Microsoft and NVIDIA have entered a long-term partnership to bring Xbox PC games to NVIDIA’s GeForce NOW cloud gaming service. News of this 10-year partnership comes off the heels of Microsoft’s attempts to quell the nerves of regulators who’ve yet to approve the $68.7 billion USD (roughly $94 billion CAD) acquisition of Activision Blizzard.
In a blog post, NVIDIA reveals that the decade-long deal will ensure players will be able to “stream Xbox PC titles from GeForce NOW to PCs, macOS, Chromebooks, smartphones and other devices.” The company continues by stating that if the acquisition of Activision Blizzard does go through this will “also enable Activision Blizzard PC titles, such as Call of Duty, to be streamed on GeForce NOW.”
News of this is pretty substantial as Microsoft and NVIDIA are both big players in the cloud gaming space. Microsoft’s Xbox Cloud Gaming is an integral pillar of Xbox Game Pass, enabling players to play many available games across their devices. In a similar fashion, GeForce Now’s subscription enables players to play a wide variety of games on PC, mobile, and even smart TVs.
“Xbox remains committed to giving people more choice and finding ways to expand how people play,” said Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer. “This partnership will help grow NVIDIA’s catalog of titles to include games like Call of Duty, while giving developers more ways to offer streaming games. We are excited to offer gamers more ways to play the games they love.”
Naturally, Microsoft’s partnership isn’t purely out of giving players more choices. It’s also directly tied to Microsoft and its discussions with EU regulators. The partnership between Microsoft and NVIDIA came mere hours after Microsoft announced a similar “binding” deal with Nintendo. Similarly, Microsoft will launch Call of Duty on Nintendo hardware with parity of release day, features, and content for the next 10 years. Of course, this is all contingent on the deal going through. Regulators like the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and the FTC in the U.S. are opposing the deal.
Likewise, Sony is arguing that Microsoft’s ownership of Call of Duty will give the Xbox brand an unfair advantage in the market. Microsoft has gone on record to state that its proposed a similar 10-year deal with Sony. Though according to Microsoft’s Brad Smith, it’s up to whether Sony wants to “sit down and talk.”