Nintendo fans hoping that the ultra-popular Call of Duty series would eventually come to the Switch got an unexpected boost last night. That's when Microsoft's Xbox chief Phil Spencer announced that the company had reached "a 10-year commitment to bring Call of Duty to Nintendo following the merger of Microsoft and Activision Blizzard King." The announcement comes alongside a similar announcement promising to keep Call of Duty on Steam for the same period of time.

If the "10-year commitment" part of those announcements sounds familiar, it's probably because it's the same length of time Microsoft has reportedly formally offered to keep the Call of Duty franchise on PlayStation consoles. That followed a September offer to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation for three additional years, which Sony called inadequate in public statements. But Spencer has gone much further in his public statements, saying in October that Microsoft would continue to ship a PlayStation Call of Duty "as long as there's a PlayStation out there to ship to."



The Nintendo announcement is significantly more surprising, though, considering that Call of Duty hasn't appeared on a Nintendo console since Call of Duty Ghosts hit the Wii U in 2013. That game came one year after Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 became a surprise launch title for the ill-fated console.

Switching things up

From a business perspective, the bestselling Switch is a much more appealing target for Activision and/or Microsoft than the Wii U ever was. But the limited hardware power of the Switch makes Call of Duty something of an awkward fit for a series that's always aimed for top-of-the-line presentation on modern consoles and PCs.

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Then again, limited hardware power didn't stop a series of scaled-down Call of Duty conversions for the Nintendo DS up through 2011's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare - Defiance. Other developers have turned to streaming versions to get their high-end games available on the Switch, especially in Japan.

Modern FPS titles from Warface and Doom have seen low-res ports squeezed onto the Switch in recent years with mixed results. But persistent rumors of a more powerful "Switch 2" in the coming years would definitely make any potential Call of Duty ports less of a development lift.

The possibility of a Switch version of Call of Duty hasn't exactly come out of nowhere for Microsoft. At an October Wall Street Journal Live event, Spencer said, "When I think about our plans, I’d love to see [Call of Duty] on Switch and playable on many different screens." In practically the same breath, though, he said that "this opportunity is really about mobile" and the 3 billion potential customers who could play Call of Duty on a smartphone.

"Microsoft is committed to helping bring more games to more people—however they choose to play," Spencer said in his Tuesday night announcement.