UK Authority Reveals 'Concerns' Over Xbox's Acquisition Of Activision Blizzard

So much for it getting done this month then. So when happens if the UK disapprove of the deal? Does that mean xbox can still buy them but not be able to release any games in the UK?

I don't care ... as long as I get Diablo 4 ASAP!

Oh no…looks like someone on the uk board is a pony…

I do find it funny the uk board is concerned MS activison deal could lead to ‘worse terms’ for their rivals.. don’t we already see this with Sonys marketing deal of cod? Don’t we already have timed exclusivity and timed exclusive gameplay/modes going to PlayStation consoles? This practice is cool though.
Nearly every marketing deal Sony does with third party publishers it secures additional exclusive extra content…

Basically its sounding like if MS want this to pass they have to agree to be cuckhold. Over on Xbox we won’t be seeing timed exclusive cod modes anytime soon. We won’t be getting any exclusivity out of activison/blizzard to add value to the console. And we’ll likely see a few games go onto PlayStation subscriptions too. Hell, we’re about to see that with Deathloop.

I hope this deal falls through. It’s a lot of money they need to recoup from GamePass subscribers for Candy Crush, Call of Duty and PC Blizzard games.

@UltimateOtaku91 Yes and no. Since Microsoft and Activision-Blizzard are both US companies the UK can't legally stop the acquisition. Could they block the games? Yes but that only hurts the UK's economy. More likely they would impose sanctions on Microsoft or demand a different publisher for Activision in the UK market. Microsoft could say no but once again no sane organization is going to cut off revenue from an entire market.

All that said in reality these concerns will be affected by the US and EU's opinions. If both allow the acquisition to go through it would be very unlikely that the UK does much to stop it.

"to damage competition in the nascent market for cloud gaming services."

This is a funny complaint given the conduct of these big companies on a daily basis.

@Clankylad They quite obviously want written assurances regarding cod non-exclusivity (probably raised by Sony UK).
They mention World of Warcraft specifically too, I know next go nothing on mmo, but maybe concern for competing subscription mmo rivals, should wow be rolled into gamepass?

It is very uninteresting, but more from a political point of view, that the Chinese are not blocked by anything, that is, we love America and democracy, but we stick a pin in their back.

Should have guessed it would be the British investigation that would throw shade on the deal...good old UK out of touch with whats happening as per usual

Didn't Microsoft already state they had not intention of making CoD an exclusive?

WoW is a shadow of its former self and not the mmo market leader as it once was. Indeed I suspect that one of the reasons ABK was up for sale to begin with was WoW being on a downward trend and bleeding subs year on year (to the point ABK obfuscate sub numbers in their shareholder report by only reporting mau's (monthly active users) instead of total subs as they used to in the golden years.)

So I am not really sure why they are taking issue. Oh well I am sure it will be sorted out by the suits at M$

The thing people are forgetting is a) this is only further scrutiny not a block and b) wad in motion before the Sony price hike and lawsuit. Both of which I guarantee you will play a factor for MS lawyers.

@SplooshDmg it is about the Cloud and GP. Sony is the only competitor that expressed concerns about It from the Brazilian documentation. And their concerns and Ms being able to put it in GP and them not having it for PS+. However for a company claiming this might be anti-compatible; they just raised prices except in the only market that has competition. I can’t see that not being relevant. But this isn’t a block either. And what Phil says really doesn’t matter because it’s what the lawyers do that matters. I’m assuming their legal was already prepared for this review. You don’t spend that much money and not have the best legal team money can buy.

The U.K. Authority are probably upset it’s an American firm buying them, if it was a Chinese company buying Activision they’d have no issues at all, that seems to be the pattern with our useless government over buy outs. Won’t be surprised in the slightest if they force concessions to be made and probably no one else will.

Typical British authority BS from people who have no idea what they are doing. Again the usual thing for Britain, and I am British and live in England, unfortunately.

It seems that MS needs to grease some wheels for this to get the green light in the UK. Sort of like paying a toll to cross a bridge.

