Why Bringing Call of Duty to Nintendo Switch Doesn’t Make Sense

During these hours sony And Microsoft there are sparks with regulators about the purchase Activision Blizzard. And this open-faced crossover gives us some pretty curious situations. Like, for example, those from Redmond promised that games like Call of Duty: Warzone And Modern Warfare 2 will play natively on Nintendo Switch. A strategy with great effect in advertising, but which doesn’t really make sense in a real scenario.

Let’s put some context into the situation. A few days ago, Microsoft signed an agreement with Nintendo to bring call of Duty Switch for 10 years. A play with which he has secured the support of a Japanese firm and which already seems to be producing positive results for him. Let’s not forget that thanks to this commitment, as well as an agreement with NVIDIA to bring Xbox games to GeForce Now, the European Commission gave the green light to the acquisition of Activision Blizzard.

But Phil Spencer still has a difficult mission ahead of him: convincing two other important regulators to complete the deal. We are talking, of course, about the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). Both organizations have spoken out against the agreement, believing it could be anti-competitive, but Microsoft pulls out all the tricks at his disposal so the $68,700 million deal won’t stop.

In their presentation before the CMA, the Americans promised that both titles free to play How Call of Duty: Warzonesuch as those who are paid as Modern Warfare 2, may natively run on Nintendo Switch. The statement is shocking, no doubt. But it’s impossible not to feel pure marketing to please the ears of regulators – and players –more than a real possibility.

Whatcall of Duty: war zone or MV2 natively works on Nintendo Switch?

Microsoft’s strategy for releasing current and future games call of Duty Switch native It’s fantastic, to say the least.. And say it shouldn’t be hater, Nothing like this. But do you really believe that today you can execute Modern Warfare 2 on a Nintendo console, and what’s an experience that rivals what you get on PS5, Xbox Series X, or PC?

The people of Redmond cover themselves with two problems, trying to justify their strategy. The first thing the engine war zone it is optimized so that the game can be run on “old” hardware. Secondly, Activision has experience in adapting their games for various platforms. Actually, this is reflected in the document presented in the SMA:

The parties believe that in addition to war zonepaid titles COD (For example, Modern Warfare 2) can be optimized to run in a timely manner on the Nintendo Switch using standard techniques already used to create games such as Apex Legends, Eternal doom, Fortnite And crisis 3 to the switch.”

So if, according to Microsoft, there are no technical barriers to bringing Call of Duty to Switch, why are we saying this strategy doesn’t make sense? Because it’s one thing to make a game work natively, and quite another to make it work properly.. if you quit war zone or Modern Warfare 2 on Nintendo Switch will mean that the game is suffering from graphical issues or that both gameplay or cinematics are limited to no more than 20 or 30 fps, you’re not doing the fans any favors.

If a Switch user is given a choice between not having call of Duty, or have it and it malfunctions, you’ll prefer the former. In the end, shooter from Activision They have never been in the orbit of the Nintendo handheld console.At least until Sony’s questions start embarrassing Microsoft in front of regulators.

“The best version of the game on all platforms”

days ago Phil SpencerCEO of Microsoft Gaming, assured that Xbox wants “the best possible version of Call of Duty on all platforms”. That is, the same content and the same gameplay for everyone, without distinction for the benefit or detriment of anyone. But what the leader offers today is simply not viable, even due to hardware limitations.

Can you really believe that the Nintendo Switch, with its NVIDIA Tegra X1 SoC and 4GB of LPDDR4 RAM, can deliver a PS5-like experience when running? war zone or Modern Warfare 2? Or at least on PS4?

In order to counter the scenario and lest it come across as an unwarranted attack on Microsoft’s strategy or on the Nintendo Switch, I recommend this report from Eurogamer published in December 2022. There they analyzed the launch experience Warzone 2.0 on previous generation consoles. Specifically, the standard PS4, PS4 Pro, Xbox One and One X compared to the PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. And the results were stunning.

Although it is true that Warzone 2.0 can be “played” on older Sony and Microsoft consoles, the difference in the level of graphical detail, textures or frames per second is monstrous. But not only that. In some cases, the discrepancy is noticeable even in the sound.

In this case it is clear that games like war zone, Modern Warfare 2 and those joining the franchise in the future will focus on taking advantage of the increasingly powerful software and hardware that comes with the latest generation of consoles. Reproduction of native experience call of Duty what you get on PS5 or Xbox Series X is simply not possible today.

The case might have been different if Microsoft had picked it up via Game Pass and Cloud Gaming. But the Redmonds made a risky promise, talking about bringing call of Duty initially to the switch. And the argument that COD It already has mobile games, and the fact that this experience could be transferred to the Nintendo Switch is also invalid. Because? Because would contradict what Phil Spencer said: The best version of the game is available on all platforms.