Microsoft signs binding 10-year legal agreement with Nintendo for Call of Duty

Microsoft has signed a 10-year legal agreement with Japanese gaming giant Nintendo to bring Call of Duty games to Nintendo’s players. Today’s announcement is a follow-up to Xbox boss Phil Spencer’s December 2022 reveal, where he committed to bringing Call of Duty games to Nintendo platforms following the merge of Microsoft-Activision Blizzard King.

Microsoft president Brad Smith announced on Twitter that the legal agreement between Microsoft and Nintendo meant “to bring Call of Duty to Nintendo players — the same day as Xbox with full feature and content parity.” The official statement further adds that Microsoft is committed to providing equal long-term access to CoD to other platforms and more competition to the gaming market. This last line stands out and is seen as a dig at the ongoing Activision saga between Xbox and PlayStation.

https://twitter.com/BradSmi/status/1627926790172811264

As mentioned, this deal had initially been disclosed in December 2022 by Xbox boss Phil Spencer, so the delayed signing is a slight surprise to those tuning into this agreement. Now that it’s been fully endorsed, Nintendo fans should expect future Call of Duty titles to be released on their preferred console simultaneously with Xbox systems.

Many players, however, are still skeptical of Nintendo consoles’ abilities to handle the dynamic motion and high graphical output of Call of Duty games. FPS drops and performance issues have always been common problems on other platforms, so the relatively less powerful hardware of the Switch will surely struggle and face the same performance issues.

It’s worth noting, though, that since this Microsoft-Nintendo agreement is a decade-long deal, the Japanese gaming giant could eventually release a more advanced system during its course that can handle visually sophisticated games like Call of Duty because playing Modern Warfare on the Switch doesn’t seem like a good time for anyone involved.