UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is now asking the UK public to share their feedback on the Microsoft deal to acquire Activision Blizzard.
In a statement on their website, the CMA elaborated that they are looking for these kinds of feedback in relation to the acquisition:
- The impact of the merger on other console gaming platforms, including:
- Activision games being made Xbox exclusives
- Activision games being made timed Xbox exclusives
- Microsoft making Activision games lower quality on other systems (such as missing features)
- Microsoft making Activision games more expensive on other systems
- The impact of the merger on multi-game subscriptions that rival Game Pass
- The impact of the merger on the future of cloud gaming
These will be collected as part of the organization’s total investigation of the acquisition. However, the CMA will not be able to respond to everyone who submits their feedback. Based on the schedule of their process, they will share their provisional findings, including any proposed solutions, on January 2023, and then proceed with the final report on March 1, 2023.
The CMA explained the situation thusly:
“If we find no competition concerns, the deal can go ahead as planned. If we do find competition concerns, we decide how these should be remedied. For example, this can include selling part of the business or prohibiting the merger altogether.”
It’s an indication of how far the CMA has gotten in their investigation of the deal, which has led to a surprising series of back and forth statements between Sony and Microsoft. It should be noted that these statements were not really intended for gamers or games media, so much as they were part of arguments made towards the CMA itself, to take their side when it comes to the acquisition.
The arguments around the deal have focused squarely on Call of Duty, a key franchise for Sony, that they have worked with for the better half of two decades.
And so, we have read Sony claim that gamers will switch to Xbox solely over Call of Duty, and Microsoft claim that they can’t add Call of Duty to Game Pass.
The CMA is not the only governing body studying the acquisition and who is in a position to reject it and force the companies to stay away from each other. America’s Foreign Trade Commission (FTC) and the European Commission, as well as several smaller commissions, are also or have made their reviews of the deal. They have come front and center in the news as it currently seems the governing body is the one most likely to reject it.
Still, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella seems confident that they will eventually pass all regulatory review from all these commissions and Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard will be completed. If that really is the case, then this just brings them one step closer to the end of that process.
Source: VideoGamesChronicle
