UK's CMA says Nintendo Switch hardware is too weak to run Call of Duty. Microsoft and Activision Disagree

[AlTech]

Summary

 

The UK's Competion and Markets Authority (CMA) has said that they were not convinced by Microsoft and Activision's arguments that the Nintendo Switch would be able to run Call Of Duty and have said the Nintendo Switch is a totally different type of console to Xbox or Playstation consoles in technical specs and the types of games that run on it.

 

The news came about as a result of the CMA's report on whether the Acquision should go ahead or not; they ultimately ended up blocking the acquisition.

 

Microsoft and Activision had argued that the Nintendo Switch could run Call of Duty either locally or as a Cloud streamed game and that it could bring Call of Duty to Up To 100 million Switch Owners if they brought Call of Duty to Nintendo consoles.

 

The CMA said that even if Microsoft made COD a cloud based game for the Nintendo Switch it would be very different to a locally installed and run game and ultimately a Nintendo console isn't a substitute for an Xbox or Playstation. Nintendo console users are more likely to play casual or less competitive games.

 

The CMA continued saying that people who own an Xbox or Playstation console are likely to also have a Nintendo console such as a Nintendo Switch. Thus removing Call Of Duty from Playstation and moving it to Nintendo consoles would not significantly expand the reach of Call of Duty to more customers; it would just shift where COD is played.

 

The CMA's ultimate conclusion is that they do not believe Microsoft and Activision on this matter and that the Nintendo Switch running Call of Duty is so impractical as to be a non-starter.

 

Quotes

Quote

"Overall, the evidence shows that the product characteristics of Nintendo Switch are significantly different from those of Xbox and PlayStation, including its technical specifications, capability to host graphically intensive games and prices," the CMA writes. "Xbox and PlayStation are more similar in this respect."

The CMA cites a number of unnamed third-party publishers to establish the differences between the Switch and other consoles in terms of both technical capabilities and audience. But the CMA also cites a "Microsoft internal document [that] points to the differences in the technical strategies of Xbox/PlayStation and Nintendo consoles."

 

Quote

The feasibility of a Switch CoD isn't a completely new concern for the CMA. The regulator's February preliminary findings report explicitly noted the "technical limitations" of "the Switch’s limited graphics and storage" and "evidence that large shooter games do not run as well on Nintendo’s consoles due to its technical differentiation."

 

My thoughts

I'm not sure how Activision thought Call of Duty could run on a Nintendo Switch tbh; a cloud version would have too much latency, and an installed version wouldn't even fit on the Switch's internal storage so customers would likely need to buy a microSD card just to play Call of Duty.

 

I suppose they could port Call of Duty mobile to Nintendo Switch and remap the controls to use the Joycons but idk if that would satisfy the Playstation owners who also own a Switch who wouldn't get future Call of Duty games.

 

Sources

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2023/04/uk-government-says-the-nintendo-switch-cant-handle-call-of-duty/

[Levent]

Eh, why would any of these matter?

[AlTech]

Just now, Levent said:

Eh, why would any of these matter?

Microsoft is/was trying to argue that even if all the Playstation customers lost access to COD that lots of other customers would get access to COD balancing things out.

 

This was one of their arguments for why they should have been allowed to merge with Activision.

[Holmes108]

1 minute ago, Levent said:

Eh, why would any of these matter?

 

This is pretty much where I’m at. I find it wild that this type of stuff is being discussed by a regulatory agency. I mean, if you (anyone) just thinks that the merger shouldn’t go through in general because the companies are too big, based on revenue, pricing, marketshare, etc I probably don’t agree, but I can totally see the argument.

 

But the degree to which the CMA seems to be going into speculation, projection, and almost a ‘gut feeling’ about gamer habits is kind of ridiculous to me.

[Zodiark1593]

With a lot of dev resources behind it, CoD could probably technically be made to run on Switch, and still look decent, but an “Impossible Port” project is more a labor of love, than a practical and profitable pursuit. 

