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Microsoft has said that should they finalize their deal to acquire Activision Blizzard, they would bring Call of Duty to the Switch and other Nintendo platforms, and they promised those releases would see feature parity with releases on other platforms. As of today, the Competition and Markets Authority doesn’t believe that is possible.

The CMA has released a 415-page document detailing its decision to block Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard, and deep in the document we can see that the organization doesn’t believe the Switch can handle Call of Duty as Microsoft claims.

“We found that these consoles compete closely with each other in terms of content, target audience, and console technology. We found that Nintendo’s consoles compete less closely with either of Xbox or PlayStation, generally offering consoles with different technical specifications, and with its most popular titles tending to be more family and child-friendly.

Nintendo does not currently offer COD, and we have seen no evidence to suggest that its consoles would be technically capable of running a version of COD that is similar to those in Xbox and PlayStation in terms of quality of gameplay and content.”

[CMA]

As the CMA doesn’t know the inner-workings of the games industry all that closely, it’s not surprising to see their statement lack nuance. They’re certainly spot-on with the tech specs discussion, but there’s room for debate on their belief that Switch couldn’t offer a Call of Duty experience similar to that of Xbox and PlayStation. Things would no doubt be different visually, but in terms of features, there’s definitely an argument to be made.

As we’ve mentioned before, Switch ports like The Witcher, DOOM and DOOM Eternal show that it’s possible to get quite close to the source material, and there’s certainly not much to hold Microsoft/Activision back when it comes to feature parity. It’s doubtful the CMA dug this deep to see examples of ports from Xbox/PlayStation to Switch, but their decision stands nonetheless.

It’ll be interesting to see how Microsoft responds to this point, as well as the CMA’s decision in general.

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Comments (4)

hawk

11M ago

It's an interesting discussion and could certainly be debated, but I'm not sure how it relates to Microsoft's purchase of Activision. I know MS promised to make Switch versions of COD if the acquisition happened, but how well they compare to PS or Xbox versions doesn't make the acquisition more or less monopolistic.


ridleysaria

11M ago

I have to agree that Switch can’t have parity. An admirable version could be made for the system but it would not be equal. Switch doesn’t even have a modern online system with remotely the same features.


captaincolon

11M ago

They can port it, sure, but just like The Witcher 3, DOOM games, Wolfenstein, etc.
When playing those on Switch I can't help but feel like I'm stuck with the inferior version.


conangiga

11M ago

Of course the Switch version will be on par with the other versions...if they develop it for Switch and port it to the other consoles that is.