The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has decreed Microsoft’s attempted $68.7 billion Activision Blizzard takeover to be harmful to gamers.
The provisional report echoes similar guff from the US Federal Trade Commission and EU Commission, which amounts to an ever-greater PR victory for arch-rival Sony.
Albeit not the final report, it looks increasingly likely the deal will fall apart, given the compelling argument Sony has made that the deal will likely lead to popular franchises such as Call Of Duty going Xbox exclusive, despite Microsoft’s ever more generous assurances to guarantee multi-platform access for many years to come.
The CMA bureaucrats claim the deal “could harm gamers” and worry that it will lead to “higher prices, fewer choices, or less innovation”.
Microsoft has responded to this, the latest of many setbacks, by saying they are “committed to offering effective and easily enforceable solutions that address the CMA’s concerns” – whatever that means – and “…to grant long-term 100 percent equal access to Call of Duty to Sony, Nintendo, Steam and others…”.
I find it unlikely that many of the grey-suited men on these competition boards play many games, if any. So the increasingly hostile attitude towards the deal has to be attributed to Sony’s clever strategy to paint exclusive ownership of studios as a terrible thing, despite the fact Sony owns tons of studios making exclusive PlayStation titles.
Regardless, the deal seems cursed, no matter what Activision Blizzard and Microsoft offer to placate the bungling bureaucrats, such is the narrative that has taken hold throughout the process – evil corporation plans to screw gamers out of choice to make loads of muuuneh.
Well played, Sony. I just hope you have an excellent counter-argument prepped next time you buy a studio for your exclusive use. Think about that.
