will harm multiple facets of the gaming industry.
This week, Microsoft has been running around signing deals with competitive platforms in order to show how chill they are about releasing soon-to-be-owned IPs elsewhere. Of course, this comes after the CMA raised concerns over the Call of Duty series being exclusive to Xbox Game Pass.
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The first deal was made with Nintendo. Microsoft claims that should the company end up owning Activision Blizzard, it will release all future Call of Duty titles on the Switch and other upcoming Nintendo hardware for the next ten years. This so-called “legally binding” partnership will provide “equal access to Call of Duty to other gaming platforms, bringing more choice to more players and more competition to the gaming market”.
Microsoft then ran to NVIDIA in order to do the same thing. The company announced another 10-year “legally binding” partnership to release all future PC games on NVIDIA GeForce Now. This will allow gamers to stream Xbox PC titles on the GeForce Now streaming service.
This partnership arrives a few months after the CMA raised concerns over Microsoft’s xCloud service and how it would dominate the game streaming industry with Activision-exclusive titles on the platform. This NVIDIA partnership is also a 10-year agreement.
“Xbox remains committed to giving people more choice and finding ways to expand how people play. 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.”
So as it stands, Microsoft has committed itself to release Call of Duty on PlayStation, Nintendo and GeForce Now. The company is attempting to get its ducks in a row and cover the issues which have been raised by the regulators – namely the concerns over streaming dominance and Call of Duty exclusivity.
At the moment we don’t know how the regulators will take these announcements. Earlier this week, Microsoft presented arguments to the European Commission regarding the concerns. The company touched on its market share in the industry, the power of Call of Duty in gaming and more. Regulators have yet to release an update on the situation.
Regardless of what Microsoft does at this point, the CMA has officially filed a lawsuit against the deal which is expected to appear in court in August. So technically, the deal is on hold until then. However, it doesn’t stop Microsoft from making deals and playing nice for the time being.
