Microsoft has said it expects to sign more deals to bring Xbox games to third-party platforms.
On Tuesday, the company announced it hadagreed a 10-year deal with Boosteroidthat will seeXboxPC gamesbeing made available to the independent cloud gaming provider.
Crucially, the deal will include Call of Duty, should regulators approveMicrosoft’s proposed $69 billion acquisition ofActivision Blizzard.
Last month, Microsoft also strucka 10-year partnership with Nvidiato bring its Xbox PC games to cloud gaming service GeForce Now, including Call of Duty.
And it signed a binding 10-year legal agreement tobring Call of Duty to Nintendo platformsshould the Activision Blizzard deal be approved.
“More [deals] will follow,” Microsoft president Brad Smith toldThe Wall Street Journal, as the company aims to convince regulators that it has no plans to restrict access to some of the industry’s biggest games if it acquires Activision Blizzard’s catalogue, which also includes theWorld of Warcraftand Diablo series.
“If the only argument is that Microsoft is going to withhold Call of Duty from other platforms, and we’ve now entered into contracts that are going to bring this to many more devices and many more platforms, that is a pretty hard case to make to a court,” Smith said.
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Microsoft recently said it had alsooffered Sony a 10-year, legally enforceable contractto make each new Call of Duty game available on PlayStation the same day it comes to Xbox –with full content and feature parity.
Sonyhas argued that should the games industry’s biggest ever deal be approved, there are “myriad ways Microsoft could withhold or degrade access [to content which] would be extremely difficult to monitor and police”.
One of the ways Microsoft could choose to circumvent its obligations would be torelease buggy Call of Duty games for PlayStation, Sony has claimed.