[RVRY]

I feel the only way they could convince the CMA is if Nintendo launches the Switch successor while they are appealing. This is possible, given the piece of Nintendo hardware that was redacted in trial documents not too long ago... Though given Activision Blizzards track record with Diablo and Overwatch I do believe a decent port to Switch is possible

[Error 52]

42 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

I'm not sure how Activision thought Call of Duty could run on a Nintendo Switch tbh; a cloud version would have too much latency, and an installed version wouldn't even fit on the Switch's internal storage so customers would likely need to buy a microSD card just to play Call of Duty.

MWII with Warzone and the campaign installed is about 70GB-ish, at least on PC. Fairly chonky, but smaller than, say, Doom Eternal.

 

I think MWII, in theory, could run on the Switch - for all the game's technical faults, optimization and scalability isn't one of them - but it would be a fairly crippled and depressing way to play it, that's for sure. Not to mention that you'd need to port the engine from x64 to ARM, which would be a technical challenge even if the engine isn't held together with duct-tape and cum like CoD's is.

 

Also, I can't imagine developers aren't cooking up Switch 2 games by this point, and I would expect that to be around the PS4's performance level at minimum. CoD probably could come to that without too much issue.

[soldier_ph]

Well at least you can run Doom on the Switch.

[Shreyas1]

2 hours ago, Zodiark1593 said:

With a lot of dev resources behind it, CoD could probably technically be made to run on Switch, and still look decent, but an “Impossible Port” project is more a labor of love, than a practical and profitable pursuit. 

Well no one ever said anything about which COD. You could probably port over COD mobile or older CODs easily. 

[CarlBar]

2 hours ago, Holmes108 said:

 

This is pretty much where I’m at. I find it wild that this type of stuff is being discussed by a regulatory agency. I mean, if you (anyone) just thinks that the merger shouldn’t go through in general because the companies are too big, based on revenue, pricing, marketshare, etc I probably don’t agree, but I can totally see the argument.

 

But the degree to which the CMA seems to be going into speculation, projection, and almost a ‘gut feeling’ about gamer habits is kind of ridiculous to me.

 

Based on the OP, it seems they're concerned because of how it would change who has access to play it and how good their experiance would be. How a merger would affect the consumer is pretty much all regulatory agencies are about, it's just the usual things we think of, (like monopolistic issues), are more abstract than this. This is actually a pretty direct application of their remit, but in an uncommon way.

[Holmes108]

18 minutes ago, CarlBar said:

 

Based on the OP, it seems they're concerned because of how it would change who has access to play it and how good their experiance would be. How a merger would affect the consumer is pretty much all regulatory agencies are about, it's just the usual things we think of, (like monopolistic issues), are more abstract than this. This is actually a pretty direct application of their remit, but in an uncommon way.

 

Having to consider possible future outcomes has to be part of the calculation, to be sure.

 

But regarding cloud gaming specifically, I just don't get it. Game streaming is a nothingburger right now, and I see no evidence of that changing drastically anytime soon. Even if there is some growth, the idea that will be a major part of anyone's business, to the point of "anti competitiveness" in the videogame space overall, just doesn't jive for me. 

 

The idea of it being seemingly their biggest beef with the deal just seems odd.

[Salv8 (sam)]

6 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

I'm not sure how Activision thought Call of Duty could run on a Nintendo Switch tbh

it could be a fifa legacy situation, they just turn down the graphics to what the switch can handle.

i wouldn't be surprised if they shrink it down from 70gb to 20gb.

i'm only against this because Microsoft has way to many game studios under it's belt and shouldn't have any more.

they already own bethsda, rare, mojang, obsidian, double fine and way more. thats more then enough to have a good stake in the video games industry.

minecraft itself has a playerbase thats probably a third of all gamers!

at this point microsoft shouldn't be allowed to even consider buying any more video game devs.

[LAwLz]

11 hours ago, Holmes108 said:

Having to consider possible future outcomes has to be part of the calculation, to be sure.

 

But regarding cloud gaming specifically, I just don't get it. Game streaming is a nothingburger right now, and I see no evidence of that changing drastically anytime soon. Even if there is some growth, the idea that will be a major part of anyone's business, to the point of "anti competitiveness" in the videogame space overall, just doesn't jive for me. 

