But why are Google and NVIDIA involved in Microsoft’s takeover of Activision Blizzard?


Mathilde Rochefort

January 13, 2023 at 11:30 a.m.

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xbox series headset © Arto Tahvanainen / Shutterstock.com

© Arto Tahvanainen / Shutterstock

After Sony, it’s the turn of NVIDIA and Google to express their concerns about the takeover of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft for 68.7 billion dollars.

Announced in January 2022, this acquisition is the largest in video game history and will give Microsoft access to Activision Blizzard’s catalog, including successful franchises like call of duty, World of Warcraft Where candy Crush.

A takeover that the FTC opposes

In December, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the federal agency in charge of controlling anti-competitive practices, began proceedings with the aim of having the operation canceled. She believes that this would stifle competition in the game console sectors, but also in cloud gaming.

According to Bloomberg, Google and NVIDIA have justly provided information that supports one of the FTC’s key arguments that Microsoft may have an unfair advantage in the subscription and mobile cloud gaming market. NVIDIA particularly emphasized the need for equal and open access to games.

As a reminder, the American company dominates the market for graphics cards popular with gamers and offers a streaming game service called GeForce Now. Google competes with Microsoft in cloud gaming, but its Stadia service has proven to be a failure and will shut down this month. Through Android, the Mountain View company is an access gateway to mobile games for millions of people.

Microsoft tries by all means to ease tensions

The two companies therefore join Sony in criticizing the takeover of Activision Blizzard. The PlayStation maker has been very upset with the acquisition since its announcement and fears that Microsoft will return the franchise call of duty exclusive to its Game Pass, which already dominates the streaming game subscription sector with 25 million subscribers.

The Redmond firm is trying by all means to ease tensions to complete its takeover. With this in mind, it has entered into a 10-year agreement for call of duty launches on Nintendo gaming platforms and Steam at the same time as Xbox. Microsoft has offered a similar deal to Sony, which has yet to respond in the affirmative.

The American giant also points out that the concerns of its competitors and the FTC are not necessarily justified, since it only ranks third in the console market behind the PlayStation and the Switch. He further assures that the popularity of call of duty is overestimated by its competitors and that its main objective is to access the mobile gaming sector, from which it is almost absent, through the King platform which publishes candy Crush.

Sony, NVIDIA and Google could be called to testify in the lawsuit filed by the FTC.

Source : Bloomberg



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