According to Microsoft, if the $68.7 billion deal announced nearly a year and a half ago to owning Activision Blizzard King goes through, they will not immediately raise the price.

Of course, one might be suitable to doubt it because when fewer companies are on the market, there is a greater chance of price increases, especially if they are state-owned. The situation in the gaming industry is more nuanced than that. However, it is still worth looking at Microsoft’s statement with a narrow eye because if they say something is not going to happen, it will happen, so the monthly service launched on Xbox One in June 2017 and two years later on PC might still see a price increase if more games are available on it with the acquisition of Activision Blizzard King. Don’t forget, Microsoft has also stopped the $/€1 introductory monthly fee.

Microsoft has said before that it does not want Game Pass to replace traditional game purchases but wants to offer an alternative. Still, meanwhile, the strategy is to do the opposite by pushing it everywhere. Xbox Cloud Gaming, formerly known as XCloud, is no coincidence that it has been put on the more expensive subscription level, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, and since E3 2018, it is precisely to strengthen the service that the Redmond company has bought fifteen studios (Playground Games, Undead Labs, Compulsion Games, Ninja Theory, Obsidian Entertainment, inXile Entertainment, Double Fine Productions, Bethesda Game Studios, Arkane Studios, id Software, MachineGames, Roundhouse Studios, Tango Gameworks, ZeniMax Online Studios, Alpha Dog Games), which also includes The Initiative and World’s Edge.

The FTC is seeking a temporary restraining order from the court to prevent Microsoft from buying Activision Blizzard King. Still, the tech company’s opposition also includes a relevant quote related to Game Pass on page 25: “Finally, the FTC ignores critical variables in the economic analysis by disregarding the new options the merger will create for playing Activision content. Here, the acquisition would benefit consumers by making Call of Duty available on Microsoft’s Game Pass on the day it is released on console (with no price increase for the service based on the acquisition), on Nintendo, and on other services that allow cloud streaming.”

It’s better to be doubtful.

Source: WCCFTech