Exceptional: Significant development for the acquisition of Activision – Great Britain has changed position

The British Capital Markets Authority (CMA) regulator has so far been seen as the biggest hurdle to its takeover Activision Blizzard from Microsoft, maintaining a hard line and stating that the deal could harm competition in the game console market and by expanding the range of players in the UK. now, The Capital Markets Authority officially changed its positionnegating all of its concerns about the console market and focusing exclusively on the emerging cloud gaming market.

In more detail, the new official document that has just been released to the public specifically states:

The main new evidence submitted to the CMA concerned Microsoft’s financial incentives to make Activision games, including Call of Duty (CoD), exclusive to its consoles. While the original CMA analysis indicated that this strategy would be profitable in most scenarios, the new data (which provides better insight into the actual buying behavior of CoD players) shows that this strategy will be a huge loss in every possible scenario. On that basis, the updated analysis now shows that it wouldn’t be commercially beneficial for Microsoft to make CoD exclusive to Xbox after the deal, but that Microsoft would instead be incentivized to keep the game available on PlayStation. […]

After considering the additional evidence presented, we now tentatively conclude that the acquisition will not significantly reduce competition in console game services because the costs to Microsoft of blocking CoD from PS would outweigh any benefits.

The Capital Markets Authority also said it was on schedule He mentioned it Its final decision is expected by April 26. Now the regulator’s concerns relate only to the cloud market. It should be noted at this point that the latest information wants the European Union to be positive about closing the deal, rejecting concerns about the console market and also focusing exclusively on cloud gaming solutions.

For the record, Microsoft has said in the past that it respects the role of regulators and is willing to address any concerns they might have about the proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard. In this context, the company has already signed agreements with Boosteroid, Nvidia and Ubitus stating that it will provide all its games to these streaming services for 10 years.

Immediately after the CMA’s announcement, the market reacted positively to the announcement, with Activision Blizzard’s share price skyrocketing to the highest price we’ve seen since the deal was announced.

In conclusion, as the head of GamesIndustry.biz points out, now it is very likely that we will immediately hear about an agreement between Sony and Microsoft. Below you will find some related posts.

“After considering the additional evidence presented, we have now tentatively concluded that a merger will not significantly reduce competition in console game services due to the cost to Microsoft of blocking [CoD] from [PS] You will outweigh any gains…”

– Florian Müller (FOSSpatents) March 24, 2023

The CMA still has concerns about the cloud gaming market, and the investigation is still on track to conclude by the end of April pic.twitter.com/k8kPkeBKL6

– Tom Warren (@tomwarren) March 24, 2023

CMA was the biggest obstacle to completing this deal. I fully expect Sony and Microsoft to come to an agreement on Call of Duty now

– Christopher Dring (@Chris_Dring) March 24, 2023

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