Alongside the reveal of yet another 10-year promise to publish Call of Duty on another platform, Xbox is promising that further deals are on the way.
Earlier today, Microsoft promised to publish its PC games, including Call of Duty if the Xbox Activision deal goes through, on a Ukrainian cloud streaming service called Boosteroid as part of a new 10-year deal. In the wake of that agreement, Microsoft president Brad Smith tells the Wall Street Journal that "more will follow," and that the company expects to reach further deals within the coming weeks.
"The reason we want to buy Activision Blizzard is to round out our titles to have a fuller library, especially to have more mobile titles where we don’t have a strong presence, and build a stronger gaming business," Smith says, seemingly downplaying the importance of Call of Duty to the acquisition. But Sony, Microsoft's most direct console competitor, and regulatory agencies around the world have singled out potential CoD exclusivity on Xbox as one of the biggest reasons to stand in the way of the deal.
Microsoft has signed agreements to put Call of Duty on Nintendo platforms and make all of its Xbox PC games, including (potentially) CoD on Nvidia's GeForce Now streaming service. The company billed those deals as an effort to bring CoD to 150 million new players and make the pending merger seem pro-competitive. Whether these deals appease regulators remains to be seen - certainly, it's tough to imagine there are that many CoD fans out there who haven't already invested in an Xbox or PlayStation console to play those games on.
On the PlayStation side, Microsoft has been publicly trying to get Sony to agree to one of these 10-year deals for months. Sony's response has reportedly been "I don't want a new Call of Duty deal. I just want to block your merger." In today's report, Smith says no formal discussions are currently happening between the two companies.
If these deals keep coming, you might not need an Xbox to play all the upcoming Xbox Series X games for much longer.
