The proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft has a major hurdle to clear before it can be approved, as the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) blocked the deal, but more recently, the European Commission ended up approving it.
In this vein, a speech by the European Commissioner for Competition, Margrethe Vestager, has been published, in which she explains the reasoning of the regulatory body for approving the agreement, a crucial factor being the enormous advantage that PlayStation already has over Xbox in terms of quota. market in Europe.
According to Vestager, sales of PlayStation consoles in the region are approximately four times higher than those of Xbox, and only in very particular market segments does that gap narrow, such as with shooters, where the overall market share increases to more than 20% for Microsoft and Activision.
“One important finding was that Microsoft and Activision’s overall market share was generally low in Europe. It’s only when you look at specific segments like ‘shooters’ that you get to over 20%. And for consoles, Sony sells about 4 times as many PlayStations as Microsoft sells Xboxes.
Against this backdrop, we don’t think the merger would pose a vertical problem. I’ve been told that Call of Duty is a very popular shooter franchise. But we found that Microsoft probably wouldn’t shoot itself in the foot by halting sales of Call of Duty games to PlayStation’s much larger player base. Our CMA colleagues agreed with us and ultimately came to the same conclusion.”
As for Microsoft’s fight to get the deal approved in the UK, the company has filed an appeal against the CMA’s decision, though it remains to be seen how long the wait for a final resolution will last.
