UK CMA Documents Reveal Six Companies In Favour Of Xbox ActiBlizz Acquisition

There's more talk about Activision Blizzard going on today, and that's because the UK's Competition and Markets Authority has made more recent documents available to the public, including responses from Microsoft and Sony.

Perhaps the most interesting new documents are related to six companies who have thrown their support behind the acquisition. One of these is 4J Studios, which has worked on various ports for Xbox including Banjo-Kazooie and Perfect Dark in the past, while the other five have all been submitted anonymously from developers and publishers.

Here are a few samples from the documents in question:

4J Studios: "We do not see the proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard as anything other than a natural evolution of the industry and it does not give us any cause for concern for our own future opportunities."

Participant B: "We do not believe that any title can be considered a 'must have' in the interactive entertainment market.... We do not believe the proposed transaction will negatively impact consumers."

Participant C: "In my experience dealing with them over the last 25 years, Microsoft always honor their contracts and obligations. When they say that they intend to make Call of Duty content available on Sony and Nintendo platforms, I believe them and I believe it is in their interest as well as the interest of the industry."

Participant E: "The acquisition will not all of a sudden make Xbox the dominant platform. It's far more likely that it may help to create a more level playing field between Xbox and PlayStation which, at this point in time, is sorely needed. PlayStation needs better competition, to force the platform to up its game, and this will surely help to do that."


Some interesting comments, then, and hopefully they'll assist Microsoft in getting this deal over the line with the CMA in the coming weeks. The deadline for the regulator's decision is currently April 26th, 2023.

If you're interested in reading through all the latest publicly available responses to the CMA, you can find them all on the UK government website... just be warned that some of them are extremely long!

What are your thoughts on this? Let us know down in the comments section below.

[source gov.uk]