Microsoft is still working hard to persuade antitrust authorities that its intended acquisition of Activision Blizzard won’t harm competition in the gaming sector. Activision today disclosed a 10-year partnership with cloud gaming service Boosteroid under which, assuming the deal closes, Boosteroid would stream Activision’s PC games.
Microsoft is making yet another effort to convince EU, UK, and US regulators that it won’t use the agreement to drive out rivals and hinder competition. The Call of Duty series will now be available on devices like the Switch and GeForce Now thanks to recent 10-year agreements it has signed with Nintendo and Nvidia. Microsoft has stated that it offered Sony a similar licencing arrangement for the PlayStation, but Sony has declined, and it has committed to maintaining Steam’s availability concurrently with Xbox. Sony voiced its reservations about the arrangement earlier this month, including the possibility that Microsoft may release Call of Duty for PlayStation with bugs, which would reduce players’ confidence in using Sony consoles to play the hugely popular shooter.
The Wall Street Journal quoted Microsoft President Brad Smith as saying, “If the only argument is that Microsoft is going to withhold Call of Duty from other platforms, and we’ve now entered into contracts that are going to bring this to many more devices and many more platforms, that is a pretty hard case to make to a court.” We wish to purchase Activision Blizzard in order to strengthen our gaming business and round out our game selection to have a more complete library, particularly on mobile devices where we don’t currently have a significant presence.
The largest independent cloud gaming service in the world is called Boosteroid. It enables multi-device streaming access like GeForce Now but necessitates buying paid titles on other platforms. (including Steam, Epic Games, Battle.net and Origin). The games now available on Boosteroid include Call of Duty: Warzone from Activision, Grand Theft Auto V, Red Dead Redemption 2, and Fortnite. (among many others). It offers native programmes for Windows, macOS, Android, Android TV, and Linux, and it can stream games through web browsers. Boosteroid has servers in Romania, Ukraine, Italy, Slovakia, France, Spain, the UK, Sweden, Serbia, and the US (iOS is absent because it doesn’t let native cloud-gaming apps without cumbersome workarounds).
