There was plenty of online chatter leading up to the CMA’s decision on whether Microsoft could go through with the bid purchase for Activision Blizzard. While it was months of back and forth between regulators on why this would or wouldn’t hurt the industry, the CMA made their official decision last week. While the CMA shot down the purchase, the chatter continues to ramp up online. Appeals are in the process from Microsoft, and more fine little details are coming out about this deal.
The final CMA report has proven to showcase a few interesting tidbits of information. For instance, Charlie Intel has taken to Twitter and unveiled that the report mentions when Call of Duty would make it on Xbox Game Pass. Even if the deal had gone through, there would still be a wait before we would even get our hands on Call of Duty. It turns out that players would have had to wait until some point in 2025 before the franchise started to show up.
According to the report, this would be a reasonable period of time before players on Xbox Game Pass would have likely expected to see the benefits from this deal. That is likely the same amount of time before we saw other video games land on the Xbox Game Pass subscription service as well. So while Microsoft Xbox players might have been displeased with the news that this deal didn’t go through, it’s at least a heads up of what we could expect if the appeals go in Microsoft’s favor.
For now, Microsoft would have to showcase how this deal wouldn’t hurt cloud gaming, which is why the CMA regulator blocked the acquisition. Of course, there are several companies in favor of Microsoft acquiring Activision Blizzard, including the likes of Nvidia with their GeForce Now service. So you can likely expect plenty of more CMA and regulator content coming out regarding this acquisition deal appeal. Of course, it would be interesting to see what other pieces of information come out online over Microsoft’s cloud gaming strategies going forward. Cloud gaming might be a significant component in the future for the video game industry, but you would likely find quite a few players right now that feel the infrastructure for latency-free gameplay is far from perfect.
