New Zealand has approved Microsoft’s merger-acquisition deal with Activision Blizzard King.
As reported by TechRaptor, this makes New Zealand the 41st country and region to approve the deal.
Dr John Small, Chair of New Zealand’s Commerce Commission shared this statement upon its approval:
“While Activision games, in particular Call of Duty, are popular with New Zealand gamers, our enquiries did not find that they are likely to be ‘must have’ in order to compete with Microsoft in New Zealand.”
In other words, the regulators found that Activision’s games aren’t so big and popular, that they have to be kept separated from Microsoft.
New Zealand’s regulator will release the text of their decision at a later date, but what we can say now is it was approved with no restrictions or additional conditions.
New Zealand’s decision falls in line with most countries and regions that have already approved the deal, adding no additional conditions and deciding that there are no competition concerns.
The US would necessarily have to be an exception to that case. It is where both Activision and Microsoft are headquartered, and so the country has several interests in the merger. Microsoft was not able to sway the FTC to approve the deal, so they settled for the next best thing. They faced the FTC in federal court, and won.
That court decision was a real victory, not just for the deal, but for the often beleaguered Microsoft itself. It also set a precedent for those other countries and regions that were still deliberating or had been reconsidering their own position on the deal.
Florian Mueller shared this observation on Twitter:
“Given that no U.S. merger was prohibited after it closed following the denial of a preliminary injunction, Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard King has now been cleared in 42 countries with more than 2.8 billion inhabitants and an aggregate GDP of $68.4 trillion (more than two thirds of the global economy).”
Florian also pointed out that he never believed New Zealand had serious concerns about the merger. They rejected the console gaming theory of harm, but also, they didn’t have any concerns for cloud gaming either. That may likely be because there are considerably less entrants in cloud gaming in their region. From that point of view, Microsoft adding Activision games to their cloud offerings would actually be an improvement.
And so, we await the outcome of Microsoft’s engagement with the CMA, after which they may finally, truly close the deal.
