Following recent reports, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) del Regno Unito concluded its five-month investigation into the proposed acquisition from Microsoft’s $69 billion Activision Blizzard and has published its interim results. In its conclusions, the body writes that Microsoft could potentially gaining an unfair advantage by adding Activision Blizzard ownership and potentially hurting players and leading to higher prices, fewer choices, or less innovation. Below is the statement:
The CMA tentatively believed that buying one of the world’s leading game publishers would strengthen this strong position and substantially reduce the competition Microsoft would otherwise face in the UK cloud gaming market. This could alter the future of gaming, potentially hurting UK gamers, particularly those who can’t afford or don’t want to buy an expensive gaming console or gaming PC. The CMA tentatively believed that weakening competition by limiting other platforms’ access to Activision’s games could substantially reduce competition between the Xbox and PlayStation in the UK, in turn hurting UK gamers. Xbox and PlayStation compete closely with each other at the moment, and access to top content, like CoD, is a big part of that competition. Reducing this competition between Microsoft and Sony could lead to all gamers seeing higher prices, reduced range, lower quality and worse service in game consoles over time.
The CMA says it will now accept responses to its interim findings from stakeholders through March 1 not responses to the above possible remedies until February 22ndbefore publishing then final report on 26 April.
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