The South African regulator CCSA announced, that it has approved Microsoft’s $69 billion (currently about 474.03 billion CNY) acquisition of Activision Blizzard.
The CCSA said, “The Commission finds that the proposed transaction is unlikely to result in significant monopoly issues because the parties do not have the ability and incentive to prevent game distributors from making sales, particularly Sony (Playstation) and Nintendo (Switch).” “In addition, the merging parties have committed to continue to offer Call of Duty to other console manufacturers.”
Microsoft has kicked off a remarkable blitzkrieg to get the deal approved, signing 10-year gaming deals with NVIDIA, Nintendo and many others, as well as a similar deal with Steam parent company Valve.
So far, countries such as Japan, Chile, Brazil, Serbia and Saudi Arabia have approved the deal. The final outcome of the review of the acquisition will be decided by countries around the world, such as the UK and the European Commission, which have until 26 April and 22 May respectively to decide on the deal.
Sony, of course, remains strongly opposed to the acquisition and has told regulators that Microsoft will use the purchase to raise console prices and deliberately treat the PlayStation version of Call of Duty differently.