 

The idea of it being seemingly their biggest beef with the deal just seems odd.

Cloud gaming is a nothing burger right now, but it seems like Microsoft is betting big on it. The amount of times they mention cloud gaming is absurd.

They aren't buying Activision Blizzard for almost 70 billion dollars for laughs either. 

 

I don't think people understand how much money Microsoft are willing to spend here. It is very clear that they don't just want to buy Activision Blizzard for titles like COD and then leave the company alone. They have very big plans.

Nvidia tried to buy Arm for 40 billion dollars (and that was in my opinion a massive overprice).

Microsoft bought GitHub for 7.5 billion dollars.

 

If owning COD seems to be worth about twice as much as owning the company responsible for most processors in the world, on top of owning the host of a ton of software on top of frameworks like Electron (that runs a lot of the world's software) then maybe it is a good idea to be skeptical.

I don't think Activision Blizzard is worth twice as much as controlling Arm and GitHub unless you have really big plans for the future of gaming as a whole.

 

I think Microsoft's grand plan is to control all of gaming in ~15 years. They are betting big on cloud gaming, and in order to make that a reality they need to offer an extremely compelling product. Their compelling product is Game Pass. Once that is a no-brainer because of the price and the number of titles on the platform, they win. They don't seem afraid to spend several fortunes today to make that a reality either. It's the classic strategy of being extremely aggressive, making a super compelling product, and then having basically a monopoly. It's the same strategy Amazon used to become dominant.

 

As I said last time we had this conversation:  

On 11/11/2022 at 7:15 PM, LAwLz said:

The market dominance ladder is climbed one step at a time, and if we always judge each step in a vacuum with no regards to how far up they are the ladder already then sooner or later they will reach the top, which is very bad for everyone except that single company.

 

I think a lot of people are missing the forest for the trees here. The core issue isn't who owns Call of Duty. The issue is how much power should a single company get over an entire industry. Where should the line be drawn to benefit consumers and healthy competition?

To what point should companies be allowed to buy up competitors without any oversight? 

 

[Sauron]

16 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

I'm not sure how Activision thought Call of Duty could run on a Nintendo Switch tbh

I mean... doom eternal runs fine, no cloud required.

 

Not that I really care how this goes, it all seems like meaningless corporate blabber to gain more control over an already highly oligarchal market

[Holmes108]

3 hours ago, Sauron said:

I mean... doom eternal runs fine, no cloud required.

 

Not that I really care how this goes, it all seems like meaningless corporate blabber to gain more control over an already highly oligarchal market

 

Yeah, and I'm not an overly tin foil hat kind of guy, but I also tend to feel like decisions like this are probably often due just as much to political pressures, lobbying, self interest, etc. etc. as it is for public good. That goes equally for deals and mergers that do go through,  as much as ones that don't, to be clear. Maybe that's too cynical, but if there's any truth to it, then it makes dissecting some of the details like this relatively moot too.

[AlTech]

23 minutes ago, Holmes108 said:

 

Yeah, and I'm not an overly tin foil hat kind of guy, but I also tend to feel like decisions like this are probably often due just as much to political pressures, lobbying, self interest, etc. etc. than it is for public good. That goes equally for deals and mergers that do go through,  as much as ones that don't, to be clear. Maybe that's too cynical, but if there's any truth to it, then it makes dissecting some of the details like this relatively moot too.

This decision was made by a neutral and independant body. The UK government has no say in how the results turn out.

[Spindel]

Cloud gaming…

 

*OnLive and Stadia has left the chat*

[Holmes108]

35 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

This decision was made by a neutral and independant body. The UK government has no say in how the results turn out.

 

 

The FCC is independent too, lmao.

 

It's run by humans, nothing is 100% neutral. I'm not saying there was some specific bribe that changed hands, just that issues involving this many people and this much money can be complicated.

 

Edit: And again, before it goes there, my belief in this general truth would be 100% the same regardless of how this specific ruling went. It's just how the world is, unfortunately.

[Albal_156]

19 hours ago, Levent said:

Eh, why would any of these matter?

