Microsoft recently earned a significant approval from the European Commission on the ongoing Activision Blizzard acquisition. Previously, the CMA blocked the deal, and the UK regulator came out to disagree with the European Commission after announcing the decision.
While the decision behind the approval has already been explained, a new statement from the European Commission hints at further support for the merger. According to the regulator, Microsoft’s $68.7 billion deal will promote even more competition in the future.
Why it matters: Limiting competition has been the biggest concern for PlayStation and authorities when looking at Microsoft’s latest acquisition.
Addressing the merger, the regulator recently said:
“To us, this solution fully addressed our concerns. And on top of that, it had significant procompetitive effects.”
The authority pointed to Microsoft’s remedies that were agreed upon before the merger was accepted in Europe.
According to the remedies, Microsoft would provide a free license for Activision games to cloud-gaming providers. This would also allow customers to choose the subscription of their choice to access Activision Blizzard’s catalog.
The European Commission argues that this will promote competition. In a scenario where the merger was blocked, games like Call of Duty would not be made available for streaming services.
However, Microsft’s agreement means that even smaller cloud-gaming services can offer these popular titles.
On the other hand, both the CMA and European Commission also identified that there is little reason for Microsoft to limit Call of Duty to Xbox consoles since PlayStation still has a much larger player base.
As such, the merger could lead to several positive developments in the gaming industry without harming existing competition in the console market.
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