Redmond, Seattle – The mega-deal for 68.7 billion US dollars is still causing a stir. Microsoft is actually on the verge of acquiring Activision Blizzard. Apple, Google and Amazon have no objections. But Sony is now trying to stop everything. Call of Duty is too important, they say, and as THE shooter, it should not fall into the hands of one gentleman. Now the antitrust office is investigating.

Microsoft close to mega deal: nearly $70 billion for Activision Blizzard

This is the biggest gaming deal:

• In early 2022, Microsoft was really in a shopping mood: the tech giant announced the purchase of the largest game studio Activision-Blizzard.
• The purchase price for Activision-Blizzard is said to be more than $68 billion. In numbers, it looks like this: $68,000,000,000.
• Shareholders approved the record deal. The shares of the companies involved shot through the roof (despite the scandals surrounding Blizzard and Activision)
• But the last hurdle now was that the antitrust office has to give the okay for such a mega-deal. And it is precisely now that competitor Sony intervenes.

That’s why the antitrust agency is now investigating: The Antitrust Division (in the U.S., the FTC) regulates whether competition in the marketplace is fair. In Germany, for example, beer breweries were fined over 100 million euros for illegal price fixing. Such institutes exist all over the world.

So in the case of the Microsoft-Activision takeover, numerous antitrust offices will have to give their okay and certify that the purchase would not harm the market or create a monopoly position without countering. Because the nearly 70-billion deal is so large, competition investigations are ongoing. Now the investigations of the Brazilian authority (CADE) are publicly available and reveal some astonishing facts.

Sony afraid to lose Call of Duty – antitrust agency to intervene now

Here’s how the investigation into the deal is going: The antitrust agency doesn’t decide such a big case between breakfast and lunch. They have asked leading (tech) companies for their opinion. So they want to know if there are any objections against the purchase of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft. These companies were asked:

• Apple
• Meta (Facebook’s parent company)
• Epic
• Riot
• Amazon
• Google
• Warner Bros
• Bandai Namco
• Sony

Such questions have to be answered by the companies (source: SEI):

In your opinion, does Activision Blizzard publish games that can be considered essential for a gaming hardware vendor to function?

Does your company believe it is likely that Microsoft will no longer offer Activision Blizzard’s games in competing digital stores, even though this practice could result in lost revenue from sales of these titles in other channels?

What is your company’s view on the positive/negative aspects of this merger with respect to the online advertising market?

What Apple, Amazon and Co. say The world’s best-known tech giants have nothing against a takeover, according to the transcripts. Many questions were hardly answered, concerns were few. Google stated that gamers would have alternative options even in the Microsoft-exclusive case. Instead of CoD, you could play Battlefield, they said.

“Call of Duty is without competition,” says Sony – synonymous with first-person shooters.

That’s why Sony is against it: Of the companies surveyed, virtually only Sony expresses strict opposition to the billion-dollar deal. They cite Call of Duty – CoD for short – as the reason. The first-person shooter is developed by Activision (and numerous studios at once). According to Sony, there is no other game that is on the same level as CoD.

Now, if Microsoft held sole power over Call of Duty, they would be hurting all the gamers in the world. Until now, “Call of Duty” games have appeared for all platforms and systems. Immediately after the first takeover talks, however, the anxious voices of gamers were raised, who feared that CoD could soon become Microsoft-exclusive. And Sony probably thinks the same way.

Sony estimates that there is no studio or developer in the world that can match the “Call of Duty” developers in size. Somewhat unfair, since there are more than four studios working on Call of Duty in parallel. That equates to thousands of employees. Other big players like Rockstar with GTA, EA with FIFA or Riot with LoL would be one step below Activision with CoD, Sony says.

Sony and CoD: Sony is also leading the concerns because they have been the market leader in Call of Duty so far, say numerous readers on the Internet. Each new – Season has so far come with PlayStation/Sony-exclusive offerings such as additional costumes or earlier maps. Sony has made it cost a lot over the years for gamers to link CoD and PlayStation in their minds.

But also on Forbes, journalist Paul Tassi wrote about the Activision Blizzard deal as early as spring 2022: “Not sure everyone understands how radically [der Deal] changed the whole concept of the gaming industry.”

What’s your take on the situation? Feel free to vote in our poll here and let us know if Sony is right or if the deal should go over for nearly $70 billion.

The deal between Microsoft and Activision Blizzard should have consequences for Game Pass. Once the acquisition is complete, an overwhelming majority of all games from the publisher should be available on Game Pass, on both console and PC. In the same move, Microsoft has stated that it has reached over 25 million subscribers to Game Pass.

Sony didn’t launch its battle royale to Game Pass until the summer of 2022, the new PS Plus subscription. But it’s not going down so well with gamers so far. It’s likely to be a while before the world’s authorities take over