Microsoft’s strategy to convince the various Antitrusts to approve the Activision acquisition
After Nintendo and Nvidia, an agreement was signed to bring Call of Duty to the Boosteroid platform as well and tick off Sony's main attack weapon. Will Microsoft's strategy be successful?
Microsoft's strategy to convince the Antitrust authorities that they are evaluating the acquisition for 70 billion of Activision Blizzard takes another step forward. As the number 1 of the Redmond company, Brad Smith , declared in an interview granted to the Wall Street Journal , the company intends to exploit the time available before the intervention of the Commission and the American and British bodies to expand as much as possible the cross-platform basis of Call of Duty, the main IP at the center of the contention.
THE RED LINE GOES THROUGH CALL OF DUTY
In fact, in the twenty-two-page text that Sony forwarded to the British CMA in which it explains why it is against this transaction, we read that "the transaction represents a turning point that threatens an industry loved by hundreds of millions of consumers", they motivate the lawyers of SIE who, with reference to the CoD , explain: “The transaction would put this content under the control of Microsoft, giving it an unprecedented advantage.” This is because the IP born in the Activision studios would be "irreplaceable".
MICROSOFT'S STRATEGY
"If the only argument against is that Microsoft will take Call of Duty off the other platforms now we have signed contracts that will bring the series to many more devices and many more platforms it will be difficult to prove it in court," said Smith implying that on the one hand intends to tick off the main argument of Sony and on the other that Microsoft remains open to agreements of a multi-platform nature.
THE AGREEMENTS SIGNED IN A HURRY AND FURY
The agreement with Nintendo, which Sony has defined as "smoke and mirrors", provides for the launch of Call of Duty also on the consoles of the Japanese house for a period of ten years and, therefore, presumably multiplatform concerning the current flagship, the Switch and the machine that will follow later, while the one with Nvidia foresees the arrival of the PC versions of its games on GeForce Now, the subscription service of the hardware manufacturer.
Added to these is the recent agreement with Boosteroid, a company that has cloud gaming, with currently around four million users worldwide, including the European Union and the United Kingdom. Also in this case it is a contract that covers ten years and will allow Boosteroid to have Call of Duty in its catalog for streaming game.
Difficult now for Sony to say that with the acquisition of Activision-Blizzard by Microsoft will create a situation such as to distort the competition's (video) game, at least for the next ten years. Will Microsoft's strategy be successful?
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/la-strategia-di-microsoft-per-convincere-le-varie-antitrust-a-dare-lok-allacquisizione-activision/ on Wed, 15 Mar 2023 15:18:36 +0000.