Xbox has signed yet another ten-year deal, the third of its kind this year alone. This deal pledges to bring Call of Duty and other Activision Blizzard-owned games to the cloud gaming service Boosteroid, which has around four million users. This coincides with similar deals reached with Nvidia and Nintendo, making it clear that Call of Duty won't go Xbox exclusive for at least a decade should its Activision Blizzard deal go through.
On top of this, Microsoft president Brad Smith says that this is far from the last deal the company will reach with third parties. Speaking with the Wall Street Journal, Smith says that "more [deals] will follow," in the coming weeks, with further plans to launch Call of Duty on rival services if it acquires Activision.
This deal with Boosteroid comes, of course, as Sony tells regulators that Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard would be harmful to the industry and consumers. Microsoft is in the process of countering this with legally binding pledges to keep Call of Duty on other consoles and services, preventing it from making the biggest game series included in the deal exclusive to Xbox.
"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," says Brad Smith, referring to Sony's opposition to its acquisition.
“The reason we want to buy Activision Blizzard is to round out our titles to have a fuller library, especially to have more mobile titles where we don’t have a strong presence."
That last comment seems to be an attempt to downplay Call of Duty's significance in the deal, instead focusing on the fact that Microsoft would also be acquiring Candy Crush publisher, King.
While many of us may be unfamiliar with Boosteroid as a service and are likely to be unaffected by this deal, it's what the plan represents that makes it so significant. It shows that Microsoft is willing to cut deals with rivals to get the acquisition over the line, and is in quite a hurry to do so. It remains to be seen if it can reach a deal with Sony, but considering the latter is worried that PlayStation would be handed dodgy Call of Duty ports, that seems unlikely.