The Federal Trade Commission blocks the 69 billion USD acquisition of Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard. The FTC has filed a lawsuit of antitrust against Activision Blizzard (ATVI), which is a publisher of Call of Duty under the acquisition of Microsoft.
The deal is being evaluated by the regulators of the European Commission and the Competition and Markets Authority of the United Kingdom. The regulators were being pressured by SONY, the manufacturer of the PlayStation and a competitor in the field, to cut down the plans that were proposed and implemented by Microsoft.
The Federal Trade Commission stated in an exchange with the media that the deal would enable Microsoft in suppressing their competitors in Xbox gaming consoles and their rapidly growing subscription content and cloud-gaming business.
Microsoft was accused by the agency of backpedaling on the assurances that they had given to the antitrust regulators of the European Union. The EU’s antitrust regulators were assured by Microsoft in 2021 when they acquired the gaming content that was developed by Bethesda Softworks.
The FTC has accused Microsoft of making exclusive a few of the games of Bethesda. Microsoft made exclusive these games into its own gaming ecosystems. The Federal Trade Commission has concerned that there are just two manufacturers that produce consoles of high performance and Microsoft is one among the two.
The Microsoft deal that is being investigated now was announced by the company earlier in 2022 in the month of January. The deal has the potential to make the company achieve the rank of number 3 by revenue in the list of the world’s largest gaming companies.
The first two companies on the list are Tencent and SONY. The claim by Microsoft states that this deal would help them to compete in the space of mobile gaming and also to continue the manufacture of their Xbox Cloud Gaming service.
Xbox Cloud Gaming is a service that serves as a platform for users to play and stream video games from the servers of Microsoft to lesser-powered electronic devices such as laptops, smartphones, Chromebooks, and also smart TVs.
There would not be a necessity to have a Personal Computer or an expensive console. Satya Nadella, the Chief Executive Officer of Microsoft views that above 20 million people had game streamed through the Xbox Cloud Gaming as per the data derived in October 2022. The number of people surged to 20 million from the 10 million that it was earlier in April of 2022.
The greatest rival of Microsoft, SONY reviews that if Microsoft has the permission to conduct the purchase of Activision Blizzard, then the combination of the two countries would be able to make exclusive the PC or the Call of Duty, an Xbox.
This combination would make SONY removed from the entire game series. Activision Blizzard has ownership of the gamer franchises such as Diablo and World of Warcraft, Call of Duty is considered as the most important one.
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The sales of the latest version of Call of Duty have made 1 billion USD in the very first 10 days of the game in the market. The latest version of Call of Duty is titled Call of Duty : Modern Warfare II. The game is planning to release another version in 2023.
The new version of the game would be titled as Call of Duty Warzone 2.0. This version is having high expectancy rates of generating a whole year-long revenue in 2023.
Phil Spencer, the executive vice president of gaming in Microsoft has given assurances multiple times to SONY and gamers that Call of Duty would be made available on the platform of SONY’s PlayStation as well. Microsoft company has also verified the willingness of the company in making the assurance legally bonded for a time period of 10 years.
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