The European Commission’s preliminary investigation has found that the acquisition could significantly reduce competition in the console and PC video games markets.

The EU is launching a full investigation into Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard, Reuters reports.

The European Commission (EC) has said in a preliminary investigation that the acquisition could significantly reduce competition in the console and PC video games markets, including multi-player subscription and cloud-based game streaming services. The ECJ considers that by acquiring Activision Blizzard, Microsoft could foreclose access to Activision Blizzard’s console and PC video games, thereby depriving its rivals of large amounts of revenue.

Back in January, Xbox console maker Microsoft announced that it had acquired Activision Blizzard, one of the biggest video game publishers, for $69 billion, putting a huge number of games in the hands of the US company.

The Redmond-based company assured its rivals that the games it would acquire would be available on competitors’ consoles and would not be Xbox-exclusive.

However, rival Sony has accused Microsoft that the games it will own after the acquisition will not be available on PlayStation consoles. The Japanese company is most concerned that the blockbuster Call of Duty will not be playable on its devices later. The FPS, set in a variety of wars, is the most successful video game series of all time and one of the most popular and highest-grossing in the world.

According to Sony, the Redmond-based company has only offered to publish Activision’s hit game on PlayStation for a limited number of years, meaning that the Far East company would lose out on a huge amount of revenue. The deal has attracted the attention of authorities in several countries, with the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) saying the acquisition could harm consumers and is investigating further.

Microsoft says the UK competition watchdog was biased and relied only on the objections of rival Sony when it said in its latest report that Activision’s acquisition of Blizzard could harm consumers.

Source: Gameindustry-biz