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

Thanks to CTOnews.com netizens Mr. Air, imp47, Domado and Nintendo for their tearless clues! CTOnews.com, May 15 (Xinhua) Microsoft's $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard has been approved by EU regulators, just a few weeks after British regulators blocked the acquisition. The European Commission believes that the deal can be approved because of Microsoft's commitment to cloud games.

The EU found that Microsoft "has no incentive to refuse to distribute Activision games to Sony" and that "even if Microsoft decides to withdraw Activision games from PlayStation, it will not cause significant damage to competition in the console market." But much like the UK, EU regulators do hurt competition to distribute PC and console games through cloud gaming services.

Remedial measures of the European Commission:

Provide consumers in the European Economic area with a free license to stream all current and future Activision Blizzard PC and console games they own through any cloud game streaming service of their choice.

Provide cloud game streaming service providers with a free license to allow eea-based players to stream any Activision Blizzard PC and host games.

Taking into account the feedback from the market, the Committee concluded that the proposed acquisition as modified by the commitment would no longer raise concerns about competition and would eventually bring significant benefits to competition and consumers. The decision of the Committee is conditional on the full implementation of commitments. Under the supervision of the committee, an independent trustee will be responsible for monitoring its implementation.

The EU's decision to approve the huge deal came less than a month after British regulators blocked Microsoft's plan, and the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) blocked the deal because of concerns about the cloud gaming market, saying the acquisition could lead to "less innovation and fewer choices for British gamers in the coming years". Microsoft is appealing the decision.

Over the past few months, Microsoft has been trying to address regulators' concerns about cloud games, persuading EU regulators but not the UK. The software giant signed cloud game agreements with Boosteroid, Ubitus and Nvidia to allow Xbox PC games to run on these competitors' cloud gaming services, and signed a similar agreement with Nintendo in December. If the deal is approved by regulators, all of these 10-year agreements also include visits to call of Duty and other Activision Blizzard games.

CMA fears that Microsoft's control of call of Duty, Watchman and World of Warcraft will give it a big advantage over competitors in the cloud gaming market, and the regulator estimates Microsoft has about 60 to 70 per cent of global cloud gaming services.

Microsoft's appeal in the UK could take months to complete. Today's EU decision may help improve Microsoft's chances of completing the huge deal, but the company still faces challenges from the US and the UK. Regulators in Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Chile, Serbia, Japan and South Africa have also approved the deal, while China, South Korea, New Zealand and Australia are still reviewing the deal.

The EU approval shows that Microsoft has cleared one of the three major regulatory obstacles to the acquisition of Activision Blizzard, which was sued by the Federal Trade Commission at the end of last year to block the deal between Microsoft and Activision Blizzard, which is still in the disclosure stage. The evidence hearing is now scheduled for August 2, so we are still months away from knowing the outcome of the case.

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