Pretty standard stuff in the merger and acquisitions world especially with one this big. Almost all authorities are going to raise these concerns and it's on Microsoft to prove the acquisition won't hurt the competition. As we saw in the leaked stuff from the Brasilian government investigation, their lawyers have all their stuff ready. SO its not concerning at all yet, this is something MS has prepared for from the start

Things start to get tricky when they actually get sued to block the acquisition and i doubt that will happen

@SplooshDmg yeah but the NVIDIA thing really didn’t have much competition. Didn’t it get thrown out before this point before the FTC was even as hard as they are now? But even after this buyout MS will still be behind Sony; NVDIA couldn’t say that. I do think concessions might be a thing. I just think if LS can’t have CapD exclusively for GP; it’s going to make them rethink it.

Does this mean guys that if the UK doesn't agree, this deal can't go through? Does every country have to agree for this to go through?

@SplooshDmg I don't think its considered undercutting. Xbox will still offer the means to buy the game for the same price whether you are subscribed to gamepass or not. Undercutting would be if they would charge 50 dollars on xbox and lets say 70 on playstation for exaclty the same product. So the offering on gamepass shouldnt be considered as undercutting and i doubt that will be a problem at all.

@SplooshDmg The stupid thing with that deal was the government blocked it over security concerns, but they then allowed another American company with a history of ripping companies up and selling all the assets off, and taking all the patents, to buy a British firm who makes circuits and other parts for Britain’s nuclear submarines and weapons… oh and they allow any Chinese company to buy any British company it seems. I was ashamed they blocked the Nvidia deal as they could have done great things with ARM. Now ARM will try to float itself on the stock market to save the company.
When it comes to buy outs I find the British government incredibly hypocritical and stupid, but I’m sure many palms are greased well…

@SplooshDmg oh no wholeheartedly no one can count on anything. I just don’t think people should act like they know what’s going on behind closed doors. But yeah anything could happen. Like you I think will go through with some concessions but who knows.

@CaptainCluck Yeah I think I'm with you on this, though I doubt these concerns will ultimately lead to the deal failing. I just keep thinking about the tiny sum Embracer Group paid for the Square-Enix western studios, and other developers/publishers like Capcom that would add so much more to Xbox than Activision would, for a fraction of the cost. I know COD is huge but I'm not a fan, and I don't particularly want Xbox to be the console of choice for those who only play FIFA or COD and barely anything else. Asobo is another developer that Xbox should snap up before someone else does, they are seriously talented.

Meanwhile, Sony buys a portion of FromSoft and partners with Kadokawa, which will almost definitely result in games like Elden Ring 2 skipping Xbox, and nobody bats an eye.

I used to really like Sony but they're being a bunch of two-faced a-holes this gen. Cry about one thing then turn around and do the exact same thing somewhere else.

Kind of reminds me about that time back in 2004-ish when EA got served by NFL 2K5 so they went and locked down the NFL license for all eternity. And it's been a blast ever since!

"The CMA is concerned that Microsoft could leverage Activision Blizzard’s games together with Microsoft’s strength across console, cloud, and PC operating systems to damage competition in the nascent market for cloud gaming services."

Translation: we want someone else to be the winner in the cloud gaming service.

Seriously... what is their hope here? Either AB on its own makes their own cloud service, or signs a deal with a cloud service provider to have their games there. The chances of AB games alternatively going into every single cloud service is next to none. In fact, chances are they will go into no cloud service ever.

Sounds to me like trying to pick winners and losers.

Also... how on earth does WoW play into this at all? No competitor gets a penny from WoW. The game is not on consoles, nor is it on any digital storefront other than their own.

@XxEvilAshxX I don't think Sony owning a minority share of FromSoft will result in any more games being exclusive to PlayStation. Most likely they've done it to prevent someone else (like MS or even Amazon) from swooping in and taking those games away from PlayStation.

@SplooshDmg That gets tricky. Although, Luna isn't a "smorgasboard" like Game Pass and Plus, though, is it? They sell retail games. So if they sell retail games on Luna, I can't see why a full price CoD (or F2P Warzone) would not be distributed for sale on Luna. Either way it's still Xbox Studios as a publisher getting a return. It would never be free with prime, but I imagine it would be available on the service to buy.

