Microsoft is ‘confident’ it can optimize Call of Duty for Switch

As part of its acquisition of Activision Blizzard, Microsoft has told the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) that it is “confident” that Call of Duty will work on the Switch.

Microsoft is clearly trying to make sure its deal to buy Activision Blizzard goes through. Part of convincing all parties involved that it didn’t want to hurt competition was by signing an agreement with Nintendo, in which the two companies agreed to a contract that guaranteed a Call of Duty port on the Switch for 10 years (if the deal came through).

But in the CMA’s interim investigative report, the group wrote that it “could not be certain that this would result in CoD being available on Nintendo” even if a deal was struck, noting the “technical limitations” of the hybrid console compared to current PlayStation and Xbox games. machine (thanks to Eurogamer).

Microsoft has since responded to concerns raised in the report, writing: “The game engine powering Warzone is mature and optimized to run on a wide variety of hardware devices (from the Xbox One console released in 2015 to the Xbox X series). Warzone supports PC hardware with GPU cards that were released way back in 2015 (i.e., before the Nintendo Switch was released in 2017).”

The response goes on to note that Activision has a “long history of optimizing game performance for available hardware capabilities,” and says it believes games like Warzone and Modern Warfare 2 can be optimized to run on the Switch in the same way other developers’ titles such as Apex Legends, Doom Eternal, Fortnite, and Crysis 3. All of these games do look noticeably worse on the Switch, but it can’t be said that they don’t run on the console.

We’re not far from knowing what the CMA thinks about the takeover, as it publishes its ruling on April 26.