Microsoft announces Call of Duty deal with Switch cloud game provider

Ubitus could be a key partner to make Nintendo deal work

Marco Wutz | Mar 15, 2023

Microsoft announces Call of Duty deal with Switch cloud game provider /

Microsoft has signed a ten-year deal with Ubitus, a Japanese cloud gaming service, allowing the company to add Xbox PC games as well as Activision Blizzard products like Call of Duty to its offerings. This comes just one day after Microsoft struck a similar deal with Boosteroid, a cloud gaming provider based in Ukraine.

Microsoft has previously signed contracts of this nature with NVIDIA and Nintendo in a bid to win approval from regulators for its proposed $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard.

Phil Spencer, President of Gaming at Microsoft, stated: “Microsoft and Ubitus, a leading cloud gaming provider, have signed a 10-year partnership to stream Xbox PC Games as well as Activision Blizzard titles after the acquisition closes. Our commitment is to give more players more choice.”

Microsoft and Ubitus @ubituskk, a leading cloud gaming provider, have signed a 10-year partnership to stream Xbox PC Games as well as Activision Blizzard titles after the acquisition closes. Our commitment is to give more players, more choice.
— Phil Spencer (@XboxP3) March 15, 2023

Having Ubitus on board not only gives Microsoft another argument in the ongoing battle against Sony and its accusations of Microsoft trying to hamper market competition. Ubitus is the leading provider of cloud gaming services for the Nintendo Switch, with games like Resident Evil Village, Hitman 3, and Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy being playable on the console through Ubitus.

Making Call of Duty playable on Nintendo Switch through the cloud service could be one way for Microsoft to make good on its promises towards Nintendo and also deflate arguments about their agreement being negligible. The UK’s Competition and Market Authority (CMA) argued that the Switch could not run the same version of Call of Duty with full feature parity as the PS5 and Xbox Series X|S due to the console’s technical limitations.

Microsoft’s recent moves have reportedly already changed the EU’s position on the Activision Blizzard acquisition, to the ire of Sony, which claimed Microsoft could sabotage Call of Duty on PlayStation if it were to take control of the developer.

Final decisions about the acquisition from the EU and the CMA are due on April 25 and 26 respectively.

Published Mar 15, 2023

MARCO WUTZ

Marco Wutz is a writer from Parkstetten, Germany. He has a degree in Ancient History and a particular love for real-time and turn-based strategy games like StarCraft, Age of Empires, Total War, Age of Wonders, Crusader Kings, and Civilization as well as a soft spot for Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail. He began covering StarCraft 2 as a writer in 2011 for the largest German community around the game and hosted a live tournament on a stage at gamescom 2014 before he went on to work for Bonjwa, one of the country's biggest Twitch channels. He branched out to write in English in 2015 by joining tl.net, the global center of the StarCraft scene run by Team Liquid, which was nominated as the Best Coverage Website of the Year at the Esports Industry Awards in 2017. He worked as a translator on The Crusader Stands Watch, a biography in memory of Dennis "INTERNETHULK" Hawelka, and provided live coverage of many StarCraft 2 events on the social channels of tl.net as well as DreamHack, the world's largest gaming festival. From there, he transitioned into writing about the games industry in general after his graduation, joining GLHF, a content agency specializing in video games coverage for media partners across the globe, in 2021. He has also written for NGL.ONE, kicker, ComputerBild, USA Today's ForTheWin, The Sun, Men's Journal, and Parade. Email: marco.wutz@glhf.gg