‘Call of Duty’ to Hit Nintendo Same Day as Xbox Release, Per New Microsoft Deal

An official deal to bring Call of Duty to Nintendo has been reached.

Early into the day on Tuesday, Microsoft vice chair and president Brad Smith confirmed that the company and Nintendo had both signed what he billed as a “binding 10-year legal agreement” that will bring Call of Duty to Nintendo users. More specifically, it will bring the game to Nintendo players on the same day as the title’s respective Xbox drop date “with full feature and content parity” to complete the experience.

While further details were scarce at the time of this writing, a separate announcement from Microsoft regarding a deal with NVIDIA included a footnote stating that the latest Call of Duty would be brought to Nintendo “following the merger with Activision.”

The latter, of course, has remained a source of contention in recent months. In December, for example, the FTC took legal action to block the multibillion-dollar merger. The acquisition was officially announced in January of last year, with Microsoft stating at the time that the agreement would see Activision Blizzard being acquired in an all-cash deal valued at more than $68 billion.

While a Call of Duty-centered Nintendo deal has been the subject of headlines in the past, Tuesday’s news marked a more formal development in that space, although all of it remains contingent on the larger Activision deal going through.