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The relationship between Sony and Nintendo has always been a rough one, but Sony has really been showing their ignorance of all things Nintendo in their current battle with Microsoft.

Long story short, Microsoft wants to buy Activision Blizzard and Sony doesn’t want them to. Sony wants to make sure Call of Duty keeps coming to Sony platforms, so they’re doing all they can to squash the deal. Multiple times now, Microsoft has pointed to Nintendo as a proof that hardware manufacturers can have success without Call of Duty, and furthermore, Microsoft has also pledged to bring Call of Duty to Nintendo hardware should the deal go through.

That all leads us to Sony’s most recent statement on the matter, and they unleash a wave of comments that make very little sense to anyone who follows Nintendo. Here’s just some of the comments Sony made to fight back against Microsoft’s plans.

  • “Nintendo’s younger audience is not interested in the first-person shooters”
  • previous Call of Duty releases on Nintendo hardware were “commercial flops”
  • the deal only exists to make Microsoft look cooperative
  • the Switch could not run Call of Duty and may never be able to
  • development of a Switch version would take years (making the deal meaningless)
  • Nintendo can accept the deal because they don’t have to “worry about equal treatment for its subscription services or cloud gaming service” as the company does not compete here aggressively

I mean, I don’t even know what to say about these comments. Some of them are so off the mark it’s incredible. Rather than let the anger in me boil over in this article, I’ll let Sony’s words above speak for themselves.

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Comments (9)

khufuthemummy

1+ y ago

Resident Call of Duty expert Josh Grobot ought to have the final say on this topic.


tendonin

1+ y ago

*It’s well documented that a large percentage of Switch owners are adults. It’s mainly teens where Switch lags.

*The most recent Nintendo CoD entries were on Wii U, so that data is basically meaningless. Before that the series at least did well enough to get versions on Wii and DS regularly. I guess Activision should have dropped Sony after Reflex bombed on Vita?

*This one’s obviously on target. Not that Sony’s impartial in pointing that out, but we all see it.

…and I’m already tired or pointing out why these are mostly silly. Basically they’re pretending Nintendo won’t have upgraded products and services in the next 10 years. A better point would be that Microsoft is acquiring much more than CoD.

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ngamer01

1+ y ago

* “Nintendo’s younger audience is not interested in the first-person shooters”

Modern Warfare 3, Black Ops 1, and Goldeneye Wii were high selling FPSs for a Nintendo platform.

* previous Call of Duty releases on Nintendo hardware were “commercial flops”

Only because Blops 2 was hamstrung by the Wii U failing at the market and Ghosts failed at all platforms it was sold on including Playstation too. Ghosts was eviscerated for being a weak follow-up to Blops 2 and to date it and Infinite Warfare are the only Infinity Ward games to not have any of their maps remade for newer CoDs in any capacity.

And it was 2013 when Bobby Kotick mostly gave up on Nintendo. My hopes for when Microsoft is able to seal the deal is not only for CoD to return to Nintendo, but for Microsoft to unseal all the abandoned IP Activision owns. Activision screwed many an IP when they didn't sell like 10 million copies on day 1.

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vinlauria

1+ y ago

Gamers rise up, am I right?


riftsilver

1+ y ago

The only point I agree with is the "the Switch could not run Call of Duty and may never be able to", only because there's been comments from Activision before about how their 2019 engine doesn't scale to the Switch.

Not to say it's completely impossible, but it would likely require an completely different engine built from the ground up. Especially since we're now moving into territory where developers are dropping PS4 and Xbox One support, I think it's very likely that whatever version actually came out would be missing gameplay or features the other versions would have (similar to how Black Ops 3 was missing campaign and co-op on the Xbox 360 / PS3 versions).

It's a nice thought, but unless we're getting a new Switch sometime in the near feature, I wouldn't bet on a meaningful CoD experience.


sligeach_eire

1+ y ago

Why can I picture Young Link with his sling shot firing out these weak insults? There's so much that can be said about all of this.

“Nintendo’s younger audience is not interested in the first-person shooters”

The Call of Duty games are rated 18+. Kids shouldn't be playing these games, but we all know what happens. It's a strange stayemy that I'd love to ask follow-up questions to. Sony know they're under pressure and they'll say anything that they think helps them.


kuribo

1+ y ago

The arguments of anti-competitiveness are valid but the way Sony is positioning things would also set a precedent against them if this Microsoft Activision deal falls through and Sony later tries to acquire any future studios. Microsoft would end up with significant ammo to stifle their acquisitions big or small.

The weirdest thing about all this are the arguments and statements from Sony. You’d think they’d have a legal team that could message their arguments better.


This deal most likely concerns future Nintendo platforms, not the Switch(unless it was a Cloud version)

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enthropy

1+ y ago

-the deal only exists to make Microsoft look cooperative

This is 100% true though. MS is just as desperate for the deal to go through as Sony is for it not to and that's the only reason MS made this PR move "deal" with Nintendo who can only win on this anyway.

And it's fucking obvious that there will be a new Nintendo system within 10 years, so those comments are rubbish. From the rumours it seems like it will be a pretty darn good upgrade from the current Switch too. And they will probably even announce it next year.