Rumor: Sony Met With EU Regulators to Discuss Microsoft's Activision Blizzard Acquisition - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 01 October 2022 / 12,075 Views
Sony reportedly met with European antitrust regulators to discuss Microsoft's proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard, according to sources familiar with the matter who spoke with Dealreporter and was reported by Seeking Alpha.
The sources claim PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan met with the European Commission on September 8 to voice his concerns over the deal.
Ryan previously stated Microsoft promised to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation for a further three years beyond the current agreement between Sony and Activision Blizzard. The promise for a further three years according to Ryan is "inadequate on many levels."
The report also stated Google also has its worried over the acquisition and voiced its concerns with the regulators.
Microsoft today filed the Activision Blizzard deal with the European Commission. A provisional deadline of November 8 was set by the regulators to either approve the deal or to choose a more in-depth investigation.
The goal of the investigation by regulators is to decide if the acquisition will reduce competition in the video game market.
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) in the UK following its initial investigation announced its plans to "explore this deal in an in-depth Phase 2 investigation to reach a decision that works in the interests of UK gamers and businesses."
Saudi Arabia's competition authority last month became the first place to approve Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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Wow...Jim Ryan is really pissing the bed over this. It's so embarrassing. Dude, make your own CoD Killer if you're so hung up on CoD. You are the market leader by revenue. Sega didn't cry because they didn't have Mario. They made Sonic. You have the man power and talent to make a rival to CoD, buckle down and make it happen instead of crying every chance you get.
I mean they did have their own shooters, they just kind of wilted away. Those devs are making Horizon games now, which are big, but they aren't making your own COD. I mean Nintendo made their own shooter that is popular, and frankly if Nintendo can make a Shooter people like, you can make your own.
Nintendo is a genre king maker and first party driver. Sony is not a genre king maker and third party driver. Nintendo or create a genre or take a genre and apply their vision with arcade roots. Sony is more focused in cultivating third party and have more PC aspects on their games.
Sony are like the one company so far that's doing movie-based games in the right kind of way
Remember when we actually used to have movies and then companies released games based on those movies, and half if not a lot of them turned out to being garbage?, Sony is like that, but they don't make them garbage and they don't entirely base them off existing movies (save for Spider-Man).
I think he means that when Nintendo jump into a Genre, they are incredibly successful at it. Abit like Rare back in their day. Sony tends to stick with what only works for them.
Sony investing in VR. That it works for them or not in that side of gaming has yet to be determined. But they’re taking a risk into something they believe in despite no definite track record of success.
Nintendo also sticks with what works for them. Especially when it comes to tone. Gameplay-wise, they try new things every now and them, same as Sony Studios. Both of them have their comfort zone, with the occasional game trying something new and unique. I’ll just mention Media Molecule as one of Sony’s examples.
Yet again, you display a lack of objectivity.
Nintendo offer a far greater variety of game genres aswell as being the best in the industry when it comes to innovation.
Ill agree with Sony VR.
It's called business. Do you really expect Sony to just lie down and take it? Of course they are going to use any and all measures available to them to try and slow down their biggest rival. As if Microsoft wouldn't do that if the roles were reversed. Come on.
So much naivete in this discussion.
I don't disagree with your underlying point: big companies do whatever is best for them, including playing around with government if that option is available to them.
But, I do not think Microsoft would make the same argument if this scenario were reversed. Microsoft is never going to argue against mergers and acquisitions, because they're a mega company that really only can move the needle on growth by swallowing up other large companies. They will advocate for laws and policies that make mergers and acquisitions easier, not the other way around.
Yes. I'm just saying, Microsoft, and many of the other tech giants, have a track record of not arguing against these things. You can actually see it in this case, where most of the other tech giants submitted opinions in support of allowing this merger to go through.
They don't argue against these things ever really, because they don't want to set that precedent.
They should really be putting greater focus on the Holdings companies, the ones that have stupid amounts of money and are fast gaining control of multiple studios and IP's.
Tencent recently stated they are going aggro on studio acquisitions, Sony isn't even batting an eye to that, and they honestly should, because the holdings companies have the money to keep this going and going.
There are no holding companies that have anywhere near MS' cash hoard. There are only two public companies with more: Apple and Alphabet. Then you have MS. They all have $130 billion or more on hand. After that it drops by about half to Amazon, GE, United Health and Meta. This is the group MS will be in after they spend $68 billion on Acti.
You could maybe argue that GE and Alpha are holding companies. But, neither is doing much in gaming.
Tencent has about $32 billion in cash, which is less than 1/4 of MS, and less than half of that group I mentioned above. They are buying companies, for sure. But, they are not quite on the level of MS. And there is nobody else even remotely close, other than Tencent.
Yes, but we all know MS is here to stay, these holdings companies only reared their heads in the gaming sector within the past decade, thus they became your new foes that can grow as big as MS with time.
Which would you rather focus on, your long-term adversary that shows absolutely no signs of ever being vanquished
or 2-3 new foes that are set to grow exponentially if left unchecked entirely?
