New Year New Life and a new episode of the same soap opera: just one week after the year since Microsoft began the process of acquiring Activision Blizzard, and after dealing for months with a Sony that is not interested in the movement, the Redmond giant he runs into two new stones on the way. Two huge stones, in fact: Google and Nvidia.
As detailed the bloomberg mediumboth Google and Nvidia joined the position of the PlayStation parent company, offering the United States regulatory commission information that would compromise the purchase and that, according to different sources offered to the medium, are based on the enormous advantage that Microsoft could gain in the video game industry. Both when it comes to cloud gaming, subscription services and mobile gaming.
However, it is time to clarify that in those statements to the regulatory commission Nvidia did not directly oppose the acquisition, but rather emphasized the need for equal access to Activision Blizzard video games. As a reference, Jim Ryan, the head of PlayStation, has already charged against Microsoft, stating that the agreement for Call of Duty was insufficient.
How does the purchase of Activision Blizzard affect Google and Nvidia?
Although, the Federal Trade Commission United States will have to weigh all concerns before approving the acquisition of Activision Blizzard, keep in mind that both Google and Nvidia have a very important role in the video game industry.
- Initially, despite the fact that Google Stadia is about to close its servers, we find that Google Play (and by extension Android) is one of the largest markets, if not the largest, within mobile telephony. Logic ally, he is not interested in a case like Epic’s happening.
- Nvidia, for its part, is about much more than hardware and mammoth graphics cards: it has its own great subscription-based cloud gaming project: GeForce Now.
At this point, and to put ourselves in context, it is worth remembering that Epic stated that Google paid Activision $360 million. so that it did not compete with Google Play and that in February 2020, two years before the purchase intention was announced, Activision Blizzard itself withdrew all its games from the GeForce Now streaming service.
The purchase of Activision Blizzard a year later
Until now, Microsoft and Phil Spencer, who leads Xbox’s video game division, have been very open to negotiations and concessions. Since its announcement, on January 18, 2022, it has been emphasized that they will continue to publish in the rest of the systems. In fact, not only have they offered a huge amount of comfort to Sony for Call of Duty, but Spencer is clear that not publishing Call of Duty on PlayStation is shooting himself in the foot and they have plans to carry the saga of shooters to Nintendo Switch.
For their part, from Activision Blizzard they already anticipate that “Any suggestion that the purchase could have anti-competitive effects is absurd“and they will fight to defend the Microsoft acquisition if necessary. In any case, its shareholders agree to the acquisition and the original plans call for the process to be completed this summer.
In any case, Microsoft’s bet is very high. Specifically 68.700 million dollars. His intentions are also quite clear: accelerate the growth of Xbox and Microsoft in the video game industry consoles, PCs, mobiles, the cloud. Completing the process will give you an advantageous situation thanks to the value of sagas like Call of Duty, Crash Bandicoot, Warcraft or Diablo. We do not know if this will threaten the video game industry but, from what we have seen, it is for Sony. And she’s not the only one who thinks so.
