Microsoft pledges to bring Xbox PC games to Nvidia GeForce Now

By Tomas Franzese February 21, 2023

Microsoft has announced a 10-year partnership with Nvidia aimed at bringing Xbox PC games to its cloud gaming service competitor Nvidia GeForce Now as part of its ongoing efforts to win over companies skeptical of its potebtial Activision Blizzard acquisition.

This means that players can use Nvidia GeForce Now to play the Steam, Epic Games Store, or Windows versions of titles like Halo Infinite, Redfall, and eventually, Call of Duty through the cloud on GeForce Now. Third-party publishers with games on the Windows Store can also now grant streaming rights to Nvidia. This announcement came during a European Commission hearing where Microsoft tried to convince regulators that its impending acquisition should bne allowed.

Microsoft has been under a lot of regulatory scrutiny even since it announced its intent to acquire Activision Blizzard in January 2022. It’s trying to win over industry peers with deals like this one with Nvidia. This week, the Communications Workers of America voiced its approval of the deal, and Microsoft has signed a binding agreement to bring Call of Duty to Nintendo platforms as well. Previously, Nvidia had raised concerns about Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard acquisition, but the press release announcing this agreement states that the deal “resolves Nvidia’s concerns,” and that Nvidia now gives “full support for regulatory approval of the acquisition.”

Regulatory bodies in the U.S., U.K., and Europe are worried that Microsoft acquiring Activision Blizzard will hurt the game industry and sabotage Microsoft’s competitors in both console and cloud gaming. Nvidia GeForce Now is seen as one of the biggest competitors to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate’s cloud service offerings, which makes it surprising that it reached an agreement with Nvidia. However, this deal also demonstrates how Microsoft is willing to make concessions so that its acquisition of Activision Blizzard is approved.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Gaming Staff Writer

Tomas Franzese is a Staff Writer at Digital Trends, where he reports on and reviews the latest releases and exciting…

Gaming

The best games on Xbox Game Pass for right now (September 2023)

As the Xbox Game Pass program has grown, so has our list of the best games on Xbox Game Pass. After the launch of the Xbox Series X, Microsoft has doubled down on Game Pass, now offering well over 350 games on the console alone. To help you through option paralysis, we rounded up the top games on Microsoft's subscription platform.

Many titles are available across Xbox and PC, and some of them even have cross-save support. Most of the games are available for streaming on mobile too, as long as you have Game Pass Ultimate. The Game Pass library is also constantly changing, so check out our monthly guide for addition and removal announcements.

Gaming

Microsoft gives Activision Blizzard cloud gaming rights to Ubisoft

Microsoft's Xbox Cloud Gaming Service Enters Beta This Week

Microsoft announced its intention to grant Ubisoft, the publisher behind series like Assassin's Creed and Far Cry, the cloud streaming rights for Activision Blizzard titles if Microsoft's acquisition of the Call of Duty publisher goes through.
This deal was made in order to appease the U.K.'s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). Microsoft has not had an easy time trying to acquire Activision Blizzard as it has run into heavy resistance from regulatory bodies like the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the U.K.'s CMA. The CMA's complaints centered around the potential monopoly Microsoft could have on cloud gaming if the deal were to go through. There was speculation that Microsoft would divest its U.K. cloud gaming efforts to appease the CMA, but it has now presented this new plan that would technically make it give up control of Activision Blizzard game-streaming rights worldwide for the next 15 years.
In a blog post, Microsoft President Brad Smith explainsed that if the Activision Blizzard acquisition happens, Microsoft will give "cloud streaming rights for all current and new Activision Blizzard PC and console games released over the next 15 years" in perpetuity following a one-off payment.
Essentially, Ubisoft will be the one deciding which cloud gaming platforms and services to put Activision Blizzard games on, not Microsoft. Smith claims that this means "Microsoft will not be in a position either to release Activision Blizzard games exclusively on its own cloud streaming service -- Xbox Cloud Gaming -- or to exclusively control the licensing terms of Activision Blizzard games for rival services," and that Ubisoft will allow them to honor existing agreements with companies like Nvidia.

Ubisoft has been cloud gaming friendly over the past several years, eagerly putting its games on services like Google Stadia and Amazon Luna. With this deal, Ubisoft says it plans to bring Activision Blizzard games to its Ubisoft+ subscription service. Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick also commented on the deal, saying that he approves of the deal, but that "nothing substantially changes with the addition of this divestiture" for Activision Blizzard and its investors.
The current deadline for Microsoft's Activision Blizzard acquisition is October 18.

Gaming

The impending Xbox 360 Store closure makes me wary of Game Pass’ future

I'm an avid Xbox Game Pass user, often trying almost every game that comes to the service and closely following the games coming to and leaving the service each month. Following some recent announcements by Microsoft, though, I've been thinking a lot more about something else about Xbox Game Pass and Microsoft's current digital-focused Xbox storefronts and ecosystem: what happens when it all goes away?
Microsoft announced last week that it will shut down the Xbox 360 Store in July 2024. After that day, it will be impossible to buy games, movies, or TV shows digitally on the Xbox 360 store; it's just like what happened with the 3DS and Wii U eShops earlier this year. That announcement also came not long after Microsoft revealed it would replace Xbox Live Gold with Xbox Game Pass Core in September. With these changes, Microsoft is stamping out any support or focus its giving to the Xbox 360's era as a platform. As someone who grew up mostly playing Xbox 360, seeing these things I grew up with go away is saddening. It's also making me think about the day this will eventually happen to Xbox Game Pass or the store on the Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S.

Frankly, I'm not as concerned that Microsoft is going to do it anytime soon. Microsoft has given no indication that it plans on abandoning Xbox Game Pass. It's a really successful subscription service heavily integrated into all of its current platforms, there are titles confirmed to launch day one on it into 2024 and beyond, and Xbox initiatives like Play Anywhere and Smart Delivery ensure that at least some version of most Xbox games are available on other platforms. While I expect it to be the primary part of Microsoft's gaming strategy over the next decade, as someone who mainly played Xbox 360 growing up and is now seeing its storefront and subscription service go away, I'm now thinking about what the end of the Game Pass era will look like.
These recent actions have indicated that Microsoft will eventually be willing to do the same to the storefronts and subscription service we're currently using. Even after the backlash PlayStation, Nintendo, and Xbox all faced from these announcements, Sony is the only one that has backtracked its plans to close down older digital storefronts, at least temporarily. Xbox Game Pass is the current hotness for Microsoft, but what happens come the day it isn't? A lot more games are digital-only or tied to a subscription this generation, and those are the games most at risk of being lost if a digital storefront shuts down.
What happens to the Xbox console versions of games like Pentiment or Immortality on Xbox once Xbox Game Pass and the current iteration of the Xbox Store are shuttered? Yes, they can be played on PC, but the Xbox console version will be lost forever. And right now, it doesn't seem like Microsoft has any publicly shared plans to permanently preserve those experiences, nor has it done so for all of the Xbox 360 digital games going away. Game preservation is a significant problem facing the game industry, and Microsoft has just made a move showing that it's on the wrong side of that effort.