Microsoft has been gunning for the Activision Blizzard company. It made an astonishing $69 billion deal to complete the merger, but it hasn’t been a smooth ride. Instead, Microsoft had to deal with a few regulators to ensure this purchase could go through. There was a ton of back and forth between Microsoft and Sony over this deal, especially with concerns over Call of Duty. But after the various battles to approve this purchase, Microsoft is just waiting on the CMA regulator. Today, we’re finding out, thanks to IGN, that the Microsoft team has sent their last submission to the CMA, hoping this deal can finally go through.
The initial result from the CMA was that this regulator struck down the deal. This was mainly due to cloud gaming concerns. But since then, we learned that the CMA was interested in having additional discussions. That ultimately prompted the appeal process from Microsoft to be placed on hold. Since then, we also found another big regulator from the EU that had agreed to this deal proceeding forward in Microsoft’s favor. Likewise, the Microsoft legal team managed to score a major win against the FTC in court over this merger as well.
We last heard from the CMA that they were waiting for Microsoft to start the discussions. It was noted that the CMA was waiting for Microsoft to resolve all of its concerns over this merger deal as its position remained unchanged. But now we’re finding out that nothing is changing from Microsoft’s end. Instead, it looks like Microsoft is hopeful that everything that happened since the CMA stuck them down is enough to change their minds over this deal.
For instance, the EU approved the deal as they didn’t find a strong enough reason to prevent the deal, especially with cloud gaming. Additionally, there is also the contract agreement that came up between Microsoft and Sony. This ensured that Sony would continue receiving new Call of Duty game installments for at least ten years. So while the CMA initially stated that Microsoft would need to make changes to resolve their concerns, these additional approvals and contract deals might persuade the CMA to give Microsoft the green light.
But we might still have to wait a little bit before we learn if this deal goes through or not. Currently, the CMA has until August 29, 2023, to come up with their decision. However, we could see the approval come out before the deadline.
