The Microsoft / Activision merger has cleared the last major hurdle (for now).
The gaming world has been hearing about this case for a long time now, the FTC vs Microsoft in an attempt to block the Microsoft Activision merger. Today marks the day that the judge has denied the FTC motion and granted Microsoft the full privilege to merge with Activision as early as this month.
While deciding the case the judge noted: “Microsoft has committed in writing, in public, and
in court to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation for 10 years on parity with Xbox. It made an agreement with Nintendo to bring Call of Duty to Switch. And it entered several agreements to for the first time bring Activision’s content to several cloud gaming services.”
With that being said it was felt that the deal was actually making Activision titles more available to a wider audience, which goes against what the FTC was claiming. At least for 10 years, part of the deal includes a day and date release of Call of Duty on the Nintendo Switch, which will be interesting.
The deal is scheduled to close by July 18th deadline. The only other hurdle was the CMA (UK) decision to block the deal, but within an hour of the FTC case failing they had meetings with Microsoft to reverse the decision. A final decision by the CMA is expected by the first week of August at the latest.
