Report: EU Likely to Approve Microsoft's Activision Blizzard Deal - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 02 March 2023 / 5,015 Views
The European Union regulator, the European Commission, is likely to approve Microsoft's Activision Blizzard acquisition, according to three people familiar with the matter who spoke with Reuters.
The remedies Microsoft has offered are likely enough to address the European Commission concerns, according to the sources.
The sources claim Microsoft won't have to sell off any Activision Blizzard assets and the deadline for the EU regulators to decide on the deal is April 25.
Microsoft in a statement said it was "committed to offering effective  and  easily  enforceable solutions  that address the European Commission's concerns."
"Our commitment to grant long term 100% equal access to  Call of Duty to Sony, Steam,  NVIDIA and others  preserves the deal's benefits to gamers and developers and increases competition in the market," said a Microsoft spokesperson.
To mitigate some of the concerns from regulators Microsoft has signed a 10-year partnership with Nvidia to bring Xbox games on PC to the Nvidia GeForce Now cloud gaming service. If Microsoft's Activision Blizzard deal is approved it will bring games from Activision Blizzard to GeForce Now, including Call of Duty.
Microsoft has also signed a "binding 10-year legal agreement" with Nintendo to bring Call of Duty games to Nintendo platforms if Microsoft's Activision Blizzard acquisition is approved.
With these new deals in place it has eased concerns from the European Commission.
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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As expected. The CMA has always been the biggest issue.
What CMA?
The CMA is the UK regulators.
Well I didn't know that, people didn't need to shit on me as usual.
lol don't take it personally man. The most random comments get down voted on this site I just gave up caring about it. Wish the whole thumb up/down system was removed.
So do I these days.
Can't wait to have this deal go through so we can move on to games, which is the subject that actually matters
Of course it's going to be approved. None of these regulators, at least the ones in the west where the legal system is going to force them into court where they would look ridiculous, are going to actually block this deal. Possibly some of this nonsense was just ignorance of the gaming market, and it has been corrected as they have become more knowledgeable about the space. But, I think most of it is political games, and the regulators now have to make sure that they don't end up in court where they would be made to look foolish and squander any political points that they've scored.
Why are they only giving reassurances for call of duty and not other already well established multiplat titles??
I think that's simply because they haven't been raised as contentious by any actors. the other big franchise are: Diablo, but Diablo 4 is already coming to Ps5 contractually and Diablo 5 is 10year+ away. Wow would remain PC anyway. Overwatch is now F2P have a 6year cycle and the latest entry did just come out everywhere so hardly anything contentious here either. Crash Bandicoot / Spyro/ Guitar Hero for what they're worth nowadays....
Ask Sony and the Regulators. They are the ones who made the entire thing about CoD.
Because CoD is the game Sony brought up claiming it will hurt the PS brand if they lose CoD. Other titles most likely be a case by case basis.
i do not think call of duty will hurt PS brand much, now if it was GTA that be another story, Hint Hint Sony
GTA comes out every 10 years, CoD is Yearly
yes but its a game just about everyone picks up, imagine if sony had exclusivity?
Then MS would do the same thing to Sony, contest GTA and force an agreement that keep it multi. What is good for the goose as the saying goes.
funny how both companies over the years having been purchasing other companies and now that microsoft made a larger purchase its an issue, should have been delt with years ago.
None of the regulators have expressed any concern about Activision-Blizzard's other franchises, nor has Sony raised any concerns about the others from what I have read. Google meanwhile has raised concerns about Xbox possibly pulling CoD mobile and King games like Candy Crush from Google Play Store to put them onto their own upcoming mobile storefront, though MS assured regulators they would remain on Google Play in addition to their own storefront.
Reports are still basically rumours though. If this was a done deal EU wouldn't have extended the deadline.
If true then corruption and collusion lost.
Corruption and collusion are not the issue. For me it's both a lacks of knowledge on the industry from the regulators and viewing the deals as MS vs Sony instead of Xbox vs PlayStation, this of course increase the scrutiny significantly and create a natural bias toward the smaller company despite it not actually being the smaller player.
It's fair to see it as MS Vs Sony since all the money comes from MS and not Xbox, which is smaller than PS and couldn't afford such a deal on its own.
Also PlayStation and Xbox aren't really seperate entities, they are both an integral part of the company. Xbox is also doing the PC part and gamepass for PC.
Yes and no the goal of the rgulation is to evaluate the impact on the market they happen into. Ms is the entity buying yes but the impacted market is only the video game one. As an exemple if Apple wanted to enter the car making industry by buying Volskwagen could you prevent it solely because apple is many time the size of the biggest car maker? No cause the competitivness in the car industry would not change. Now if they also bought Renault it could change but you have to compare the size of Volkswagen + Renault vs the car industry and not that of Apple as it is irrevelant for the market.
Yeah but if Apple wanted to buy TSMC, that would be a big issue.
But then again, you only have to look into the impact on the industry the transaction happen into to know why. In this case, this would be seen as a vertical merger, which would actually work for Apple since authority are general more lenient on vertical mergers. However the authority might have high suspicion that the acquisition is to lock out other TSMC customers. This suspicions would only be reenforced by the fact both Apple and Qualcomm actually did try to do exactly this. So the impact on the industry would be humongous (customer included of course). Now if Apple were to propose legally binding measure that it would still serve TSMC other customers the same way they are right now, this would be seen only as a way for Apple to reduce cost from their own use of TSMC which would be normally totally fine for regulator provide they think Apple is not being deceptive about it.
Apple is the market leader who are in two duopolies (PC and Mobile) so any purchasing of major companies within those industry can be treated as anti-competitive. Xbox is not part of a duopoly and is trying to compete to be market leader.
What if Samsung brought those companies instead?
Exactly my point transaction need to be evaluated by the impact they have on the industry they happen into, Apple would not get challenged when buying a car manufacturer because there would be no impact in the car market. If they where to buy 2 car giant and try to merge them now that's potentially a source of issue but only regulator believes other actor could not compete anymore.
As apple buying other phone maker Apple revenue is 52% phone sale so of course their would be scrutiny (gaming is 8% MS revenue for reference). But regulator would first have to determine why the transaction occur because Apple is not likely to produce android phone in the future and manufacturing capacity isn't really an issue for Apple so the most logical explanation is that they want to literally shut down a competitor. Which is detrimental to the competition in the industry and potentially outright illegal.
