However, it appears Call of Duty’s absence on Nintendo is something that Microsoft wants to address in the future.
During a CNBC interview, Microsoft’s President Brad Smith talked plenty, but one thing that probably stood out the most to Call of Duty fans is what Smith said about the future of Activision Blizzard’s marquee shooter on Nintendo devices. Specifically, Smith singled out Call of Duty as something that they’d like to bring to the Nintendo Switch. Of course, Smith did say that Microsoft wants to bring other popular franchises by Activision Blizzard to Nintendo consoles as well, but it is telling that he mentioned Call of Duty. In an ideal world, Smith’s statement is a tease for a potential Switch port of Call of Duty. But, when you think about it, porting the popular shooter to the Switch isn’t easy. The largest games on the Nintendo Switch barely crack 40GB. Compressing files is a huge issue when you have to get games down to a quarter of their original file size on other platforms, which is something that Microsoft and Activision Blizzard would have to do in order to get Call of Duty on the Nintendo Switch. The good news is that solving the file size issue guarantees that a Call of Duty game can run on the Nintendo Switch. Doom Eternal, which is a similarly graphically-demanding game, runs just fine on Nintendo’s hybrid console. The same goes for the likes of Apex Legends and Fortnite. So, if Activision Blizzard finds a way to bring just Call of Duty: Warzone alone on the Nintendo Switch at around 30GB, there’s no reason why it wouldn’t run smoothly. Unfortunately, we’re all speaking hypotheticals here. Unless Microsoft or Activision Blizzard confirms anything, all we can do is wait and speculate. In other news, Xbox head Phil Spencer just shot down fears of an Xbox Game Pass price hike following Microsoft’s massive acquisition of Activision Blizzard. It appears that Xbox is focused on Starfield right now while waiting for the buyout to clear, which could take as long as June 2023.
