Nvidia and Microsoft have worked out a partnership that will see Xbox PC games coming to the GeForce Now gaming livestream service.
Announced on Nvidia's official blog, the partnership is part of a 10-year deal that will see games on third-party services like Steam or Epic Games Store end up on the cloud service. The post also shares the very first games that will be available on the Windows Store. Currently, support for Halo, Minecraft, and Elder Scrolls is being worked on now, while titles like Call of Duty and Overwatch will be brought over if Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision goes through.
The latter has been facing strong opposition from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which filed a lawsuit in late 2022 to block the deal. If the FTC wins, Microsoft will stand not only to lose out on the exclusive rights to top-selling games but also not having those games to offer those same titles to Nvidia.
Microsoft’s impending court battle
This isn’t the only 10-year agreement that Microsoft has enacted recently. Nintendo and Microsoft reached a historic long-term legal agreement to bring Call of Duty to Nintendo platforms. It’s huge since the last COD title to come to a Nintendo console was Call of Duty: Ghosts back in 2013.
The timing is what’s interesting about this deal, since it serves to counter the argument brought forth by the FTC that the Microsoft/Activision Blizzard deal would create a monopoly within the gaming industry and breach US anti-trust laws.
Microsoft had also reportedly offered Sony the rights to Call of Duty on PS Plus, which serves to appease doubt that the former would create a monopoly. This offer was on the heels of Sony’s very public opposition to the deal. The tech giant also recently served Sony a subpoena to appear in a pre-court hearing and, according to the court filing, wants Sony to detail PlayStation’s game production pipeline.
