As the U.S. court rejected the FTC request and agreed to Microsoft’s $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, the UK is also preparing to negotiate.
According to a statement from Microsoft President Brad Smith, the CMA has now agreed to negotiate with Microsoft “to acquire Activision Blizzard.” Microsoft said: It will try its best to dispel the concerns of the regulators to dispel the concerns of the British Market Supervision Bureau, so as to complete the acquisition of Activision Blizzard.
While we disagree with the CMA's concerns, we are considering how the transaction could be amended to address these concerns in a manner acceptable to the CMA.
To prioritize these efforts, Microsoft, Activision and the CMA have agreed that it is in the public interest to suspend litigation in the UK, and the parties have jointly submitted a submission to the Competition Appeals Tribunal.Judging from the previous statements of the two parties, it is expected that Microsoft will give British players some preferential treatment in cloud games.
Judging from the current situation, Microsoft should also soon reach a unity with the UK Market Regulatory Authority and obtain approval for the Activision Blizzard acquisition.
The Verge has confirmed with the U.K. Competition Authority that they are “ready to consider any proposed restructuring deal from Microsoft to address the issues raised in our final report”.
At the end of April this year, the British CMA issued a notice to block the transaction because “this may endanger the emerging cloud gaming market”. Subsequently, the European Commission announced its approval of the deal in May, arguing that Microsoft’s concessions on cloud gaming were sufficient.
In fact, Microsoft has previously reached a number of agreements with many cloud game service providers around the world, promising to provide them with at least 10 years of games (including Activision Blizzard games) agreements.
As far as Microsoft is concerned, they definitely want to try and push the deal before the current merger agreement expires (July 18). And if the extension is not agreed after that, Activision Blizzard may charge a handling fee of US$3 billion.
