Microsoft is “confident” that Call of Duty can be optimised for the Switch

In part of its bid to acquire Activision Blizzard, Microsoft has told the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) that it’s “confident” Call of Duty can run on Switch.

Microsoft is obviously putting the work in to make sure its deal to acquire Activision Blizzard will go through. Part of convincing all the relevant parties that it doesn’t want to harm competition has been by signing deals like it has with Nintendo, where the two companies agreed to a contract guaranteeing Call of Duty ports on the Switch for 10 years (if the deal goes through).

But in the CMA’s provisional findings report, the organisation wrote that there is “no certainty that this will lead to CoD becoming available on Nintendo,” even with the deal in place, noting the hybrid console’s “technical limitations” compared to current PlayStation and Xbox consoles (thanks, Eurogamer).

Microsoft has since responded to the concerns raised in the report, writing, “The game engine that powers Warzone is mature and has been optimised 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 response goes on to note that Activision has a “long history of optimising game performance for available hardware capabilities,” and says it it believes that titles like Warzone and Modern Warfare 2 can be optimised to run on the Switch similarly to titles from other developers such as Apex Legends, Doom Eternal, Fortnite, and Crysis 3. All of those titles do look noticeably worse on Switch, but it can’t really be argued that they don’t run on the console.

We aren’t far away from finding out the CMA’s say on the acquisition, as it’s set to publish its ruling on April 26.