There has been a ton of talk about Microsoft’s massive bid to acquire Activision Blizzard. The company has anything but a smooth transaction, and now it’s been a fight with regulators to ensure that Microsoft can go through with the purchase. One of the major regulators to have been weighing out this potential deal has been the CMA. Today it looks like we are very close to a final decision. A report suggests that tomorrow morning we should get word on whether this deal will go through or not.
The latest report comes from industry insider Tom Warren, who has noted that the CMA will likely have a final decision unveiled about the Activision Blizzard acquisition tomorrow morning. That should allow for quite an exciting announcement for the video game industry. We’ve been watching the CMA rather closely these past several months as Microsoft, Activision, Sony, and others had commented on their viewpoints when it came to Microsoft purchasing the company.
Mainly it boiled down to Sony not wanting to see Microsoft acquire Activision Blizzard, along with the uncertain future of the Call of Duty franchise. But lately, there have been more reports that suggest the CMA is taking more towards the side of Microsoft, and it could be official at some point tomorrow. It’s still important to note that Call of Duty is not going anywhere if the deal goes through. That has been a key focal point for Microsoft as they continued to alert the public on their various contractual agreement deals.
For at least ten years, Call of Duty will be available on PlayStation console platforms. In fact, the game should thrive across multiple platforms as Microsoft made contract deals for Nintendo along with Steam. But this might make Xbox Game Pass far more desirable. All first-party Microsoft games will land on Xbox Game Pass, and that could soon mean the IPs under Activision Blizzard. Of course, it was previously noted that there were no plans right now to see Diablo IV launch on Xbox Game Pass. With that said, there wouldn’t be plans until the deal was completed, to begin with, so don’t expect any game releases to land on Xbox Game Pass until the acquisition is over. At any rate, we’ll have to wait for CMA to make its decision and see what the next steps will end up being.