Microsoft/Activision also claimed in their response to the initla CMA report that CoD would be ported to 150 million more devices (Most of these are Switch consoles ~130 Million I think) so it was part of their argument about how the biggest selling game in the industry wouldn't be exclusive to Xbox. I agree CoD on Switch is just a non starter. Who would buy it over the Steam Deck or a ROG Ally now. Maybe a Switch successor but we havent heard anything about that. Maybe Activision/Microstf know things the CMA doesn't? Latency is too bad for CoD a competitive game with it being cloud based and the hardware is too basic for it to run modern CoD titles without a significant game rewrite and its a 720p. Switch has a Maxwell SoC from 2015. Idk how Activision expect that to run 2019/2022 Modern Warfare I/II or a future CoD game. No Ray tracing (when everyone expects that to be in mdoern AAA games now) thats for sure.

[Albal_156]

55 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

This decision was made by a neutral and independant body. The UK government has no say in how the results turn out.

Thats why Activision statement about the UK not being open for business or whatever was so crass. If the EU come to the same conclusion I hope the EVP of Activison gets ratioed because stuff like that just pisses people off. Companies expect they can just do deals like this and regulators won't have any concerns.

[Holmes108]

6 minutes ago, Albal_156 said:

Microsoft/Activision also claimed in their response to the initla CMA report that CoD would be ported to 150 million more devices (Most of these are Switch consoles ~130 Million I think) so it was part of their argument about how the biggest selling game in the industry wouldn't be exclusive to Xbox. I agree CoD on Switch is just a non starter. Who would buy it over the Steam Deck or a ROG Ally now. Maybe a Switch successor but we havent heard anything about that. Maybe Activision/Microstf know things the CMA doesn't? Latency is too bad for CoD a competitive game with it being cloud based and the hardware is too basic for it to run modern CoD titles without a significant game rewrite and its a 720p. Switch has a Maxwell SoC from 2015. Idk how Activision expect that to run 2019/2022 Modern Warfare I/II or a future CoD game. No Ray tracing (when everyone expects that to be in mdoern AAA games now) thats for sure.

 

Porting to switch isn't the best argument/assurance to be sure. I wonder if they couldn't (or even didn't) just make some sort of promise to it being openly available in a more general sense, to all the major players, on whatever hardware may appear over the next decade or whatever. 

 

I guess it's hard to give assurances a game can reasonably be ported to a system that doesn't even exist. You have no idea if it's going to be 2D, 3D, motion controls, etc etc.... 

[StDragon]

19 hours ago, soldier_ph said:

Well at least you can run Doom on the Switch.

That's a low bar considering it can run on a preggo test

[Doobeedoo]

What a meme. "Nintendo console users are more likely to play casual or less competitive games." 

Oh and ps/xb users aren't ?

Haha, ah yes CoD the peak casual normie shooter.

So much fuss of company buying company, in entertainment world too.

[Holmes108]

5 minutes ago, Doobeedoo said:

What a meme. "Nintendo console users are more likely to play casual or less competitive games." 

Oh and ps/xb users aren't ?

Haha, ah yes CoD the peak casual normie shooter.

So much fuss of company buying company, in entertainment world too.

 

It all seems a bit weird. They say it's all about game streaming, but that apparently is only 1-2% of the game market. Nvidia, who offers one of the bigger streaming competitors came out in favor of the deal. Still denied. They've said that even after the deal, MS would only be 3rd place, still behind Sony and Tencent. Blocking the deal seems to help the market leader(s) the most.

[Doobeedoo]

20 minutes ago, Holmes108 said:

 

It all seems a bit weird. They say it's all about game streaming, but that apparently is only 1-2% of the game market. Nvidia, who offers one of the bigger streaming competitors came out in favor of the deal. Still denied. They've said that even after the deal, MS would only be 3rd place, still behind Sony and Tencent. Blocking the deal seems to help the market leader(s) the most.

It's nothing to do with streaming, just trying to come up with arguments though.

Still baffling to me that this merger ia such a big deal, like gaming will be ruined or something. While literally could help Blizzard in ways.