Since Microsoft announced its $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard in January last year, Sony has been expressing its concerns in front of European and British regulators.
Therefore, Microsoft has signed a 10-year agreement with Nintendo and Nvidia, saying that it will definitely bring Xbox games such as “Call of Duty” to players of Switch and GeForce Now gaming platforms after completing the acquisition, with the intention of expressing to regulators that it does not dare to monopolize the attitude.
Microsoft announced Tuesday that it has signed a 10-year deal with Ukraine’s Boosteroid, promising to bring a slew of Xbox PC games to the little-known streaming platform.
As Microsoft Vice Chairman and President Brad Smith said in a statement, “This move is in part to make it clearer to regulators that our acquisition of Activision Blizzard will allow Call of Duty to run on more devices.”
As Smith told the Wall Street Journal, they are expected to sign more deals like this in the coming weeks. “If the only argument is that Microsoft will refuse to make Call of Duty available for other platforms, then we have now signed contracts that will bring it to more devices and platforms”.
Of course, Sony apparently disagrees with this statement. In a recent filing with the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority, the PlayStation maker pointed out that Microsoft said the same thing before acquiring Bethesda Softworks, while Starz was not offered to PS platforms, which is one reason it can’t trust the company about Call of Duty’s cross-platform commitments.
Founded in 2017, Boosteroid already has 4 million streaming customers with servers in nine European countries and six U.S. states. These users can play games on any smartphone, Windows/Mac/linux-based PC or Android TV device for just 7.49 euros per month (currently about $55), similar to the NVIDIA GeForce Now gaming platform.
Currently, Boosteroid already supports users playing games from other platforms, including Steam, Epic, Blizzard Battle.net, EA Origin, R-Star’s own gaming platform and WarGaming, which is required for World of Tanks.
