An Antitrust Lawsuit Could Block Activision Blizzard's Acquisition!

General news News 11/24/2022

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The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) does not think it is a good idea for Microsoft to acquire Activision Blizzard.

Politico, citing three people familiar with the matter, reports that the FTC is “likely” to launch an antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft to block their Activision Blizzard King acquisition. It’s the FTC’s way of demonstrating that it is putting some constraints on the power of big tech companies. However, it requires a vote of the FTC commissioners, but they are allegedly not convinced by Microsoft’s arguments. The lawsuit announcement could come soon (in December), and Microsoft has already reacted…

“Microsoft is prepared to address regulators’ concerns, including the FTC and Sony, to ensure the deal closes confidently. We’ll still trail Sony and Tencent in the market after the deal closes, and together Activision and Xbox will benefit gamers and developers and make the industry more competitive,” David Cuddy, a spokesman for the Redmond-based tech company, told Politico.

Meanwhile, the UK’s competition and markets authority, the CMA, has published 22 and 111 pages of comments on the deal from Sony and Microsoft respectively. Sony’s reaction revealed that Call of Duty on PlayStation generates billions of dollars and that the franchise has an annual budget of more than $300 million. Sony says it’s also specifically crucial because of its large, aggressive release cycle and that it’s a much bigger name than, for example, NBA 2K, which Microsft mentioned. The company added that Electronic Arts’ Battlefield series is not good enough against CoD (Battlefield has so far amassed 89 million sales against Call of Duty’s 400 million).

Paul Tassi, writing for Forbes, perhaps rightly laughed Sony off (“Sony just raised regional PS5 prices and pushed for $70 games and they have the *balls* to say this to regulators, lmao”) when Sony said, “Faced with weaker competition, Microsoft would be able to: increase console and game prices for Xbox users (including those that switched from PlayStation); increase the price of Game Pass, and reduce innovation and quality.” Meanwhile, Sony has also increased the price of PlayStation Plus. Hmmm…

Source: WCCFTech, WCCFTech

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Angyal Anikó

Anikó, our news editor and communication manager, is more interested in the business side of the gaming industry. She worked at banks, and she has a vast knowledge of business life. Still, she likes puzzle and story-oriented games, like Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishments, which is her favourite title. She also played The Sims 3, but after accidentally killing a whole sim family, swore not to play it again. (For our office address, email and phone number check out our IMPRESSUM)