Update [Wed 22nd Feb, 2023 12:30 GMT]: There has been some confusion in light of Brad Smith's tweet regarding the 10-year legal agreement between Microsoft and Nintendo.
Smith stated that the deal was to "bring Xbox games to Nintendo's gamers", leading many to assume - quite naturally - that this meant the deal encompassed games beyond Call of Duty. This is not the case.
As stated by Tom Warren over on Twitter, Microsoft was asked for clarification on the matter during its Activision Blizzard press conference in Brussels, and Brad Smith responded to confirm that the deal is specifically for Call of Duty, stating "the Nintendo agreement is focused on Call of Duty and it builds on the agreements that we've had in place to date with Nintendo for other games".
So there you have it. While this doesn't necessarily rule out additional Xbox games in the future, the 10-year commitment deal between Microsoft and Nintendo is for Call of Duty, and Call of Duty only.
Original Article [Tue 21st Feb, 2023 09:30 GMT]:
Cast your minds back to December 2022, you might recall that Microsoft had entered into a 10-year commitment to bring the Call of Duty franchise to Nintendo platforms. Well, that commitment is now legally binding, so it's definitely happening (we think).
According to Brad Smith, Vice Chair and President of Microsoft, the company has negotiated with Nintendo and has now signed a binding 10-year legal agreement to bring Call of Duty to Nintendo platforms. The attached statement says that upcoming games will launch on Nintendo and Xbox platforms at the same time with full feature and content parity.
The question remains, of course, as to when this will begin, and how exactly the games will perform on Nintendo platforms. In our eyes, there are three options: the games will be heavily compromised in terms of visuals on the Switch, they will launch as Cloud Versions, or the commitment won't begin until Nintendo launches its next major hardware (and who knows when that will be).
We're personally betting on the latter option, as Phil Spencer had previously stated that work will not begin on new platform support until after the Activision Blizzard acquisition had closed. So it may take some time until we see this commitment come to fruition.
Regardless, for Nintendo fans who enjoy some Call of Duty here and there, the news is most certainly welcome. We won't say no to a bit of Captain Price and Soap MacTavish, that's for sure.