This commitment will start with the Nintendo Switch.
Photo of the head of Xbox Phil Spencer

As the day came to a close on December 6, Xbox head Phil Spencer took to Twitter to announce a "10-year commitment" to bring Call of Duty games to Nintendo platforms. This commitment would begin with bringing titles to the Nintendo Switch. This would, of course, depend on whether or not the Microsoft acquisition of Activision Blizzard is approved.

Curiously, Spencer also revealed that they are making an identical pledge to continue bringing the Call of Duty games to Steam as well. If you recall, this year's release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is the first time a Call of Duty game was released on Steam after Activision went their own way for several years.


These commitments aren't just coming out of the blue here. As mentioned, Microsoft is still trying to get the acquisition of Activision Blizzard approved by several different regulatory agencies around the world. The acquisition has been the subject of intense scrutiny, especially throughout Europe and North America. The government bodies looking into this acquisition worry that Microsoft would make Call of Duty an Xbox exclusive and thus create an unfair monopoly.

The deal has also been a major issue for Sony, who believes that Microsoft may stop Call of Duty from appearing on PlayStation or offer exclusive incentives (such as adding Call of Duty to Game Pass) that would give Microsoft an "advantage" over the competition. Microsoft previously said that they have committed to a similar 10-year promise to Sony to continue releasing Call of Duty titles on PlayStation.

Spencer's commitments are being put into the public eye to show these governments that they aren't planning on keeping Call of Duty exclusive to Xbox. As Kotaku put it, he's saying these things to grease some wheels and look more favorable with these governments that have doubts about the acquisition.

Whether or not they can even get a Call of Duty game to play on the Switch is another matter entirely. It could be that the game is offered as a cloud-based game like several other Switch titles have opted to do. Then you also need to factor in that without an external SD card, the Switch maxes out at 64GB of internal storage. Recent Call of Duty games laugh at such a pitiful amount of storage.

When it comes to Spencer's commitments to continuing with Call of Duty releases on Steam, Valve's Gabe Newell had some interesting things to say about it. Newell issued a statement to Kotaku.

We’re happy that Microsoft wants to continue using Steam to reach customers with Call of Duty when their Activision acquisition closes. Microsoft has been on Steam for a long time and we take it as a signal that they are happy with gamers reception to that and the work we are doing. Our job is to keep building valuable features for not only Microsoft but all Steam customers and partners.

Microsoft offered and even sent us a draft agreement for a long-term Call of Duty commitment but it wasn’t necessary for us because a) we’re not believers in requiring any partner to have an agreement that locks them to shipping games on Steam into the distant future b) Phil and the games team at Microsoft have always followed through on what they told us they would do so we trust their intentions and c) we think Microsoft has all the motivation they need to be on the platforms and devices where Call of Duty customers want to be.​