The UK Market and Competition Authority has ruled the purchase of Microsoft and has prevented the giant from completing the acquisition of Activision. The reason? They believe that the operation would impede the growth and the variety of options in the market of cloud game.
A canceled purchase
According to the UK Market and Competition Authority, Microsoft has not been able to clarify the doubts that were raised about the cloud gaming situationensuring that the purchase would place those from Redmond in a privileged position which would greatly affect the growth of your competition, thus limiting the options available to the user.
According to the ruling, having control of Call of Duty, Overwatch and world of warcraft It would make it possible to offer an extremely complete cloud gaming service, even more so since Xbox now controls between 60% and 70% of cloud gaming services. Microsoft proposed several solutions to the CMA, but according to the organization, these suffered from several deficiencies that have led to the decision to cancel the purchase:
- They did not cover business models for cloud services
- It was not open enough for vendors to offer versions of games on operating systems other than Windows.
- It would standardize the terms and conditions on which the games are available.
The promise of maintaining services for 10 years to the competition would not make much sense in a market that changes so quickly.
Activision on Game Pass is too much
The conclusion they have reached is that the benefit of having the Activision catalog on Game Pass It is much higher than the damage that occurs with the merger within the cloud gaming landscape, since even Xbox gamers themselves who subscribe to Game Pass could see how the monthly fee is increased after including Activision’s extensive catalog.
Has Microsoft definitely lost the battle for Activision?
As you can imagine, this is only the first chapter in a series of lawsuits that will take place throughout 2023. Microsoft is not going to sit idly by, and even Activision has announced that they will work hand in hand with Microsoft to appeal the decision. “The CMA report contradicts the UK’s ambitions to become an attractive country to build technology businesses,” said the Activision spokesperson.
Fountain: gov.uk
