A government agency concludes that Microsoft’s Activision acquisition would not severely harm competition.
A big step forward on the rocky road of Microsofts acquisition of Activision-Blizzard: Authorities of several countries (and the EU) are scrutinising the mega deal for 69 billion US dollars with regard to competition concerns. With the British Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), an important authority has now expressed a preliminary positive opinion
In a press release the CMA announced that it had updated the preliminary outcome of the investigation. Most important half-sentence in the text: total, the transaction will not lead to a significant lessening of competition in console games in the UK
Call of Duty to continue on PlayStation?
Another important passage concerns the core of the whole misery: The feared exclusivity of Call of Duty for the Xbox console cosmos. Competitor Sony fears that this would shift competition extremely in favour of Microsoft.
The CMA, however, sees it differently, or rather can’t see any advantage for Microsoft in this:
The costs Microsoft would incur if it withheld Call of Duty from PlayStation would outweigh the benefits of doing so.
A big step
Although this is not yet the final result of the CMA’s report, it is possible that this passage will also stand until the end. For the time being, however, this interim result gives the parties involved the opportunity to present new evidence, as the chairman of the expert panel, Martin Coleman, stated in the report.
The CMA’s final report is due to be released on 26 April. If this concludes the evidence, at least one authority would formally pave the way for the mega-deal.
However, it remains to be seen what the other countries and institutions will come to. Probably the biggest hurdle: The US Federal Trade Commission, which will try to legally prevent the takeover.
