Microsoft executives including company president Brad Smith are expected to meet with FTC Chair Lina Khan today to make a final case for its $68 billion buyout of Activision Blizzard. It is expected to be the last such meeting before the antitrust agency reaches a decision whether to proceed with a lawsuit or settlement of the case.
It is widely believed that the deal could be approved if Microsoft agrees to certain concessions in order to assuage regulatory concerns in regards to massively popular Activision Blizzard IPs like World of Warcraft and especially Call of Duty.
Our acquisition will bring Call of Duty to more gamers and more platforms than ever before. That’s good for competition and good for consumers. Thank you @Nintendo. Any day @Sony wants to sit down and talk, we’ll be happy to hammer out a 10-year deal for PlayStation as well. https://t.co/m1IQxdeo6n
— Brad Smith (@BradSmi) December 7, 2022
Ahead of the meeting, Microsoft announced that it had struck deals with Nintendo and Valve (owner of the Steam gaming platform) to keep Call of Duty on those respective platforms for the next ten years. Microsoft recently offered a similar deal to the Activision Blizzard acquisition’s most vocal opponent, Sony, which has so far balked at the offer.
This eleventh-hour move on the part of Microsoft could be seen as the tech giant’s way of assuring regulators that the acquisition won’t be as deleterious for the gaming industry as some critics believe.
Featured image via MSN.