MS Won't auto gobble up literally all of the industry, that much we know, but what's to stop the other holdings companies from simply gobbling up what's left?, just look at the rate Embracer is gobbling up IP after IP, studio after studio.
We now know that Tencent is going to go full on aggro mode with their buyouts, so it's going to be Embracer on steroids.
Personally, I'd rather focus on the new kids on the block. Embracer/Tencent aren't going to pull a Google retard move and get themselves kicked to rock bottom, at least it's highly unlikely that either will pull a Google.
The market leader who even pays since years for CoD exclusivity deals to extend the market leader position is complaining so much about the possibility to lose one or two percent of their leading position. Damn...
Well, obviously they would. Not doing so would be grossly irresponsible of them. It's a business. If their competitor is about to make a move that will hurt them, and there may be a legal way to prevent them, they absolutely should try their best to make the case.
Pathetic. Give it up already. It won't make a difference.
I assume the regulators realize that Jim Ryan isn’t exactly unbiased in this case.
Insecure much?
Based
get real!
Microsoft gobbling up everything,
But they still haven't released any quality title other than halo and forza again?! Gears 2019 right? That holy trilogy
Well they haven't really produced much else by the time Xbox series turns two.
I tell the truth and the butthurts shows hahaha
Don't forget Flight Simulator.
Sony acting like Acti/Blizz are 1st party. This might not have happened if Sony didnt horde all the deals to favour their own console and butchering others. Clearly CoD massively boosts which console gets the marketing rights.
I would probably care more if Sony played fair with the CoD license, but because they have inserted themselves with CoD deals the last 20 years, i say the Karma bus is coming around.
What a total Douche -Chad move. Though at the same time I feel like this is a necessity since the Activist-Blizzard deal with Microsoft could absolve Bobby Kotick which isn't cool. The rich protect the rich and this is a very good example of that. I'd say "Go Sony, I guess?" but it doesn't exactly seem like Sony is doing it out of good will as a some protest. They don't wanna lose the games so everyone is being selfish here to some extent. There isn't a lot of hope for some mutual cooperation at moment. The whole situation feels FUBAR'd
Google now have all the evidence in the world to show that consolidation hurts the industry.
No, the problem is the government doesn't step in on their monopoly because they work together.
Video games are not important compared to what Google is doing.
The difference between what Sony does and Microsoft does
Sony - buys companies who are either making ps exclusives already or in the case of bungie are Multiplatform and will keep them Multiplatform.
MSFT - buys companies who are Multiplatform and their IP's and makes future games exclusive - except for Minecraft (so far).
What Microsoft is doing is totally anti consumer and from a business standpoint, it is designed not to actually benefit gamepass or the xbox community but to harm their competitor. They could have got Activision games on gamepass buy just paying them like EA and still left them on PS. Only companies out to do to harm are willing to forgo their biggest buyer of their products in favour of another. I don't recall Sony taking away an IP which was massively played on another console and made it exclusive. I'm looking forward to seeing the EU and other organisations force Microsoft to open the accounts for gamepass.
The same post about the 'right way' to buy out studios, like it's some game and everything needs to be fair.
I don't think you know what anti-consumer means. CoD is staying multiplat for the foreseeable future. Having to buy a certain console or service is something that has been going on since the beginning. PC releases will only improve with consistent Steam releases. So it's PS only gamers who are complaining, but all of them have great gaming PCs so that shouldn't matter ?. Xcloud is accessible via laptops, tablets, PC, phones, etc.
How is day 1 releases on Game Pass not benefit the consumer and the service? I don't have to buy CoD, Starfield, Diablo 4, etc. to play it? I'm game for it.
Sony has done their own moneyhatting (ie FF, SF, dlc content, etc.) which is fine because it's what they do to stay the dominant console maker, but then complain when MS makes their own power moves too.
If MS doesn't acquire these publishers some other company does that may or may not be worse so keep that in mind.
In the case of ActiBlizz it’s actually a good thing because Bobby and the Board that are protecting him will be kicked out of gaming and hopefully MS will improve the workplace conditions, people need to remember what triggered this purchase in the first place
If I remember correctly ff7 remake was meant to come to xbox after 2 year of being released. Looks like it's now permanent on Sony console. Forspoken is min 2 years deal and potential to be permanent. Nioh series never came to xbox. Rise of ronin is only on Sony consoles which means Sony has paid to keep it aay from competition. All of these are 3rd party games that would have been multiplatform but Sony made sure it wasn't anymore.
Point is that sony ain't no Saint. They all do this to each other
Dumbest comment ever!
The difference is semantics. At the end of the day it’s one company paying a developer or publisher to make something. In your scenario, if you are a PC or Xbox or Nintendo gamer then Sony kept ND games from you for two generations before buying the studio. Whether they owned ND during the Jak or Crash days is irrelevant, other fan bases still didn’t get those games.
It’s a lot like owning versus leasing/renting.
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