Microsoft to Defend its Activision Acquisition at EU Hearing Next Week - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 14 February 2023 / 4,341 Views
Microsoft will be defending its acquisition of Activision Blizzard next week on February 21 at a hear in front of the European Union and national antitrust officials.
The hearing was confirmed by a Microsoft spokesperson who spoke with Reuters.
Microsoft asked for the hearing after it was issued a formal antitrust warning over its Activision Blizzard deal. The company is expected to offer remedies after the hearing.
A Microsoft spokesperson previously stated the company is committed to "finding a path forward" and is "confident" it will be address the concerns from the European Union regulators.
The Microsoft acquisition of Activision Blizzard has also faced scrutiny by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in the US and the Competition and Market Authority (CMA) in the UK.
The CMA last week in its provisional conclusion concluded the deal could put Microsoft in an even stronger position in cloud gaming and could stifle competition in the growing market, which in turn could harm UK gamers who are unable to afford consoles. It could also weaken the rivalry between Xbox and PlayStation in the video game console market and the CMA says this could also harm UK gamers.
The FTC in December announced it was looking to sue to block Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard as it would give Microsoft the ability to suppress its competitors in gaming. The FTC pointed to Microsoft's record of acquiring and using gaming content to suppress content from rival consoles, including its acquisition of the parent company of Bethesda Softworks, ZeniMax Media.
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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If this deal fails, which I think is highly unlikely, I'm sure MS will go after somebody else. As near as I can tell, nothing has changed in the market that would substantially impact their rationale for trying to buy Activision. But, it seems like their primary interest is in mobile. So the other traditional video game publishers don't make a lot of sense in that regard.
I could see them trying to buy King from Activision, or maybe Zynga. Or maybe they would try to roll up a handful of smaller mobile developers. Presumably the Chinese giants like Tencent don't have any interest in selling off parts of their business to Microsoft, at least not at realistic prices.
The only other thing I could see would be Microsoft trying to take a substantial stake in Tencent or Bytedance. That could help those Chinese companies with their political problems in the west. But, it might also present some political challenges to Microsoft. So I'm not sure how realistic that is.
The conflict behind this deal is quite interesting. Microsoft getting Activision will give them some exclusives to maybe push Sony to bring back Socom, Resistance and Killzone? Create some heavy competition. Now another company did this like Disney and the quality in content has dipped. They may buy this for IPs and give little to No care for quality and just become another Disney. Halo has already lost quality in my opinion and I am concerned for Fable and Perfect Dark, if it’s even coming out? I miss the days when companies had to develop exclusively for systems based on its design. N64 vs PlayStation.
The most interesting thing is Sony could request that some or all of its submissions be kept confidential, but the Commission could not rely on confidential facts in its decision (and any potential appeal of such a decision to the Court of Justice of the EU).
Hopefully this will fail and all "Acquisition war" bullshit will end...
Yes, they will probably succeed sooner than later and we will move on. I agree with you, this BS needs to end :)
i'm not so sure, i mean, even Warren Buffett is selling activision stakes, this deal have very real chances of failing.
https://www.reuters.com/business/buffetts-berkshire-reduces-stake-activision-blizzard-2023-02-14/
It's not looking good for Microsoft.
edit: Also, forgive me if i was not clear. I wish MS to fail, i wish for ABK to continue idependent.
You should read those articles in their entirety instead of just headlines tho :) He is reducing his "stakes", meaning he believes the chances are less than few months ago, he still have a really sizable chunk of Activision stocks. So I would say that he def. still believe the deal will go through, just lowering the risks; if it does not. That's probably what you should read with those numbers... not the opposite.
But the deal has def. more chances to fail now than ever, not going to argue that!
And yes, I know you wished that from the start :)
It wont end if it fails. They will buy something else.
Likely, but, hopefully, no one will buy a big publisher like EA, Take Two, Capcom...
Considering the arguments made by regulators, I don't see how Take Two or Capcom would be a problem. Maybe a regulator could argue that EA's share of the sports games market means they can't be bought.
Capcom would be another legal disaster, because it's a protected Japanese company . Really doubt they want too go trough this saga again.
Alot of people downvoting believing they won't buy other companies if this fails? Wow
We believe that if regulators block this deal MS won't really get approval for similar deals, smaller companies they may get the go ahead, but considering their justification for this one it would hard to use the same for other purchases.
Well Said.
You understand the second biggest publisher is half the size of ABK right? Thats alot smaller purchase.
It would be better to invest some US$ 40 billion to open several studios and attract labor from competitors, including Sony. I think the investment would be smaller and would cause great damage to its competitors, but the possibility of new major IPs emerging would be proportionally great.
FTC, CMA and others can only prevent them from buying other companies, but nothing prevents them from preying on the competition's workforce.
The main problem is time, risk and talent. It takes a long time to created one AAA Studio and make a game. Include the risks of the Studio not being capable of creating successful products and, also, consider that It's not Just "pay more Money, work for me" for top tier devs...
MS focus on "buying" and not "creating" makes Sense, cause creating takes way more than lots of money.
The only problem is that if MS was capable of doing that they would have done it on X1... they opened some studios and they didn't really deliver on the promise.
