The UK CMA released a new report today into their ongoing investigation into Xbox’s ActiBlizz deal, and there’s a lot to unpack here regarding the likelihood of the purchase actually going ahead. While there are a lot of wrinkles in this report, the focus is once again on Call of Duty.
The authority believes that if the deal goes through, it could harm competition in the cloud gaming and traditional gaming markets. The AMC then offers some suggestions on how the deal could be changed to help you gain regulatory approval. Here are some potential “structural remedies”:
- Separation and sale of the ‘Call of Duty’ part of the business
- Separate the “Activision” and “Blizzard” segments and potentially sell one or both parts.
As mentioned, the CMA refers to these suggestions as “structural remedies”, such as selling CoD or other parts of ActiBlizz’s business. However, the authority says “behavioral remedies” could also work, such as making certain games and IPs cross-platform in the future, even if they are owned by Microsoft.
Of course, we also know that Xbox has made a 10-year commitment to keep Call of Duty on other platforms, and the CMA says those commitments will be reviewed in the next “remedies” phase, rather than when of this initial assessment.
So for now, all of CMA’s suggestions are just that, and Microsoft has time to respond to those findings with its own means to help the deal come to fruition. Given how important Call of Duty is to Activision Blizzard’s overall business, we’re not sure exactly how splitting and selling it would work.
Other sections of this latest CMA report also claim that the deal could harm the gaming market by reducing competition between Xbox and PlayStation. We have more information on this element of the report below.
Will this deal ever happen? Let us know where you think things are heading next.