This, officials felt, would constitute a "significant lessening of competition," which was enough to put the hammer down. For instance, it said the deal would “standardize the terms and conditions on which games are available, as opposed to them being determined by the dynamism and creativity of competition in the market.”īy comparison, regulators believed that without the merger, Activision Blizzard “would start providing games via cloud platforms in the foreseeable future.” And that if it did, users will have a wider choice of service providers than if all of that content was locked inside Microsoft’s ecosystem, or at the very least made available to users at more preferential terms (. And even if they weren’t used as a cudgel against Sony and Nintendo, as well as other cloud gaming companies, there was still a risk of the more general ills of a monopoly provider. Regulators said if those were combined with Activision Blizzard’s portfolio of gaming titles, could be more readily weaponized in the cloud gaming sphere. Specifically that it already controls Windows and Xbox, both big brands for gaming and gamers, as well as the infrastructure to support it, with xCloud and Azure on the cloud side. PDF), the CMA says that Microsoft’s strengths as a brand and as an infrastructure provider needed to be taken into consideration. Consequently, the investigation refocused on the cloud gaming market, which is where it found greater cause for concern. And Microsoft did attempt to head off those concerns by signing a pact with Nintendo for access to Call of Duty, and made overtures to Sony for the same. It conclusion was, broadly speaking, that while Microsoft could block high-profile Activision Blizzard titles, like Call of Duty, Overwatch and World of Warcraft from rival platforms, it didn’t make much business sense to leave all of those sales on the table. But in March of this year, said that the console market would be less of an issue than it had originally suspected. The nature of the UK’s investigation originally centered both on cloud issues but also the broader console gaming market. It added that, if the deal concluded, Microsoft would have a market share of between 60 and 70 percent, “incentive to withhold games from competitors and substantially weaken competition in this important growing market.” In a statement, the body said the deal risks harming the nascent cloud-gaming market by creating a monopoly player. The UK’s antitrust regulator, the Competition and Markets Authority, has announced it will block Microsoft’s eye-popping purchase of Activision Blizzard.
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