The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has shared that the majority of the public is in favour of the Microsoft-Activision acquisition.
The regulator collected comments from the public for a duration of two weeks in October 2022. In its summary titled “Responses from members of the public to the issues statement,” the CMA revealed it received over 2,100 emails about the matter.
Of those emails, around 3/4th favoured Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard and 1/4th of the emails were against the acquisition. A few of the responses didn’t express any clear view in favour of or against the deal.
The CMA will release a final report on March 1, 2023. In the meantime, it shared views that were expressed by the public that are in favour of the acquisition. Here are some of them:
- Microsoft is not as strong as Sony and Nintendo in console gaming. The acquisition will help Microsoft to compete against the two companies.
- As Microsoft will not make Activision games including Call of Duty exclusive to Xbox, the acquisition will not harm rival consoles. It gave Minecraft as an example.
- Microsoft won’t make Call of Duty an exclusive because it is a multiplayer game.
- The merger will push Sony to innovate, such as to create more games that will compete with Call of Duty.
Here are some of the views that are expressed against the acquisition:
- Microsoft is dominant in the PC operating systems space, and the acquisition will lead to it dominating in gaming as well.
- Microsoft is big enough to make games that can compete with PlayStation exclusives, without acquiring Activision.
- The acquisition would set a bad example of tech giants acquiring large publishers.
- If the deal goes through, other publishers such as EA and Ubisoft could be acquired too.
EU regulators survey game developers and publishers about Microsoft’s Activision deal
The European Commission has reportedly sent a 91-page-long survey to game developers and publishers. The purpose of the questionnaire is to gather the thoughts of industry leaders about the Microsoft Activision deal, including the potential impact. Reuters, the source of the report, noted that it has seen the document.
EU regulators reportedly sent the survey earlier this month to console manufacturers, game publishers, developers, and distributors. It also sent the survey to providers of PC operating systems.
The questionnaire asked the parties about any “partial exclusivity strategy” that Microsoft could deploy around the Activision Blizzard console games after the deal.
