The Biden administration has been moving to strengthen enforcement against illegal and anticompetitive mergers. Regulators could ask questions about Microsoft making games exclusive to their own systems and about whether the company would harness user data gained in the acquisition to its advantage in its other businesses. “I think it should get a hard look and it probably will get a hard look” by antitrust enforcers, said Diana Moss, president of the American Antitrust Institute. But the Activision deal is so big - potentially the priciest-ever tech acquisition - that Microsoft will also be putting itself into the regulatory spotlight. Other tech giants such as Meta, Google, Amazon and Apple have all attracted increasing attention from antitrust regulators in the U.S. Regulators and rivals could turn up the pressure to block the deal. Pushing more people into such virtual social networks will not be all fun and games, however, and could amplify existing problems with online harassment, trolling and identity theft, according to Elizabeth Renieris, founding director of the Technology Ethics Lab at the University of Notre Dame. The community element helps drive adoption.” “Millions of people play Call of Duty online. “That’s where Activision really helps,” said RBC’s Jaluria. Microsoft’s metaverse ambitions have focused on work tools such as its Teams video chat applications, but online multiplayer games such as Call of Duty and World of Warcraft have huge followings devoted to interacting with each other virtually for fun. Metaverse enthusiasts describe the concept as a new and more immersive version of the internet, but to work it will require a lot of people to actually want to spend more time in virtual worlds. And there are some ways Activision could help the tech giant compete with rivals like Meta, which renamed itself from Facebook last year to signal its new focus on leading its billions of social media users into the metaverse.
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It has adapted Call of Duty into successful mobile and free games, and he expects the company to help Microsoft do the same with its own games, such as Halo.
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Pachter said that Activision presents a model for Microsoft for how to evolve its classic console franchises. However, he noted antitrust regulators may not allow Microsoft to keep games off Sony’s competing game console, the PlayStation. Microsoft expects to bring as many Activision games as it can to Xbox’s subscription service Game Pass, “with some presumably becoming Microsoft exclusives,” wrote Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter. On the other hand, the prospect of a console-maker like Microsoft controlling so much game content raised concerns about whether the company could restrict Activision games from competitors. Others include Guitar Hero, the Tony Hawk skateboarding games and MechWarrior, which McKeon-White said “basically wasn’t touched for two decades.” He said the “most egregious” example of a popular franchise that Activision, founded in 1979, left by the wayside is StarCraft, last updated in 2015. “Their target is anyone and everybody who plays video games and they want to bring that to a wider audience.” “Microsoft wants to increase the variety of intellectual property,” said Forrester analyst Will McKeon-White. “For the average person who is playing Candy Crush or anything else, there will probably be no changes at all,” said RBC analyst Rishi Jaluria.īut Jaluria and other industry watchers think it could be good news for game development more broadly, especially if Microsoft’s games-for-everybody mission and mountain of cash can rescue Activision from its reputation for abandoning favorite game franchises while focusing on a few choice properties. Microsoft, maker of the Xbox gaming system, said acquiring the owner of Candy Crush, Call of Duty, Overwatch and Diablo would be good for gamers and advance its ambitions for the metaverse - a vision for creating immersive virtual worlds for both work and play.īut what does the deal really mean for the millions of people who play video games, either on consoles or their phones? And will it actually happen at a time of increased government scrutiny over giant mergers in the U.S. Microsoft stunned the gaming industry when it announced this week it would buy game publisher Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion, a deal that would immediately make it a larger video-game company than Nintendo.