The sigh of relief must have been felt from Redmond to the courtroom in San Francisco: after the green lights granted by regulators in Europe, Brazil, Japan and other major territories for Microsoft’s activity, this important victory now offers a (virtually) avenue to the success of its acquisition project. Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley, who has surely learned a lot more than reason about the ruthless world of the video game industry, concluded her decision with these few words:
“Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision has been described as the largest in the history of [l’industrie de] the tech. She deserves consideration. This review has paid off: Microsoft has committed in writing, in public and in court to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation for 10 years, on par with Xbox. He formed a deal with Nintendo to bring Call of Duty to Switch. As well as many other agreements to bring Activison content to many cloud gaming services for the first time. The responsibility of this Court is narrow. It is to decide whether, notwithstanding all of these circumstances, this merger should be halted—perhaps even permanently—pending an administrative decision from the FTC. For the reasons explained, the Court finds that the FTC failed to substantiate its allegation of lessening of competition in this industry. Rather, the news items point to increased access to Call of Duty and other Activision content for consumers. »
The winner takes it all
A considerable victory for the Redmond firm, which could have seen its entire agreement called into question by a preliminary injunction from the federal agency. If so, Microsoft should have reviewed the terms of its acquisition after the deadline set for July 18, 2023. Phil Spencer did not fail to seize his Twitter audience to congratulate himself on the progress made and to send his usual winks to the entire community of gamers Xbox:
“We are grateful to the Court for having promptly decided in our favour. The evidence showed that the deal with Activision Blizzard is good for the industry that the FTC’s claims about changing consoles, game catalog subscription services and the cloud do not reflect market reality video game. Since we announced this acquisition, our commitment to bring more games to more people and more platforms has only grown. We’ve signed several agreements to make Activision Blizzard games, Microsoft first-party games and Game Pass accessible to more people than today. We know gamers around the world have been following this story diligently, and I’m proud of our efforts to expand accessibility and choice for gamers through this journey. »
There remains the possibility for the FTC to appeal this decision before July 14th. But given the many battlegrounds already engaged by the Federal agency in recent months against (other) tech giants, it is very likely to see it simply drop the case. Microsoft’s attention is “now touring” to the United Kingdom: after the setback Competition and Markets Authority last April, its CEO Doug Smith announced that he was ready to suspend his appeal in order to “reconsider how the agreement can be modified” to respond to the concerns of the authority responsible for competition in England.