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'Call of Duty' to be released on Nintendo Switch, Microsoft says

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Agence France-Presse

<div class="embed-wrap"><figure data-feedback="fb:likes,fb:comments"><img alt=" Mikhail Huacan plays Call of Duty Warzone online with other Latin American players, from his home in Lima, Peru in this October 2020 file photo. Paolo Aguilar, EPA-EFE" src="https://sa.kapamilya.com/absnews/abscbnnews/media/2022/life/12/08/call-of-duty-warzone-online-epa-12082022.jpg"/><figcaption>Mikhail Huacan plays Call of Duty Warzone online with other Latin American players, from his home in Lima, Peru in this October 2020 file photo. <em>Paolo Aguilar, EPA-EFE</em></figcaption></figure></div><p>The hugely popular &quot;Call of Duty&quot; game franchise will become available on Nintendo&#x27;s Switch console if the acquisition of its developer goes ahead, a Microsoft executive said Wednesday.</p><p>The US tech giant is in the process of buying the game maker Activision Blizzard, but the huge $69-billion purchase has yet to be finalized while it is examined by antitrust authorities.</p><p>&quot;Microsoft is committed to helping bring more games to more people -- however they choose to play,&quot; Xbox head Phil Spencer tweeted, in what analysts called an attempt to show competition would not be affected by the acquisition deal.</p><p>&quot;Call of Duty&quot; is a blazingly successful first-person shooter franchise with hordes of devotees that play it on Microsoft&#x27;s Xbox consoles or Sony&#x27;s PlayStation.</p><p>The games are also available on PC and mobile, as well as Nintendo&#x27;s older Wii and DS consoles.</p><p>Spencer said Microsoft had &quot;entered into a 10-year commitment to bring Call of Duty to Nintendo following the merger of Microsoft and Activision Blizzard King.&quot;</p><p>New titles in the series will also continue to be sold on Steam, a platform for downloading games, as soon as they are released on Xbox &quot;after we have closed the merger,&quot; he added.</p><p>Serkan Toto of consulting agency Kantan Games told AFP that the timing of the announcement was &quot;clearly a publicity stunt&quot; linked to ongoing negotiations over the Activision purchase.</p><p>Nintendo&#x27;s Switch, which was launched in 2017, had more than 110 million users in the past year.</p><p>&quot;So if Activision was really interested in bringing &#x27;Call of Duty&#x27; to a Nintendo platform, to the Nintendo Switch, they could have done it three or four years ago,&quot; Toto said.</p><p>Earlier this week, Microsoft president Brad Smith wrote in a Wall Street Journal article that the company had offered to strike a new contract with Sony in a similar 10-year deal. However, Spencer told Bloomberg that Sony has so far rebuffed the offer.</p><div><strong> FROM THE ARCHIVES:</strong></div><figure class="op-interactive"><iframe allow="autoplay; fullscreen" frameBorder="0" height="100%" id="ivsplayer01" scrolling="no" src="https://player.ivideosmart.com/ivsplayer/v4/dist/html/iframe-src.html?iframeid=ivsplayer01&amp;key=e8c22c015ca9eafa76f1e3edfa03c603&amp;spid=3001339&amp;vid=1633427" width="100%"></iframe></figure><div class="iwantbar">Watch more News on <a href="https://www.iwanttfc.com/#!/browse/Genres/News/tag_id_genres/id_news" target="_blank">iWantTFC</a></div>

The hugely popular 'Call of Duty' game franchise will become available on Nintendo's Switch console if the acquisition of its developer goes ahead, a Microsoft executive said Wednesday.