A Call of Duty character hangs on the wall in a stairwell on Friday, Oct. 21, 2022, at Activision Blizzard, Infinity Ward Division, in Woodland Hills, Calif. (AP Photo/Allison Dinner)
Microsoft has struck a deal with Nintendo to make Call of Duty available across its platforms.
"We’ve now signed a binding 10-year contract to bring Xbox games to Nintendo’s gamers," Microsoft president Brad Smith tweeted Tuesday.
The deal ensures that Nintendo gamers will have access to the latest Call of Duty titles on "the same day as Xbox, with full feature and content parity." The company came to a similar agreement with Sony to ensure access to the popular franchise for PlayStation gamers as well.
Following Microsoft's $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, which is the video game publisher behind Call of Duty, competitors such as Sony have expressed concern that the merger would curb competition in the console market.
In what appears to be an effort to assuage these concerns and get regulatory approval for the purchase, Microsoft is entering agreements to make Call of Duty available across different consoles for at least the next decade.
An independent watchdog within the IRS reports that while taxpayer services have vastly improved, the agency is still too slow to resolve identity theft cases. And National Taxpayer Advocate Erin Collins says those delays are “unconscionable.” Erin M. Collins said in the report released Wednesday that overall the 2024 filing season went smoothly, though IRS delays in resolving identity theft victim assistance cases are worsening. It took nearly 19 months to resolve self-reported identity theft cases as of January, and Wednesday's report states that now it takes 22 months to resolve these cases.
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