In a recent response document by Microsoft that is now publicly available, the company addressed concerns over the performance of Call of Duty titles on the Nintendo Switch. This comes after a recent statement by Xbox CEO Phil Spencer, who stated the company’s goal to bring Call of Duty to “all platforms.”
It’s worth noting that Microsoft’s wording on Call of Duty being available on the Nintendo Switch means it’s the native version, and not one playable via the cloud. “Following the Merger, Microsoft will develop and publish future native console versions of CoD titles for Nintendo platforms for at least 10 years,” Microsoft stated.
The document claimed that Call of Duty’s free-to-play title, Warzone, runs on a “mature” game engine that’s also optimized for “a wide range of hardware devices.”
CoD includes both the free-to-play title Warzone and buy-to-play releases. The game engine that powers Warzone is mature and has been optimized to run on a wide range of hardware devices (ranging from the Xbox One console released in 2015 up to the Xbox Series X). Warzone supports PC hardware with GPU cards that were released as far back as 2015 (i.e., prior to the release of Nintendo Switch in 2017).
The claim is followed up by examples of console games that run well enough on the Nintendo Switch already, including Apex Legends, DOOM Eternal, Fortnite, and Crysis 3. Apex Legends and Fortnite are both worthy mentions given the fact that they share the battle royale format with Warzone. Here’s the full statement:
The Activision development team have a long history of optimizing game performance for available hardware capabilities. The Parties are confident that in addition to Warzone, CoD buy-to-play titles (e.g., CoD: Modern Warfare 2) can be optimised to run on the Nintendo Switch in a timely manner using standard techniques which have been used to bring games such as Apex Legends, DOOM Eternal, Fortnite and Crysis 3 to the Switch.
For those not up to date on the ongoing drama regarding the Microsoft-Activision acquisition, check out the latest report here, and see what Activision CEO Bobby Kotick has to say about Sony’s “sabotage” here.