The Call of Duty franchise has been a massive success since its debut back in 2003. This first-person shooter series has taken the world by storm and its latest installment, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 has sold more than 500 million copies worldwide. Amid BO6’s dominance, speculations are growing in the gaming industry about the franchise’s future on Nintendo consoles.
According to a ten-year agreement between Microsoft and Nintendo, Activision will be porting the whole of Call of Duty series to the upcoming Nintendo handheld console. However, while the next-generation handheld is getting the franchise, one older Nintendo system was notably left behind.
Since the release of the Nintendo Wii U back in 2012, Activision has been porting its old CoD games to the handheld console. This was first implemented through their 2007 release, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and continued till the release of Call of Duty: Ghosts in 2013. The 2014 title Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare was not ported to the Wii U.
In an interview with Eurogamer, Michael Condrey, the co-founder of Sledgehammer, Condrey stated that the decision to abandon the Wii U was made by Activision. Sledgehammer serves as the primary developer of CoD games.
We’re not developing a Wii U version, that was a business decision made by Activision to focus us on Xbox One, PS4 and PC. Another studio is doing current-gen. The Wii U wasn’t on the business key plan. So that was off our radar, but I know the company’s not doing it.
He also confirmed this statement on his X (formerly Twitter) reply saying that the decision was made by Activision.
@1422644 no, no WiiU. That was an Activision decision. We are focused on XboxOne, PS4, and PC.
— Michael Condrey (@MichaelCondrey) August 20, 2014
In another interview between Eurogamer Italy and Activision publishing head, Eric Hirshberg, he stated that they analyzed which platform is appropriate for each game and that Wii U was not an appropriate option for Advanced Warfare.
All I can say is we analyse each game and the platforms we think are appropriate for each game each time. It’s a judgement call each time. This is the judgement we made.
It was evident that Activision’s decision was influenced by the Wii U’s struggles at that time. The console suffered from low sales, a weak lineup of games, little to no third-party support, and poor marketing all of which contributed to the downfall of the Wii U.
By choosing not to port Call of Duty titles to the Wii U, Activision had effectively backed out from bringing AAA games to handheld consoles and rather focused instead on PC, Playstation, and Xbox. However, while the publishing company had stopped porting Call of Duty games to handheld consoles, they continued to publish other titles for the Wii U such as the Angry Birds or The Amazing Spiderman series.
After the Wii U failure, Nintendo bounced back with the world’s best handheld console in 2017, the Nintendo Switch which became a massive hit selling more than 146 million units worldwide. Despite taking the world by storm, Call of Duty titles were not ported to Switch.
Bobby Kotick, the CEO of Activision later revealed that he had the chance of bringing CoD to Nintendo but he chose against that and later regretted his decision. During Microsoft’s court case against the US Federal Trade Commission, he said.
When I saw the prototypes for Switch, I was concerned because they were trying to accomplish a lot with a console that also had a portable capability. I didn’t think it was going to be wildly successful.
Now that Activision and Microsoft are working together, the president of Microsoft, Bradford Smith highlighted that he aims to bring popular Activision titles to Switch to reach a wider audience as per a 2022 interview with CNBC.
We’d like to bring the other popular titles that Activision Blizzard has and ensure that they continue to be available on PlayStation, that they become available on Nintendo.
While Call of Duty titles will not be ported to the current Nintendo Switch, they will certainly make their way to Nintendo Switch 2.
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