Microsoft agrees with Nvidia to bring Xbox and Activision Blizzard games for PC to GeForce Now

Microsoft has announced a ten-year agreement with Nvidia so that all Xbox games for PC as well as those of Activision Blizzard (including Call of Duty) if the purchase goes through, will be available on GeForce Now, a service that allows you to play in the cloud to titles purchased from Steam, the Epic Games Store and other stores. This alliance has been made public just after Microsoft has met behind closed doors with the European Commission and other video game companies to discuss the acquisition of Activision Blizzard.

With this move, Microsoft intends to convince regulators that if the purchase of Activision Blizzard is approved, its games will be available on more platforms than ever. Xbox Game Studios, Bethesda Softworks, and Activision Blizzard titles are not currently part of the GeForce Now catalog. Xbox Cloud Gaming is one of the most powerful cloud gaming services out there, so this deal with competitors should alleviate regulators’ concerns. The alliance also serves for Nvidia to get on the Microsoft boat and support the purchase of Activision Blizzard without nuances and with a good face.

During the conference offered by Microsoft, the company also wanted to highlight that Valve is one of the companies that supports the acquisition of Activision Blizzard. Valve’s support is not trivial if we take into account that with Steam it dominates the market for the digital distribution of PC games. Last year Microsoft offered Valve a deal to keep Call of Duty on Steam for the long term, but turned it down because of the trust they have in Phil Spencer and the Xbox team, who “have always delivered on what they told us they would do.”

Microsoft ensures that if the purchase of Activision Blizzard is completed, Call of Duty will be available on more than 150 million devices that today do not have access to the game. Regulators are concerned that a title considered key like Call of Duty will become exclusive to the Xbox ecosystem, something that Microsoft wants to solve with the agreements with Nvidia and Nintendo. Sony is offered the same deal and even Brath Smith has printed it to show it to the press, but for now the Japanese company has not changed its position.

During the press conference Brad Smith, president of Microsoft, has also shown the press a graph where he ensures that in the European market Sony has a share of 80%, while Xbox is satisfied with the remaining 20%. Worldwide, the division is 70/30 in favor of the Japanese company, while in Japan it sweeps with 96/4. We don’t know where Nintendo falls in this division, but it seems to be in a league of its own.