Microsoft has reached a 10-year deal with NVIDIA to bring Xbox games to the GeForce Now streaming service. The company’s president, Brad Smith, made the announcement at a press conference in Brussels where he, Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick, and other prominent figures attended a European Commission hearing on Activision Blizzard’s proposed acquisition by Microsoft.
Smith said that if the deal goes through, Activision Blizzard games like the Call of Duty series will also be available on GeForce Now. The publisher removed its titles from the cloud gaming service in 2020. Smith’s GeForce Now announcement came hours after he confirmed that Microsoft will bring Xbox games to Nintendo platforms like Switch under a binding 10-year agreement. , and Activision Blizzard titles if the acquisition closes. . NVIDIA now supports the Activision Blizzard deal, Smith said.
“Xbox remains committed to giving people more choice and finding ways to expand the way they play,” said Phil Spencer, CEO of Microsoft Gaming. said in a statement. “This partnership will help grow NVIDIA’s catalog of titles to include games like Call of Duty, while giving developers more ways to deliver streaming games. We are excited to offer gamers more ways to play the games they love.”
Users will need to purchase copies of the games from the Xbox PC, Steam, or Epic Games stores to play them on GeForce Now. It’s unclear when Xbox games will be available to stream through the service, which has more than 25 million users. However, NVIDIA said so, and Microsoft “will begin working immediately to integrate Xbox games for PC into GeForce Now.”
The deal will give gamers another way to stream Microsoft games from the cloud almost anywhere they have a strong enough internet connection. Currently, Xbox Cloud Gaming (which requires a Game Pass Ultimate subscription) is the primary way to do this. The deal with NVIDIA is an attempt by Microsoft to assuage regulators’ concerns about the Activision acquisition by showing that Xbox Cloud Gaming won’t be the only exclusive way to stream your games.
Earlier this month, the UK’s competition watchdog said Activision’s proposed $68.7bn takeover could result in a “substantial lessening of competition on games consoles” and “harm gamers in the United Kingdom”. The Competition and Markets Authority found that Microsoft already had a 60-70 percent share of the cloud gaming market and that if the deal went through, it would “reinforce this strong position.” In December, the US Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit to block the merger.
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