“Following our Phase 1 investigation, we are concerned that Microsoft could use its control over popular games like Call of Duty and World of Warcraft post-merger to harm rivals, including recent and future rivals in multi-game subscription services and cloud gaming."
Isn't that the entire point of any gaming company buying other companies? It's called competition. What a stupid statement. It isn't Microsoft's job to help Sony compete. And as much as I hate Sony's negative tactics (paying for denying access to games versus creating new avenues of access) it isn't Sony's job to help Microsoft neither...

@S1ayeR74 I'm sure if you followed the money from our Government back, it would become very clear why they are very eager to allow certain acquisitions.

It’s the UK it takes 5 signatures and 2 years to be allowed to build a small rabbit hutch in your own back garden 😂

@Richnj Oh I don't doubt that for one single second.. corrupt to the top. £850 a roll wall paper anyone??...

@Royalblues Yeah, the UK is a nation of PlayStation lovers, myself included 😁

Not a popular opinion, but im pround britain is asking the relevant questions and not rolling over simply because phil made some non binding comments on social media.
Microsoft has a long history of abusing its power to in an anti competitive way, which is why they have been the subject of so many anti trust suits in the past. This is not so much MS gaming as we know, but when the organisation as a whole has exhibitted anti competive practices in the past, its only right that a mergers committee check this is not a new example.
I suspect they will get assurences they can rely on from MS lawyers and then wave it through, but its quite right they ask the questions - its the reason they exist at all.

@CaptainCluck It will make Microsoft more money. It will be recouped with more subscribers.

@SplooshDmg
So glad you get the same red tape rubbish as the UK does 😂

I wish they have bought other company than AB. Seeing Embracer buying all those studios for much less money made me sad. If it was microsoft, we could all be playing a lot of good games on game pass, they could even have bought other companies and avoided this headache.

So Sony PlayStation, the biggest market leader in games has no problems buying others but when MS tries to be competitive it’s seen as problematic? It’s a big acquisition but does it make MS all of sudden the leader? MS has been trying to be consumer friendly for years now and MS certainly isn’t the MS of the old days + it’s their gaming division. It seems Sony & Apple can practically do what they want and nobody over there seem to worry about that. Sony PS already gave away they are getting more competition by their statements. They wiped the floor with MS for years! They had COD deals for years and didn’t feel sorry for MS, did they? They do mind when they get a uno reverse 🙂 (they will lose a lot of profit from that one)
I’m a gamer and own every console & we as gamers will benefit from this deal. And PS needs to “work” harder to be on top.

And this is what happens when you want governments to step in. EVERYONE begging the governments to step in against microtransactions. The same governments mind you, trying to say video games cause violence. Younger gamers don't understand the saying "Give them an inch, and they'll take a mile." Government's are the LAST thing you want poking around the video game world. They got their foot in the door with microtransactions, now they want you to open the door all the way, so they can freely come in.

@Bleachedsmiles Flame that console war man. Also, Sony doesn't own cod. Paying billions upon billions to own something and paying millions for marketing, aren't even in the same ballpark. It's not even the same sport. Your WAY off on your comment

I’m just gonna sit back and wait for the acquisition to go through, which it will. Not a fan of the acquisition, I think Acti/Blizz are awful, but can understand it from a business perspective.

@SmoothlyRough Explain yourself - how am I ‘way off’ with my comment?

Just another reason of many for me to boycott the pony poopstation. Being a whiney Karen about it doesn't help me like you.

@Pusher2021 I think the scrutiny has less to do with it being MS, and less to do with MS buying a big publisher, and more to do with the fact that it's CoD. If it were Ubisoft, or 2K, or even EA, I don't think this much scrutiny would exist. I don't think buying "Activision" is even drawing scrutiny. I think "buying CoD" is where it's all coming from, because CoD is an institution associated with the core of gaming, and even regulators that know nothing of gaming know of CoD and it's significance in a general sense.

