Microsoft Signs Binding Contract To Bring Call Of Duty To Nintendo

Update (Tue 21st Feb, 2023 23:55 GMT): As part of today’s European Commission hearing, Microsoft’s Brad Smith clarified his comments from earlier in the day to explain that his mention of a “contract to bring Xbox games to Nintendo’s gamers” was focused around Call of Duty. You can see what he said down below:

Original story (Tue 21st Feb, 2023 08:50 GMT): Microsoft president Brad Smith has announced this morning that Microsoft has entered into a 10-year binding legal agreement with Nintendo to bring Call of Duty to the platform with full feature and content parity following the acquisition of Activision Blizzard – and his wording seems to suggest it could go beyond Call of Duty as well.

As you can see by Smith’s comments, he mentions that it’s a “contract to bring Xbox games to Nintendo’s gamers”, but then the actual statement inside the tweet only mentions Call of Duty, so there’s a little bit of confusion right now.

Back in December of 2022, Microsoft announced that it had entered into a 10-year “commitment” to bring Call of Duty to Nintendo in the future, but it sounds like this is the first time that commitment has ever become legally binding.

This statement from Brad Smith has arrived on the same day that Microsoft is set for a major European Commission hearing, so it’s probably no coincidence! In other words, we might have more news to report later this week…