Microsoft signs its fourth 10-year deal in four weeks in latest attempt to push the Activision acquisition through

gamesradar.com:

It must be a day that ends in 'y', because Microsoft's signed another 10-year deal, now with Ubitus, the cloud gaming "enabler" behind several Nintendo Switch ports. 

Xbox boss Phil Spencer announced the deal rather casually in a tweet (opens in new tab). The 10-year partnership will enable Ubitus to "stream Xbox PC Games as well as Activision Blizzard titles after the acquisition closes," Spencer says. 

It's currently unclear whether this list of games includes Call of Duty, as the series isn't mentioned by name, but it's a reasonable assumption. Microsoft president Brad Smith recently said more non-exclusivity Call of Duty deals will be announced in the next few weeks, and here we are again. 

"Our commitment is to give more players more choice," Spencer added, mimicking verbiage from a recent Microsoft press conference which saw the reveal of a 10-year Call of Duty deal with Nintendo and a 10-year streaming deal with Nvidia GeForce Now. Business development lead Sarah Bond echoed (opens in new tab) Spencer's tweet, maintaining that "giving customers more choice is core to what we do."

Of course, the underlying reason the company has become so 10-year-deal-happy is that it's looking to appease competition regulators who have opposed the Xbox Activision deal on the grounds that, on top of giving one publisher control of the industry megalith that is Call of Duty, it would give Xbox an unfair advantage in cloud gaming, a space it already dominates. Just yesterday, March 14, the company announced a 10-year deal with Ukrainian cloud service Boosteroid, hailed as "the largest independent cloud gaming provider in the world."

Deals like these let Microsoft demonstrate its much-vaunted "pro-competitive" stance even as it seeks