Microsoft’s desire to buy Activision-Blizzard was rather messy. They are currently in talks with the British government in an attempt to convince them that this acquisition should be approved. However, what makes the whole thing even weirder is the fact that Nintendo is indirectly involved in this. For example, Microsoft also has to convince the UK government that they can honor their deal to bring Call of Duty games to Nintendo’s hardware in the next decade.
Unsurprisingly, though, the power of the Nintendo Switch is a source of concern. Not only did Microsoft hear it, but they expressed their belief that they could optimize Call of Duty games for Nintendo’s console. They told the UK government that Activision has “a long history of optimizing game performance for available hardware capabilities”.
They continued, saying that Microsoft and Activision are “confident that with Warzone, Call of Duty titles that are purchased to play (eg Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2) can be optimized to run on Nintendo Switch at the right time using standard techniques that were used to bring games such as Apex Legends, DOOM Eternal, Fortnite and Crysis 3 to the Switch”.
Warzone, or to be more precise, the engine the game runs on, is also used in their argument. They believe that the engine that runs Warzone can adapt to the power of the Nintendo Switch. In fact, they state that the engine is “optimized to run on a wide range of hardware devices (from Xbox One released in 2015 to Xbox Series X)”. Warzone itself can support graphics cards dating back as far as 2015, several years before the Switch was even released.
However, there are still many questions in the air at this point. It is not known how the British government will respond to this argument, or even whether it will allow the acquisition to go ahead. If the deal goes through, then the tone of uncertainty will shift towards which Call of Duty games will be released on the Switch. Whatever happens, we’ll let you know.
