The Nintendo Switch is not a powerful console. It wasn’t pushing boundaries in 2017, with launch titles like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild subject to performance woes as it struggled to depict its sprawling open world without compromise. Link’s Awakening chugged like a mothercuckoo as you moved between screens too, the hardware trying its hardest to render a classic experience through updated visuals before falling short at every hurdle.
Zelda isn’t the only series to have performance issues on the Switch - Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Xenoblade Chronicles 3, and Pokemon: Scarlet & Violet would all be so much better on other platforms, but they’re loyal to Nintendo and will never change. You could be a naughty little gamer and emulate, although that isn’t an option for most, or go for third-party games on other more capable consoles like the PS5 and Xbox Series X. Ports are a common occurrence on Nintendo Switch these days, and never would I describe them as the best way to play. Technical showcases most certainly, but anyone telling you that The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and The Outer Worlds are best enjoyed here are lying to your face.
This brings us to Call of Duty. Activision’s annual shooter franchise hasn’t graced a Nintendo console since Ghosts in 2013, with the publisher either outright ignoring the Switch or aware that Nintendo’s audience may not align with those who consume its annual blockbuster. This is now set to change, with Microsoft and Nintendo signing a 10-year deal which allows all games in the series to be ported with full feature and content parity. On paper, this means that the full campaign, multiplayer, and battle royale experience other platforms have been enjoying for years now is finally making its way to Switch - but is this a good thing?
We’ve no way of knowing just yet, with Microsoft saying the series will run “as we expect” on Nintendo Switch with no concrete specifics. I expect it to run like total shit, so this statement designed to reassure us is doing the exact opposite. Call of Duty is demanding even on the consoles more than capable of running it. The PS5 often bugs out when trying to navigate user interfaces, while loading times are extensive whether you’re hopping into the campaign or a stream of multiplayer matches. The 60fps promise that the series never broke generations ago has also been abandoned, with drops common in more hectic scenarios as the engine struggles to keep up. All of this will be worse on Switch, more so if it renders everything on a local level instead of resorting to cloud streaming, which it likely can't do given the presence of multiplayer. How many corners will need to be cut in order to make it run, let alone play in a way that doesn’t have me pulling teeth and immediately switching to a better console?
Call of Duty will sell on Switch, given their combined popularity and how many own the hybrid console and nothing else. One day a common consumer is going to find out the biggest shooter in the world is available and will pick it up for themselves or a loved one, doomed to sit through a truncated version of an otherwise competent game because the hardware isn’t capable of doing it justice. It’s been seven years and suddenly a new interest has sprung forth, a number of factors coming to play a part in why this is happening at all.
Microsoft is buying Activision, and one of the sticking points brought up by multiple trading bodies around the world is the unfair competition that will make itself known when Xbox is the only place to play Call of Duty. No matter how much it claims the series will remain on PlayStation and PC, it keeps having to prove itself if the acquisition has any hope of going through. Nintendo Switch now being besties with Call of Duty is an evident symptom of this troubling reality, Microsoft clutching at straws to show the CMA and FTC that it isn’t focused on screwing over Sony, and it will play nice with whomever it needs to so the deal goes on.
I’m playing armchair corporate executive/game developer here - but I bet the actual legwork to get Call of Duty running on Switch hasn't even been done yet, nor has the ongoing impact such an agreement will have on those responsible for making it happen. It could mean a new iteration of the Switch is closer than we think, or a cloud-based solution that goes far beyond what we already have is also on the horizon. Chances are though it comes down to being a bargaining chip in a battle that Microsoft is slowly coming to realise isn’t going its way.
Not a soul has asked for Call of Duty on Nintendo Switch – not even our own Features Editor Ben Sledge who has been known to reminisce about Call of Duty DS games on occasion – hence its announcement has been received as a bizarre reveal instead of a welcome surprise. This will inevitably devolve into curious regret as the end result comes to be a bad port with bad graphics and bad compromises that showcases just how badly the platform is in need of an upgrade.