The CEO of Microsoft Satya Nadella has expressed his confidence in the company’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard. Despite an ongoing probe by the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) into the deal, in a Bloomberg Television interview Nadella says scrutiny was expected due to the size of the deal. He then addressed Sony’s presence in the industry, naming them the number one player in the gaming space. He ends saying “if this is about competition, let us have competition”.
The acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft had the whopping price tag of about $69 billion dollars. This is Microsoft’s largest acquisition to date, and one of the most expensive in history. If the deal goes through, Microsoft will have full control of some of the most iconic names in gaming like Call of Duty, Candy Crush Saga, Overwatch and more. An interview clip of Nadella discussing the acquisition can be seen below.
Nadella references Sony’s own purchases as part of the justification for Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard. Since the announcement of the planned acquisition in January, Sony has acquired Bungie, Haven Studios, Right Stuf and more companies in the gaming and entertainment industry. These acquisitions were approved with little in the way of protest from competition authorities, mainly due to their smaller scope.
The heavy scrutiny on Microsoft’s acquisition comes from the scale of the purchase. The CMA in the UK has specific concerns around Xbox’s dominance in the cloud gaming space, and what Activision Blizzard exclusivity could do for competition. They state “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’.
No matter what comes next with the Activision Blizzard acquisition, we’ll be sure to report it. Keep your eyes on GameLuster for more games industry news.
