There has been a lot of chatter regarding Microsoft and its attempt to acquire Activision Blizzard. The company has sent out a massive bid to make the deal happen, and things have been anything but smooth. Regulators are going through this deal; fortunately for Microsoft, most have given the green light. Meanwhile, the FTC lost a court case against Microsoft over this deal, so it left it to the CMA. This UK regulator initially shot down the deal earlier this year, which prompted an appeal from Microsoft. Fast forward to the present day, and you might have known that yesterday was the deadline for this deal to go through.
We didn’t get any indication from Microsoft on whether the deadline for this purchase was extended or not. That prompted us to start digging into it ourselves and speculate what was going on with this merger. However, just now, Xbox head, Phil Spencer, took to Twitter and revealed that Microsoft and Activision Blizzard have extended the merger agreement deadline to October 18, 2023. That should give them plenty of time to get everything settled and open up even more exciting games to the Xbox Game Pass subscription service. However, we’re still waiting on the CMA.
As mentioned, there was an appeal over the CMA striking down this merger request. However, after Microsoft came out of the court case against FTC with a big win, CMA had a change of heart. Instead of going through the court system, the regulator requested Microsoft to pause the appeal process so that they may have additional discussions. Recently, the Competition Appeal Tribunal, otherwise known as CAT, has agreed to pause this appeal. That is giving the CMA and Microsoft more time to discuss and answer any of the regulator concerns over this deal going through.
We know that the CMA has extended their deadline decision from this month to August 29, 2023. But we will likely see an official announcement well before the deadline. It’s likely that this deal will go through, so we’re just left waiting on what changes Microsoft might have to endure in order to appease the CMA. Of course, there’s always the chance that no changes will be requested. After all, the reason the CMA initially struck the deal down was due to cloud gaming concerns. So we’ll have to see if Microsoft striking deals with other cloud gaming providers might be enough to settle the concerns the CMA initially had.
