European Commission has recently announced its consent for Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard
As per previous communiqués, the European Commission has recently announced its consent for Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard, an impressive deal valued at 69 billion USD.
The European Commission opines that this transaction does not constitute any monopolistic tendencies, given Microsoft’s promise to license Activision Blizzard’s gaming content to other game consoles and cloud services.
Simultaneously, the European Commission emphasizes that, given the current 1:4 sales disparity between Microsoft’s Xbox gaming console and Sony’s PlayStation in the European economy, it would clearly be beneficial for Microsoft to continue selling Activision Blizzard’s gaming content on the PlayStation platform. Consequently, they do not foresee any disadvantages for Sony following Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard.
On the other hand, the European Commission believes that even if Microsoft were to refuse to provide Activision Blizzard’s gaming content to Sony, Sony could still gain market advantage through its own console sales scale, platform exclusivity, and supported gaming content. Hence, they have consented to Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard to promote the growth of the gaming industry within the European economy. However, both the UK Competition and Markets Authority and the US Federal Trade Commission still have concerns about this deal, including fears that Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard could destabilize the development of the gaming industry.
Previously, Microsoft emphasized that the acquisition of Activision Blizzard would stimulate the growth of the gaming market and be beneficial for the development of more games. They also pledged to continue offering games on competing platforms such as Nintendo and stated that relying solely on their own gaming platform to distribute games would not yield maximum benefits.
Regarding the acquisition of Activision Blizzard, Microsoft recently elucidated that this would benefit the advancement of the metaverse applications they are promoting. This includes enhancing virtual visual applications through gaming technology and enriching the interactive richness of the metaverse through the gaming content.
