MISCELLANEOUS
Wed 15 Mar 2023 8:53 pm - Jerusalem Time
Microsoft pledges to make Call of Duty available on Nintendo devices
Tokyo - (AFP) - The famous "Call of Duty" game will become available on "Nintendo" devices in the event of a Microsoft acquisition of the company that publishes the game, an official in the American company announced Wednesday.
Microsoft, which produces Xbox video game consoles, announced in January its acquisition of the American company Activision Blizzard for a record amount of $ 69 billion, but this project is still under the watch of the authorities in charge of regulating competition in the United States. United and Europe.
Regulators fear that the acquisition could allow Microsoft to stop making Activision Blizzard games, including "Word of Warcraft" and "Candy Crush," available on competitors' platforms.
"Microsoft wants to provide more games to a larger segment of people, whatever way they choose to play," said Phil Spencer, head of the games department at the American giant, in a tweet on Twitter.
He added, "Microsoft is committed to providing + Call of Duty + to + Nintendo + for ten years after its acquisition of + Activision Blizzard King +," noting that copies of the new "Call of Duty" will also remain available through the "Steam" platform for video games on Computers.
Serkan Tutu of Mantan Games, an analytics company in Tokyo, said in an interview with Agence France-Presse that this announcement "is clearly a publicity stunt due to its timing."
The Federal Trade Commission should consider Thursday the acquisition of Activision Blizzard, according to several outlets. As for the European Commission, it launched an investigation in early November dealing with this deal, while the competition authorities in the United Kingdom announced in September that they had initiated a comprehensive investigation.
Toto pointed out that the video game player "Switch" from "Nintendo", which has sold more than 110 million copies since its launch in the market in March 2017, "is not new," adding, "If + Activision + really wants to allow + Call of Duty+ on a Nintendo platform would have done that three or four years ago."
And Phil Spencer said in an interview with “Bloomberg” on Wednesday that a similar agreement to the one that was concluded with “Nintendo” was proposed to “Sony”, the maker of the “PlayStation” device, which strongly opposed the Microsoft- Activision deal from the beginning. According to Spencer, the Japanese group would have refused the offer.
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Microsoft pledges to make Call of Duty available on Nintendo devices