In a further effort to convince European Union regulators to approve of its planned merger with Activision Blizzard, Microsoft has just announced a deal with NVIDIA that will add Microsoft"s Xbox PC games to the GeForce Now cloud gaming service.
The Verge reports that the deal was announced in Brussels during a press conference by Microsoft president Brad Smith. As previously reported, Microsoft reps went to Brussels today to meet with EU regulators to convince them to give their thumbs up to the company"s $69 billion acquistion of Activison Blizzard.
Microsoft"s deal with NVIDIA means that the graphics chip maker now approves of the Activision Blizzard merger. It also means that one of Microsoft"s biggest rivals in the cloud gaming industry will have access to a ton of the company"s games. That will also include the list of Activion Blizzard games which will be added to GeForce Now, presuming the merger with Microsoft goes through as planned. However, unlike Microsoft"s cloud gaming service, which lets people play hundreds of games with an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription, GeForce Now is for the purchase of individual games.
The deal comes just a few hours after Smith also announced a 10 year deal to bring Microsoft"s Xbox games, and Call of Duty games, to Nintendo game platforms. Microsoft says it wants to make a similar deal with Sony"s PlayStation consoles, but so far Sony has not expressed any interest in such an agreement. Indeed Sony claims Microsoft has engaged in "obvious harassment" with Microsoft"s request for information about Sony"s PlayStation executives.
The EU has sent Microsoft a list of concerns about the Activision Blizzard merger deal, and UK regulators have done the same. It looks like we will get a final "go-no go" for the merger in the very near future.