The approval by government bodies of the maxi-acquisition of Activizion Blizzard initiated by Microsoft will still take several months, and in the meantime the Redmond house is making some important moves to facilitate approval.

One of these was announced today: Microsoft has entered into a 10-year agreement with Nintendo to bring Call of Duty, currently absent on Switch, on the hardware of the Japanese house, obviously if the acquisition is successful.

Similarly, a deal was offered to Valve to keep CoD on Steam; the game is already present on the platform, but there were fears that MS could exploit the acquisition to make the game exclusive in the Windows Store. Valve's Gabe Newell said such a proposal wasn't necessary, given that Microsoft has been on Steam for a long time and the company doesn't expect it to remove its games or even CoD in the future.

Both agreements are intended to demonstrate to government authorities that the acquisition is not intended to make CoD exclusive or remove it from specific hardware, but rather that Microsoft's purpose is to make it available to a wider audience of players. Obviously what matters to Microsoft is to be able to include it in the Game Pass, which has now become much more important than any exclusivity.

Sony, which is vigorously opposing this acquisition, has received the same ten-year agreement proposal, but for now it has been rejected: we will see if they can reiterate with the same force that Microsoft wants to "keep CoD all to itself", when the statements and now also the company's actions prove the exact opposite.