At the beginning of last year Microsoft reached an agreement to buy Activision Blizzard, but this has to be approved by regulatory bodies before it can take effect. One of the bodies that is reviewing the agreement is the CMAwhich has just published new findings and gave a date for its final report.
Since it began its investigation, the CMA had placed an emphasis on how the console video game market would be affected, since they considered that Microsoft had incentives to make Call of Duty exclusive to Xbox. However, their new report indicates that this is no longer a problem and his new concern is the cloud gaming market.
Through a statement Martin Coleman, the head of the independent panel of experts conducting the investigation, concluded that “the merger will not result in a substantial reduction of competition in console gaming services”, but still maintain their concerns about the market for video games in the cloud. “Our investigation is still ongoing to be completed by the end of April.Coleman said.
In the statement it was clarified that the scheduled date for the publication of the final report is April 26, 2023, so you have to wait a little more than a month to know the final conclusions of the CMA. Although the investigation no longer considers concerns in the console video game market, the CMA said that “will continue to carefully consider the answers provided” regarding the issue of competition in cloud gaming services.
In recent weeks we have seen Microsoft enter into agreements with companies in the cloud gaming market, this in order to alleviate the concerns of regulatory bodies. At the moment Microsoft has signed agreements with NVidia, Boosteroid and recently with Ubitus, so we only have to wait for the next month to see if this is enough to alleviate the concerns of the CMA.
