The FTC antitrust case won’t go to court in a few weeks, so the Redmond tech giant might not be able to take over Activision Blizzard King until next year.

Early last year, the big news was that Microsoft had made a $68.7 billion takeover offer for Activision Blizzard King. And at the end of the year, the FTC (US Federal Trade Commission) sued the tech giant, claiming that it would be anti-competitive for Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Xbox boss Phil Spencer to bring another major publisher under the Xbox banner after ZeniMax Media (=Bethesda).

According to the FTC’s hearing schedule, the final in-court conference will start at 1 PM ET on August 1, while the parties will appear in court at 10 AM ET the day after. There are still seven months until then, which will be used to gather evidence and responses to the allegations. As GamesRadar points out, August does not mean that the trial will be closed that month. After all, cases like this can take months (Epic Games vs. Apple took a long time and is still not over because both companies appealed).

It means that there is a chance Microsoft will not be able to get its hands on the Bobby Kotick-led publisher until 2024. In December, the FTC took Microsoft to court because they believed the Redmond company would suppress Xbox and Game Pass rivals. In response, Microsoft said the lawsuit against them violated the US Constitution, and a few days ago, the company retracted that claim. (We wrote about both stories.)

And it may make Microsoft’s investors furious, as some of them must have expected consolidation by 2023, which will hurt the gaming industry in the long run, despite the company’s promises of stars in the sky.

Source: PSL