EU 'Expected' To Approve Xbox Activision Blizzard Deal Next Week

I've heard this one before. Still though, the EU could very well actually approve it. I think the FTC and CMA reasonings for opposing it are questionable at best.

We’ll have to wait till May 22nd to see if they really do approve it because there were reports before the CMA denied the acquisition that they were going to approve the deal.

@Kaloudz @SplooshDmg the thing i haven’t seen talked about much is the CMA approves the deal for Xbox consoles, just not Xcloud. So there are talks that MS would sell ABK games on Xbox and PS in the UK but not have them on GP or Cloud in the UK, but that concession would get the deal done, plus make the UK gamers unset at their government when they can’t get ABK games on GP. A true win for MS and egg on the face of a very talentless CMA. I still give the deal 80% chance to pass before end of summer. In a court of law MS wins, so this depends on how bad ABK and MS want to fight for this.

If the EU approve it then the deal will go through. The FTC court case is a definite win for MS and that just leaves the UK on its own again globally. Even if they don't overturn the CMA, I can't see MS letting the UK alone dictate their US, EU and even global businesses.

Don't jinx it, you literally posted a similar article about the CMA lol.

Personally I'm not getting my hopes up, not because I'm pessimistic but because I've heard something similar before with a different regulator....

@SplooshDmg the FTC could be beat in court. Khans tactics are a bit nutty. I just don’t know what that means if they do manage the EU and the FTC

._. I just want this ride to be over either way.

@UltimateOtaku91 right that’s what I’m saying don’t count the chickens before they hatch.

Reuters sources mentioned this after the eu meeting a few weeks ago...it will go through and once again the uk will be a laughing stock.

I’ll believe it when I see it after the CMA’s ruling.

IF the EU pass it, then it lessens the ruling here in the UK and I’d expect the CMA’s ruling to be overturned.

@Snake_V5 I’m sure you’ll be cheering again ‘we did it guys’ over on PS if the deal gets blocked again. 🤣 how fun.

In that case it's definitely dead cuz they all expected that the CMA was going to approve as well lol.

I'll wait until the final verdict here...The corpse of the deal is a starting to smell so it needs to be revived or buried.

@Kaloudz its almost like our cma said no knowing that the eu will say yes

@Fenbops I will be yeah 😁

The EU are fans of behavioural remedies, the CMA are not, so I can see the EU passing it, but who knows at this point. If it does pass:

Then MS will need to argue that the CMA took the "easiest/lazy" option, and not the "best/proper" option, CAT will approve the appeal and pass it back to the CMA to do the work again.

Blocking the deal solely for Cloud Concerns with all the concessions already offered, always seemed a needlessly costly option when there are less costly and less dramatic options available.
This is what the CMA will fail the appeal on, if I had to guess, as its in the CMAs guidelines that any remedies should be proportionate.
Blocking the whole deal at a cost of several billion pounds, for a nascent market, is like the total opposite of that. Very shaky ground for the CMA to be on.

I read an article last week that the CMA have been inundated with complaints about them blocking the deal. Apparently they have recieved a huge amount.
That's my guess for what it's worth, but I could be totally wrong, it wouldn't be the first time. I still think it's 50/50 at this point if it will be approved

Bookies must rub their hands together at stories like this.

@WaffleDee very likely but you know how things have always been between the uk and eu

Sure hope so. That'll be huge.

@somnambulance I think the deal will be approved in the EU, I think the CMA just wanted to be "that" one to think they are higher than the big corporations, they've done it with a few other big boys and came out on top but this time they will be pressured by the FTC and EU passing the deal.

In terms of their vintage titles I hope they can revive Prototype and True Crime, and maybe bring back skylanders but without the toy B.S.
Hopefully they don't go down the route of just making multiplayer online games and filling every game with MTX.

I agree with everything you say, @Green-Bandit, except where you say people will be upset with the UK Government. Other than the fact that people are always upset (usually with good reason) with their Government, no matter the Country, or which side of right or left they maybe on, the CMA is actually independent of the Government. People maybe be upset with the Government because of this, but to do so would mean their 'upset' would actually be misdirected...

@mousieone The FTC was just following marching orders to “crack down” on deals. I think they certainly could lose in court.

Seems like Deja Vu, They said the same thing with the CMA and a few days later they blocked the deal..

@Kaloudz i agree and totally think the deal still has plenty of wiggle room to get completed. Seeing as the CMA said they have no issues with the deal on the Console space.

@Fiendish-Beaver Thanks buddy, yeah good point and I misspoke when i said upset with the government, what i meant and didn’t do a good job of saying is, UK players aren’t going to be happy the CMA is the reason they can’t play COD and other ABK games on Cloud or GP when the rest of the world can and rightfully so, it would be a bad look. But the CMA has made it clear they have no issues with the deal on Console. Another thing they said is MS will start to raise the price of GP after the deal, well MS this is your chance to please the CMA and customers around the world in saying GP will stay between $15-18 dollars for the next amount of years. Without trying to sound like a know it all or pretend i know how easy or hard any of this is, in which case i do not. My point is MS still has options if they truly want this deal and i believe they do. So while i think they were disappointed by the decision of the CMA, i do not think they are giving up or should they. Again sorry for giving the wrong message, hopefully i made it make more sense 😊

@Kaloudz if there’s one thing the industry isn’t short of it’s trolls. Really wish people would represent the industry better and choose to play what they want on whatever platform they want and be happy with that. Maybe take a poke or two at bigger topics and then go away and play games again. But it seems like if Phil Spencer sneezes online they are ripping him and acting immature and uninformed.