Now, I can't figure out WHY CoD is so popular, it's a generically themed mediocre game. But for some ungodly reason it's super huge

It’s odd that none of these regulators care that Nintendo never gets any Call of Duty games, or most third party AAA’s for that matter.

Isn’t that unfair compared to Nintendo’s rivals?

@Titntin I find it utterly hilarious how you actually believe the CMA is doing this for the consumer.

@S1ayeR74
I find it even more ridiculous that you think they are doing it to pass the time, but I doubt you have any knowledge of their role or have given it any real thought.

@SplooshDmg What a fantastic reply. Thank you for giving me some faith that people on this site do occasionally think before drawing a line in the sand.
I'm also in favour of this deal going through, but also believe some legal assurances are warranted in this particular case, and hopefully that's what extra scrutiny will achieve.

@Titntin haha who’s a triggered condescending a** then eh.. and I do understand what they do very well thank you very much, I follow the governments decisions over buy outs and they are hypocritical, never protect the consumer, but I’m sure you aware of that with your defence of them 😂

@S1ayeR74
Triggered? Hardly!
The only one acting like a child and throwing insults around is you.
I'm not in defence of anyone, except I've stated they have a job to do and appear to be doing it.
Your instant aggression shows an angry mentality- I think you need a hug from someone.......

@Titntin Ah the good ol reflection tactic. Never works but nice try. And when it comes to Kwasi Kwarteng and the CMA with their utter incompetence then yes I am angry thank you with what they have done, if you understood that then you would understand how you come across as defending them. But it seems that may be over your head?

Political games from the isolated little island trying to give itself some importance

@SplooshDmg I'm not sure I get the specific concerns there. If they're leveraging Windows + Azure, there's little this acquisition does that affects that anywhere close to scale. And if the problem is influencing distribution and rev share, how is that different from how any other major player, be it Sony, or Valve, or Tencent is doing now? And if those concerns are major concerns (I can't quite see how) how is the ABK acquisition going to affect that beyond CoD's power, which comes right back to the issue being CoD. Activision may have the third most powerful non-mobile franchise in gaming with CoD....but that's basically all they have of significance at this point. Their other franchises are far less influential in terms of industry-level effect. WoW was once supreme, but that was long ago.

So either way, even if those issues are significant (I still don't understand how it relates to ABK or even another 4 buyouts specifically), it's still CoD that makes it matter.

If we're looking outside consoles and focusing on PC, what changes with ABK in the picture? Does Windows Store become more dominant if ABK games aren't on Steam or EGS? Yes. But....if it were just Diablo and Overwatch would that matter? Not really. It's still about CoD. Streaming....there's literally only 4 companies that even could run streaming at scale, MS, Google, Amazon, Facebook and everyone else just rents from them, including Sony. Even Apple has zero infrastructure for that, though they could buy it overnight and buy some wagyu beef with the leftover change. So I'm not sure that swings streaming substantially in MS's favor either.

They would be able to expand their vertical integration, trimming costs, and being able to compete at incomparably low rates, buy pulling as much development in house as possible to distribute on their own services. However, historically, moves like that are seen as benefiting consumers are regulators don't touch that until it's down to the last company or two in the industry, so I don't think they'd be looking at it from that angle (at least from a US perspective, I know little about UK's regulatory traditions.)

So I'm still failing to see what the angle is here about outsize power for MS coming from the aquisition. Frankly even if they followed it up with Ubisoft and EA, I'm not sure there would be enough room for regulators from a traditional history to say much. And MS lawyers would have a field day with all the examples across myriad industries where regulators did squat to allow even tighter monopolies to exist without a peep. Loose regulation and laissez-faire for nearly a century dug its own grave here.

Edit: FWIW I'm not necessarily in favor of the acquisition. In a general stance I can't stand the general trend of consolidation not just in gaming but modern business in general and would like to see the opposite, a splintering and broadening of competitive forces at smaller scales. And on a personal stance since it doesn't add much of particular interest to me to the platform or enhance much of anything other than maybe giving MS more studios to produce content they've been lacking. But at the same time, I can't see how any regulation body that's allowed all the consolidation they've allowed in the overall market to seriously look sideways at this with a straight face. It seems a bunch of navel gazing and hand waiving to look important, inconsistent with their own (useless) history.

