Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

On October 13, Microsoft said on Wednesday local time that the British market competition regulator had conducted an in-depth investigation into Microsoft's $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard based on objections raised by rival Sony. Concerns that Microsoft's acquisition of franchises for popular games such as call of Duty will affect competition is totally "unnecessary".

The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said last month that Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard could hurt competition and needed an in-depth investigation. CMA believes that Microsoft may use its control of popular games to hurt competitors that operate multi-game subscription services or provide cloud game services.

In its full official decision on Wednesday, CMA said it was a "game-changing merger" that would give Microsoft franchises to best-selling games such as call of Duty, World of Warcraft and Candy Legend.

"CMA is concerned that full control of this powerful game directory may cause Microsoft to damage Sony's competitiveness and thus hurt consumers," CMA said.

Microsoft said CMA accepted Sony's complaint in its entirety and did not conduct an "appropriate level of review".

Microsoft said in the filing that Sony's PlayStation has been the largest gaming platform on the market for more than 20 years, and that the loss of a game franchise will affect its market dominance is not credible.

Microsoft said: "the decision to turn to an in-depth investigation mistakenly relied on Sony's selfish statement, which grossly exaggerated the importance of the call of Duty game and ignored Sony's clear competitive ability to respond."

Microsoft also said it had promised Sony PlayStation to continue to run the call of Duty game.

A spokesman for CMA said in a statement: "our investigation is to protect the interests of British gamers and businesses. The first phase of the decision identified three areas where the transaction could cause damage: console, multi-game subscription services and cloud gaming services."We have now launched an in-depth investigation and the results of the investigation will be released early next year."

A Microsoft spokesman said: "this deal will benefit all players, developers and the entire game industry, because our wish is to bring more games to more people."

A spokesman for Sony's PlayStation division reiterated the view that the deal was "bad for competition, bad for the game industry, and bad for the players themselves."

"this deal will bring exclusive integration of technology and content to Microsoft's Xbox ecosystem, leading to dominance in games, which will have devastating consequences for consumers, independent developers and Sony," he said.

Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard was announced in January and requires regulatory approval around the world.

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