While Microsoft went before the European Commission to defend its acquisition of Activision Blizzard King for nearly 70 billion dollars, the company had planned its coup by announcing at the same time a historic agreement with Nintendo as well as with NVIDIA. The Microsoft president’s words might be confusing and have been corrected.
Nintendo deal doesn’t cover all Xbox games
The initial post by Brad Smith, President of Microsoft, has been deleted, but we recall that it included the following sentence: “We have now signed a 10-year contract to bring Xbox games to Nintendo gamers. » Although Call of Duty was mentioned next, the mention of “Xbox games” might suggest that the company was committed to releasing a good part of its games first party at Nintendo. And yet this is not the case.
In a new post published at the end of last week, Brad Smith corrected the situation.
We want things to be clear and any misunderstanding cleared up. I’m delighted to echo that statement below and affirm Microsoft’s firm commitment to bringing Call of Duty to Nintendo customers should our acquisition of Activision Blizzard be approved by regulators.
The mention of Xbox games has been removed and it is now only Call of Duty. That doesn’t mean Microsoft won’t release more Xbox games on Nintendo consoles, but that’s not in the deal. Indeed, some games and licenses owned by Microsoft are already available on Japanese consoles, we can, for example, cite Minecraft.
An agreement subject to redemption
Keep in mind that the contract will apply if and only if the acquisition of Activision Blizzard is approved, which is not yet won. The FTC continues to disapprove of the deal, and the CMA and the European Commission have expressed their reservations. The final decisions from Europe and the United Kingdom are expected no later than April, as mentioned in our calendar of the next deadlines.
To follow the progress of the takeover and all the latest information, you will find below our summary video to understand everything regarding the issues surrounding the takeover of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft, as well as our complete file on this subject.