@SplooshDmg Is there any part of blizzard left after Activision? Blizzard stopped mattering like 15 years ago sadly.

@SplooshDmg StarCraft 3 with an auction house, mtx, nft, and a mandatory mobile companion app. Also, soundtrack by BTS and Twice.

@SplooshDmg Me likey!

@SplooshDmg To be fair, ANYTHING coming hot off the heels of XC feels bad. That said, Ys8 was the game I used to manage the withdrawal from XC2 ending and ended up loving it almost as much, and few other games could have pulled me out of the post xc2 blues. The bigger problem is Ys9 just isn't as good as Ys8. It's one of the weakest ys games honestly. It's not bad but it's not the best. At least you're not playing the 15fps switch edition

Idk what I'll do when I'm done xc3. I love sh2 but it's not a big rpg adventure replacement, and p5r remasteredish is a month away. Splatoon 3 may distract me enough. XC is one of those things that playing it just makes all other games seem uninteresting for months after.

@SplooshDmg I still do have to replay xc1 just to do the extra story. I played it on 3ds, so my save doesn't carry to the definitive edition.

It really is so funny. I don't intentionally seek weeb games, it's just to me the games I classify as "real" games happen to be called weeb. So to me it's just a year full of real games instead of filler and I never get the complaints about lack of games... It's like 2000 of good games in 8 months and everyone's complaining there's nothing 😂

@SplooshDmg All sadly true. Lol at Sony and the pop culture factory, that probably hit the nail on what bugs me about them. They still have a few worthy exceptions. Returnal is niche, though it was really an indie game until they bought him. Horizon and got are "old ubisoft" and gow, while I'm not a huge fan of what it became, the new one looks a little more arcade like the old ones. I'm cautiously optimistic. But after that what do they have? Marvel, marvel, FF May Cry, and telephone hangouts with guns. Oh and 7r2 but it's not their game.

Ubi runs hot and cold. Fenyx is fantastic. It's a better botw. Mario rabbids is great looking. But I don't even understand what far cry is anymore and room Clancy games are mobile games with better graphics now.

Crash was always bad. My bad relationship with naughty dog begins with the platformer your run AT THE SCREEN, and ends when the reremakester.

@SplooshDmg Malls. I've seen those things in Japanese video games!

But wow, I can't believe they had Miku in the window. Malls really are dead if they're catering to weebs!

@SplooshDmg Poor Rex... 😂

Today you are bestest nonpon friendpon of Tora!

I do love how Sony is like "we changed Aloys design and used a male model for realism" and Nintendo's like "here, she's $950 an hour." . Theses a few moments the camera is not where the camera should be ..

@SplooshDmg $20 gets you your choice of an NFT-enabled MPEG of the 2K Games E3 presentation on workplace equality, Cheezeburger cat gif of Jim Ryan's tabby, tail end, cancelled by beams of light, or a recording of an Activision shareholder meeting with Bobby Kotick and one free Deviantart search for "Pyra."

You want Nintendo-grade wifus, you have to be ready to pay Nintendo-grade hourly prices. Yamauchi knew what's up. Mythra's better anyway, though. Queen of snark bested only by Liverpool-Eunie in XC3, the best character in games history, though I suspect her UK VA is way better than the JP VA in this one instance. Thanks to Eunie, XC3 needs a new subtitle. "Xenoblade 3: You Wot?" She's more of an anti-wifu though.

I can't believe you're already up to Mythra. IDK how you're churning through this series. I'm at hour 96 of XC3 and nearing the end-ish areas but still with a decent amount of stuff to do, probably clear into 120+ hours. And that's not the optional crazy stuff, that's just the core story quests and side quests including raising colony affinity.

Hah, I have splatoon this week, and I'm sure Nivrana's going to go cheaper in digital sales soon enough with how poor the launch was.