The scramble over Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard seems to be raging, but the UK CMA has released a statement that could be pivotal.
While Sony continues to fire all guns against the takeover of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft (and sometimes makes a little ridicule) and Microsoft leaves no opportunity to spread its own goodwill through deals and statements, the antitrust authorities in the USA and Great Britain are wrestling and the EU are still deciding whether to approve the acquisition.
A statement by the British Competition and Markets Authority now has the potential to turn things around, at least in one aspect of the takeover, and Sony in particular shouldn’t like that at all. Sony has recently repeatedly emphasized how harmful it would be to put Call of Duty in the hands of Microsoft and even made accusations that Microsoft could intentionally disadvantage Call of Duty on Playstation, contrary to corresponding promises.
The CMA has now apparently come to a very different view. A statement released today reads: “The CMA Inquiry Group has updated its preliminary findings and has reached its preliminary conclusion that, overall, the Transaction will not result in a significant impediment to competition in console games in the UK.”.
Above all, the possibility of Call of Duty exclusivity is given little probability. “While the CMA’s original analysis suggested that this strategy would be profitable in most cases, new data (which offers a better insight into the actual buying behavior of CoD players) suggests that this strategy would be profitable in every plausible case would result in losses”so die CMA. “Based on this, the updated analysis now shows that it would not be economically beneficial for Microsoft to make CoD exclusive to Xbox post-deal, but instead Microsoft still has the incentive to make the game available on PlayStation.”
However, a decision regarding the takeover in relation to the topic of cloud gaming, which is apparently still being intensively discussed, is still open. A final report from the CMA is expected by the end of April. The decisions of the EU Commission and the American FTC, which even filed a lawsuit against the takeover, are also still pending. In any case, today’s statement by the CMA should be a powerful damper for Sony.