Microsoft May Face More Pushback With Their Activision Deal In The UK
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The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has now given its ruling over Microsoft’s proposed $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard. The ruling looks to block that acquisition owing to the harm it could bring to competition within the gaming market.
In its provisional finding, the CMA stated that “buying one of the world’s most important game publishers would reinforce [Microsoft’s] strong position and substantially reduce the competition that [they] would otherwise face in the cloud gaming market in the UK.” Microsoft already account for 60-70% of the global cloud gaming services of the world, with their Azure and Xbox Cloud Gaming infrastructure.
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The report mentions Call of Duty, and how Activision’s flagship series plays an important role in driving competition between consoles. That Microsoft “would find it commercially beneficial to make Activision’s games exclusive to its own consoles (or only available on PlayStation under materially worse conditions.)” The CMA note that this has happened before with Microsoft acquisitions.
Martin Coleman, chair of the independent panel of experts conducting the Phase 2 investigation gave a statement within the report. “Our job is to make sure that UK gamers are not caught in the crossfire of global deals that, over time, could damage competition and result in higher prices, fewer choices, or less innovation. We have provisionally found that this may be the case here.”
The CMA has said it will welcome responses to this finding so that potential options for addressing their concerns can be made before they issue their final report which is due by 26 April. These concerns of the CMA have previously been shared by the Federal Trade Commission, which had sued Microsoft in December last year to block the deal from being accepted.
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Source: Gov.uk
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