Microsoft elaborates on plans for Call of Duty on Nintendo platforms

Microsoft dropped some surprising news this week, revealing that it had reached a 10-year commitment to bring Call of Duty to Nintendo platforms. Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer has now followed up with some additional information. This comes as part of an interview with The Washington Post.

One of the main takeaways is that the goal would be for a new Call of Duty game to end up on a Nintendo system at the same time as other platforms. However, it’s unlikely for anything to materialize next year. If it’s not blocked by regulators, Microsoft’s acquisition deal of Activision Blizzard – including the Call of Duty franchise – wouldn’t happen until June 2023.

Spencer said:

“You can imagine if [the deal] closed on that date, starting to do development work to make that happen would likely take a little bit of time. Once we get into the rhythm of this, our plan would be that when [a Call of Duty game] launches on PlayStation, Xbox, and PC, that it would also be available on Nintendo at the same time.”

Some have questioned how Call of Duty could launch on a platform like Switch as the device isn’t as powerful as other hardware. However, Spencer indicated that Xbox has a great deal of experience shipping and supporting games across a variety of systems.

He said:

“We would do this with Minecraft as well, where we would do specific work to make the game run well on Nintendo Switch and their silicon and support their platform completely. We do the same when we ship on PlayStation 5.”

“Minecraft and Call of Duty are different games. But from how you get games onto Nintendo, how you run a development team that is targeting multiple platforms, that’s experience we have.”

The Call of Duty Nintendo deal is for ten years, but that isn’t necessarily a stopping point. Spencer mentioned how it’s merely “about picking an expiration date, not with the goal of ever expiring, but just like, the legalese of a document has to say this goes through some date.” Ultimately though, the goal “would be to continue to support those customers.”