CMA Approves Microsoft’s Purchase of Activision Blizzard

It looks like the Activision Blizzard vs Microsoft vs Sony TV series is about to end. At the very least, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), the UK regulatory body evaluating the transnational company’s takeover of the electronic game developer, has shared an interim report in which it has practically agreed to the purchase, where according to it, the group of companies will not harm the competitiveness of consoles. .

“The Capital Markets Authority has updated its interim results and has come to the interim conclusion that, overall, the transaction will not result in a significant reduction in competition from UK gaming consoles,” the company said.

The big predicament is due to the Call of Duty franchise, which Sony, an Xbox competitor, says Microsoft can take games from PlayStation or offer “buggy” versions. According to the submitted report, CMA understands that MS does not intend to do this with the competitor and that the strategy of porting games to other platforms is correct.

The most important new piece of evidence presented to the CMA concerns financial incentives for Microsoft to make Activision games, including Call of Duty (CoD), exclusive to their consoles. Although the CMA’s original analysis indicated that this strategy would be profitable in most scenarios, the data (which provides better insight into the actual buying behavior of CoD operators) indicates that this strategy would result in significant loss under any plausible scenario.Accordingly, the updated analysis now shows that it would not be commercially beneficial to Microsoft and concluded that CoD exclusively for Xbox after the deal, but Microsoft will still have the incentive to continue making the game available on PlayStation.”

The final report of the CMA studies on Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard is scheduled to be delivered by April 26, 2023. However, until then, Sony can still question partial decisions, but it needs hard evidence, which has yet to be provided.