Microsoft Signs 10-Year Deal With Cloud Streaming Service Ubitus - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 15 March 2023 / 3,098 Views
Microsoft for the second time this week announced it has signed a deal to bring Xbox games on PC to a cloud streaming service. This includes Activision Blizzard games on PC if Microsoft's acquisition of the company is approved.
This is a 10-year deal with Taiwan-based cloud gaming company, Ubitus. Its technology has been used to bring several games to the Nintendo Switch and elsewhere. Switch games that use Ubitus' cloud technology includes Control, Resident Evil Village, Guardians of the Galaxy, Hitman 3, and more.
"Microsoft and Ubitus , 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," said Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer via Twitter. "Our commitment is to give more players, more choice."
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
Yesterday, Microsoft signed a 10-year agreement with cloud streaming service Boosteroid to release Xbox games on PC to the platform, as well as Activision Blizzard games on PC if the acquisition is approved.
Microsoft and Nvidia also announced last month the two companies have signed a 10-year partnership to bring Xbox games on PC to the Nvidia GeForce Now cloud gaming service. The agreement will enable gamers to stream Xbox games on PC from GeForce Now to PCs, macOS, Chromebooks, smartphones, and more. If Microsoft's Activision Blizzard deal is approved it will bring games from Activision Blizzard to GeForce Now, including Call of Duty.
Microsoft has also entered a 10-year commitment with Nintendo in December 2022 to bring Call of Duty to Nintendo platforms if Microsoft's Activision Blizzard acquisition is approved.
"Microsoft has entered into a 10-year commitment to bring Call of Duty to Nintendo following the merger of Microsoft and Activision Blizzard King," said Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer at the time. "Microsoft is committed to helping bring more games to more people – however they choose to play."
a significant milestone for Ubitus – keeping up our mission of bringing quality games to more platforms and players in more countries with our accessible game streaming solution
— Ubitus K.K. (@UbitusKK) March 15, 2023
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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So that's how they gonna bring CoD on Switch
I'm sure it's the easiest path if they need feature parity.
Makes sense, the Switch 1 is not going to run a modern CoD natively without a crap ton of work, it's why Activision hasn't already put it on Switch. Though by the time this acquisition closes, if it closes, CoD 2023 will have already released, and by the time CoD 2024 releases I would imagine Switch 2 will have already launched most likely in March 2024, and Switch 2 specs should allow a native port with only minimal work. Maybe they will release CoD natively on Switch 2 as well as release it on Switch 1 via the cloud, or maybe the deal is only for Switch 2 native ports, hard to say.
I mean they released black ops III on PS360 in 2015, no way they couldn't do the job for a Switch version for CoD 2016 or 2017
The difficult work would be building the game for ARM processor. Xbox 360, wii, wii-u were all powerpc and ps3 was cell but since they dropped wii-u support 10 years ago they only targeted X86 ever since. So even their engine, depending on how they currently develop warzone mobile, might not be able to do ARM as of now.
More choice for 10 years, what happens after?
That will probably depend on how well the game sells on Nintendo systems.
