on Friday, Xbox creator Microsoft completed its 69-billion-dollar acquisition of Activision Blizzard, bolstering its position in the video gaming industry with top-grossing games like “Call of Duty” to more effectively fight with Sony, the sector’s leader.
The largest gaming merger, first announced in January 2022, overcame its final major barrier later in the day when Microsoft consented to sell off streaming licenses for Activision’s titles to ease competition concerns.
The accomplishment is a significant victory for the American tech company in its campaign to draw more customers to its Xbox systems and Game Pass membership service. Sony, whose PlayStation game systems sell more than the Xbox, generates more gaming income than Microsoft.
While Activision’s chief executive officer Bobby Kotick will continue in his position until the end of 2023, Microsoft Gaming’s chief executive officer Phil Spencer will be in charge of the company’s operations.
Spencer has hailed the acquisition as an opportunity for Microsoft to enter the greater than 90 billion-dollar mobile gaming industry.
Famous mobile games from Activision like “Candy Crush Saga” as well as “Call of Duty Mobile” were left out of the cloud streaming agreement that Microsoft made with Ubisoft Entertainment of France to win Britain’s permission.
“Microsoft instantly has more than $3 billion of mobile revenues,” said Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter.
“The big benefit is that Microsoft has a vision that they are going to deliver games through a subscription, and they need more content to give subscribers. So, this is a big step toward having sufficient content,” he said.
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The Federal Trade Commission of the United States continues to oppose the acquisition despite having been unsuccessful in doing so in the past. The FTC stated on Friday that it will assess Microsoft’s contract with Ubisoft while concentrating on its petition for review.
Analysts, though, predict that not much will change.
“The impact of an FTC challenge will be limited to incremental concessions in the future,” D.A. Davidson analyst Gil Luria said.
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The CMA believes that Microsoft’s streaming capitulation is a turning point and said that it was the sole rival agency in the world to achieve this result.
“The new deal will stop Microsoft from locking up competition in cloud gaming as this market takes off, preserving competitive prices and services for UK cloud gaming customers,” it said in a statement.
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