Analyst Says Microsoft/Nintendo CoD Deal Is a Win-Win for All, Comments on Game Pass and Slowing Switch Sales

wccftech.com:

Over the past couple of weeks, there were lots of noteworthy news regarding Microsoft and Nintendo, the most recent of which is the 10-year contract they signed yesterday to get Call of Duty on Nintendo platforms, provided that Microsoft finalizes the acquisition of Activision Blizzard.

We were able to pick the brain of MIDiA Research co-founder and senior analyst Karol Severin to get his take on these hot industry topics. Let's start from the end; here's his opinion on yesterday's announcement.

I see this largely as a win-win for all parties involved. Regulators get assurances about any potential ‘threat’ of Call of Duty going exclusive (which, in my opinion, was never really an actual threat anyway – more detail in this article of yours I commented on in the past ).

Microsoft and Activision get to unlock additional audience for Call of Duty (as it wasn’t available on Nintendo Switch). In turn, Nintendo will also unlock a new revenue channel, particularly for the segment of gamers who only own Nintendo hardware. For example, in the UK, approximately 45% of Nintendo hardware users do not use a PlayStation nor an Xbox. (MIDiA Research Q3 2022 survey, n=1,000, 16+ online population, nationally representative to age and gender) So this will likely present a revenue upside for Activision and, ultimately, Microsoft if the acquisition is approved. Of course, this new audience for Call of Duty may also translate to additional value for Microsoft regarding its cloud business in the future if Microsoft decided to take Activision’s cloud services demand away from Google.

Severin still believes the deal will go through and sees the CMA's provisional findings of endangered competition as part of the process.

I still think the deal