Microsoft has signed yet another deal granting Call of Duty access to a third-party platform (should the Activision Blizzard deal be approved of course). This time it is cloud gaming provider Ubitus, with which Microsoft has signed a 10-year deal similar to the previously signed deals and the one offered to Sony.
Microsoft and Ubitus @ubituskk, a leading cloud gaming provider, have signed a 10-year partnership to stream Xbox PC Games as well as Activision Blizzard titles after the acquisition closes. Our commitment is to give more players, more choice.
— Phil Spencer (@XboxP3) March 15, 2023
It is the fourth such deal the Redmond, WA company has signed thus far and the second announced in as many days. Yesterday a 10-year deal was signed with Boosteroid—the largest independent cloud gaming provider outside the U.S. Previous deals secured the Call of Duty franchise on Nintendo systems and Nvidia’s GeForce Now cloud gaming platform. That is, if and when Microsoft acquires ABK.
These deals are clearly an effort on the part of Microsoft to demonstrate the merits of the acquisition and win over regulators. As Microsoft president Brad Smith told The Wall Street Journal yesterday following the Boosteroid announcement,
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.
The European Commission and the U.K.’s CMA have until April 25th and 26th respectively to make their final decisions on whether to approve the deal. In the U.S., the FTC is suing Microsoft in an effort to block the deal.
