The UK antitrust watchdog has asked the public to share their opinion on Microsoft’s proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard. And it seems that most consumers fully support the record merger.
In October, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) invited the public to say whether they supported the $68.7 billion deal.
According to the summary, the regulator recieved around 2,600 emails, but only reviewed 2,100 of them. The rest contained abusive content, or were blank, unintelligible, stated to be from non-UK consumers, or not in English.
Around 75% of the reviewed emails were in favor of the Activision Blizzard acquisition.
What does the public say in favor of the deal?
- Sony and Nintendo have stronger positions in the console market, so the merger will help Microsoft compete more closely against them.
- The deal won’t harm rivals because Microsoft has repeatedly pledged to not make Call of Duty and other Activision Blizzard games exclusive to the Xbox ecosystem.
- The public cited EA’s Battlefield and FIFA, as well as Take Two’s GTA as real competitors to the Call of Duty franchise.
- They think that the merger will boost competition, pushing Sony to innovate by improving PS Plus or creating first-party titles to compete with Call of Duty.
- Microsfot may encourage Activision Blizzard to invest in other brands other than Call of Duty.
- The deal won’t harm competition in the mobile games market, which is controlled by Google and Apple, and won’t create competition concerns in cloud gaming because there are other potential rivals like Netflix.
Those who opposed the Activision Blizzard acquisiton said Microsoft already has enough resources to compete with PlayStation without buying more content. They also noted that it will set a harmful precedent in the industry and raise barriers to entry for smaller studios and independent developers.