I don't give a #@&# about Activision, but good news if we can finally put this behind us.
It'll be a sign of good things to come in the future, too.

They were reporting this before the cma approval too. I will believe this when I see it.

@Widey85 that would be nice if we didn’t have to wait till the 22nd. It’s kind of exhausting all this waiting. I think many of us just want to know their answer.

I heard an interview with this guy online who claims he knows a lot about the different acquisition laws. He was saying if the EU approves it, MS can close on the deal. Though the CMA denied it, they didn’t deny the console part. They don’t have to wait for the FTC’s decision. Not sure how true all this is, but maybe there’s still some life left in this acquisition.

Yeah well considering that's what they said about the CMA I'll believe it when I see it.

I just hate that either way this whole thing is likely gonna drag out for several more months and possibly a few years.

@Green-Bandit It’s just feels that the CMA will magically approve once they get whatever concessions out of Microsoft…

After Redfall and Phil's interview i'm surprised people are still supporting this deal.

Here we go again!

CMA was "expected to approve" last month. Switch Pro was "expected to arrive" Holiday 2019.

I'll believe it when I see it. Either way it'll be one sentence that defines the next decade of the console wars.

@EvilSilentFrame FTC is totally irrelevant. Unlike CMA they don't have blocking powers, they can simply file a lawsuit claiming a trust violation where normal federal judges decide like any other lawsuit their opinion. At most they're just a sounding board to decide if it should be heard by a different sounding board with more authority. But the circuit court is very very pro big business, and is bound by legal precedents, not by opinion. So in US federal court the question is not "does the court think this is good or bad for the market", the court decides "according to the letter of the law, and all prior judgements made in similar trust cases, does this one run afoul of historical rulings on the matter."

That's why virtually any merger goes through in the US unless there's something very unique and monopolistic about it, while they may not in the EU. Because we're bound by case law (historical verdicts) as the core of the legal system, it means "if mergers have historically always been approved, mergers shall forever be approved unless somehow wholly unique from prior mergers"

@Ryu_Niiyama I feel like since we have to define the entire console generation by which lawyers we agree with the most, we should at least get annualized Ace Attorney games on Game Pass.

@Kaloudz Don't give them ideas lol

Lol. Very reliable sources said the CMA would approve it too. As reported here. People aren’t learning. Best wait for the actual result eh.

Don’t hang out any bunting just yet.

@WallyWest for many their console choice is like supporting a football team…. You do it blindly and hate anyone that doesn’t agree with everything they do and say.

Where as much like politics - you shouldn’t blindly support any single company blindly and should act like a customer and not a “fan”, you should not support a political party you should support the one making the best policies at the time.

@Moonglow Its because we don't win anything (including the Eurovision Song Contest) lol

Bring it on, I'm hoping it goes through so they can put scarface on Xbox.

Let's just hope Eu is not biased just as CMA are.

@Kaloudz i thought Phil was blamed for Covid, then again i might be thinking of Trump or Musk, these 3 take the blame for 9 out of 10 articles i read these days. Must be nice for everyone else to take no blame even when caught with their hands in the cookie jar. Media favoritism sure must be a nice card to have in the pocket.

@AlwaysPlaying they will come around if the others do. Just need to get the Eu on board and that would be a huge help. Could be a drama filled Monday.

I'm excited to see the outcome of this. I'm still not sure if I want the deal to go through or not for various reasons. So I'm fairly neutral.

@Kaloudz folks went right to the too and blamed Bill Gates didn't they? Microchips in the vaccine if i recall correctly? Explained the chip shortages.

Question: IF the US and EU will approve and the deal will go through what does it mean for UK customers? Is the Game Pass still available without Activision games or has MS to shut down Xbox business in UK entirely?

Becuase "sources" have been bang on with their predictions in the past. This is a non news article which is happening here more and more. Would much rather you guys report news rather than "he said/she said" rumour crap. It's unreliable.

@Kaloudz completely agree.

@Kaloudz ROFL where you been dude! Look it up. Bill is Dr. Evil ....but with hair....and a bit of a tan.

@Kaloudz @Krzzystuff Oh, that was very much true: I remember during the pandemic, people were saying it was all on "Kill Gates"!

@Kaloudz the CMA protected you!!!

I haven’t read a single thing about the reasoning, but the CMA are so stupid because they won’t let Call of Duty on GamePass. The CMA just doesn’t understand us gamers at all. It’s so unfair!

@NEStalgia I f that’s what it takes to get a new entry then I have no objections.

@Krzzystuff @Kaloudz Gates was blamed for ebola long before then. Though...with Gates....I honestly wouldn't doubt it was all true. Nasty piece of work, that guy.

@Ryu_Niiyama I see what you did there!

@Kaloudz Gates is...not a pleasant guy. He's a control-freak that in the earlier days would be stalker-ish, going in the parking lot and recording the license plates of employees cars to see who was and wasn't putting enough extra hours in. Add in his management direction at MS in the evil monopoly years and we get a good picture.

Yet imprudent enough that due to his high profile divorce, we also now know that the reason he's no longer involved in the company is due to his sexual misconduct becoming problematic enough that the board threw him out before he became a liability. Controlled everyone but himself.....real charmer.

@Kaloudz I think most of those stories came out after his 90's tenure. The revelations with the divorce was just in the past few years, it was very well silenced, but having it in the legal docs for the divorce brought it out in public. Basically long after everyone forgot about him, we found out he was even worse than we thought he was.

Shame he's not around at MS though in the post-ABK years he and Bobby could have got along wonderfully.