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

CTOnews.com, Nov. 24 (Xinhua)-- the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) may file an antitrust lawsuit to prevent Microsoft from buying video game publisher Activision Blizzard for $69 billion, Politico reported Wednesday, citing three people familiar with the matter.

It has not been determined whether the FTC will file the lawsuit, and four members of the FTC have not voted on the complaint or met with lawyers for the companies, two of the people said. However, the FTC staff who reviewed the deal were skeptical of the companies' arguments, these people said.

The investigation is ongoing, but a lot of onerous work has been done, including the forensics of Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Activision head Bobby Kotick, these people familiar with the matter said. If the agency does start an investigation, it could be as soon as next month, these people said.

At the heart of the FTC's concern is whether the acquisition of Activision will give Microsoft an unfair boost in the video game market. Microsoft's Xbox ranks third in front of industry leader Sony Interactive Entertainment and its PlayStation game consoles. However, Sony has become the main opponent of the deal, telling the FTC and other regulators that if Microsoft allows popular games such as call of Duty to be monopolized on its platform, Sony will be at a clear disadvantage.

The Federal Trade Commission declined to comment.

CTOnews.com learned that in a statement outlining Sony's position submitted to the UK Competition and Markets Authority in October, which was released on Wednesday, Sony said the deal would not only hurt its competitiveness, but also give consumers less choice in games and developers less choice in releasing games. "Microsoft is a tech Titan that buys irreplaceable content at an indisputable price ($68.7 billion) to push its competitive advantage to itself," Sony said. "

In its own statement released by British regulators on Wednesday, Microsoft accused Sony of making self-deceiving statements to maintain its number one position in games. "it is not credible that Sony, the current market leader with clear and lasting market forces, may be defeated by Xbox, the weakest of the three console competitors, for losing a game."

Microsoft says it has repeatedly promised to keep "call of Duty" on Sony's PlayStation, and that the game is not what Sony says it must have. In addition, Microsoft pointed out that the game is not currently available on any subscription service, and that adding it to the Xbox service in the future will not hurt Sony.

To a lesser extent, Google is also an opponent of the deal, according to two people familiar with the matter. The company believes that Google's Chrome operating system deliberately reduces the quality of its Game Pass subscription service, and that owning Activision will further spur it to do so, eventually directing hardware sales to Microsoft and away from Google, these people said.

Google is a small player in the gaming industry and is shutting down its online gaming service, Stadia. However, it is subject to antitrust scrutiny around the world, including behaviour in the game market.

A Google spokesman declined to comment.

Microsoft has promised to continue to provide call of Duty on Sony's Playstation console and recently made a proposal to let Sony use the game within the next 10 years. It is unclear how Sony will respond to this proposal.

However, the FTC's concerns go beyond call of Duty, and investigators are trying to determine how Microsoft can use future unannounced games to boost its game business, according to two people familiar with the review.

"any suggestion that the deal could lead to anti-competitive effects is completely absurd." "this merger will benefit players and the US gaming industry, especially when we face increasing competition from abroad," Activision spokesman Joe Cristinat said. We are committed to continuing to work with global regulators to allow the transaction to take place, but we will not hesitate to try to defend it. "

Activision also challenged Epic's allegations. "Epic's allegations are nonsense," Christinat said. "We can confirm that Google has never asked us to put pressure on us or to agree not to compete with Google Play-we have submitted documents and testimony to prove that."

Microsoft spokesman David Cuddy said the company is "ready to address the concerns of regulators, including the Federal Trade Commission, and Sony, to ensure that the deal is completed with confidence. After the transaction, we will still lag behind Sony and Tencent in the market, and Activision and Xbox together will benefit players and developers and make the industry more competitive."

Technically, the FTC does not need to take any action at this time. Regulators in Europe and the UK have also recently conducted in-depth investigations, which means the companies will not be able to complete deals until spring at the earliest. This means that if the FTC does sue, it may sue in its own internal administrative court.

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