Microsoft and Nvidia agreed to a 10-year partnership to bring Xbox PC games to Nvidia GeForce Now cloud gaming service.
The deal also encompasses Activision Blizzard titles, which includes the Call Of Duty series, should Microsoft’s acquisition of the publisher for nearly $70 billion USD goes through.
GeForce Now currently allows players to stream the PC games they own to various devices including PCs, macOS computers, Chromebooks, smartphones and other mobile devices. All players need to do is linked their Steam or Epic Games Store account, and should the game support GeForce Now, they can be streamed. The service is supposed to expand to Malaysia sometime soon by local telco Yes 5G.
With this new deal, Xbox PC games purchased on the Microsoft Store will be able to be streamed via GeForce Now. Work on the integration has begun immediately.
This new deal is a small slice of a bigger story. Microsoft is still facing hurdles from regulators to let the Activision Blizzard deal go through. Nvidia was one of the few companies, alongside Google parent company Alphabet and Sony, to be against the acquisition.
With this GeForce Now deal, Nvidia is now “offering its full support for regulatory approval of the acquisition”.
The press release paints this deal as allowing more players to play games under the Xbox banner. “Through this partnership, more of the world’s most popular titles will now be available from the cloud with just a click, playable by millions more gamers,” said Jeff Fisher, senior vice president for GeForce at Nvidia.
GeForce Now is in direct competition with Xbox’s own cloud gaming offerings- offered via Xbox Game Pass. So this deal is to show that Microsoft won’t be locking their games (and Call Of Duty, should they own ActiBlizz) and force players to join the Xbox ecosystem, but rather to provide more access to the games on more platforms even outside of Xbox.
The announcement, made at a Microsoft press conference held in Brussels, Belgium, also announced a 10-year deal to bring the Call Of Duty series to Nintendo platforms, again, should Microsoft is allowed to acquire ActiBlizz.