This morning, Japan’s Fair Trade Commission has essentially cleared Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard deal, determining that the acquisition would not substantially harm competition. The full 43-page long report is available here in the Japanese language.
Needless to say, it is a particularly significant victory for Microsoft, especially since the main opposition to the deal’s completion has been raised by Sony, a Japanese company. As you will remember, they argued over and over again that if Microsoft were to make Call of Duty exclusive, that would be a big problem for PlayStation and gamers as a whole.
However, their arguments seem to have fallen deaf on Japan’s FTC, and it’s not looking promising elsewhere, either. The European Union is rumored to be gearing towards an approval without any structural remedies, and the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), believed to be the most problematic to handle for Microsoft, has just amended its own provisional findings to conclude that the console market would not be endangered if the deal went through.
Both the EU and the CMA still have to render their final verdicts, which are expected to be available by the end of next month. The CMA also underlined that it still had concerns regarding the budding cloud market. Still, Microsoft has signed several 10-year contracts with companies like NVIDIA for GeForce NOW, Boosteroid, and Ubitus to show its willingness to bring all of its games, Activision Blizzard’s included (once the deal is approved), on other cloud platforms. Given these deals, it’s hard to imagine Microsoft won’t be able to persuade the CMA to clear those remaining concerns.
Stateside, there’s still the wild card of the Federal Trade Commission, which openly sued to block the deal late last year. However, it is widely believed that the FTC wouldn’t stand much of a chance in court if it came to that, and the recent track record of the FTC appears to confirm that. Under Lina Khan’s chairmanship, the Federal Trade Commission often sued just to make a point, even when it knew it couldn’t win.
It remains to be seen whether the FTC would continue to try to delay the Microsoft/Activision Blizzard deal (the biggest in gaming history at $68.7 billion) by pursuing a losing court battle or not after other regulators from major countries have approved the deal. As a reminder, besides Japan, the following countries have already cleared the acquisition: Brazil, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Chile, and Serbia.
