What you need to know
- Today, Microsoft is defending its bid for the Activision Blizzard acquisition before the European Commission in Brussels.
- Microsoft stated that if the deal goes through all Activision titles will be on GeForce NOW.
- The Activision Blizzard acquisition is planned to be finalized in July 2023.
Today, an important closed hearing is taking place in Brussels before the European Commission in which Microsoft is defending its case to acquire Activision. During this
Microsoft first announced its plans to buy Activision Blizzard for Xbox back in January 2022. Since then, the acquisition has met with a lot of opposition from Sony as well as a lawsuit blocking the merger from The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
Microsoft remains confident in the acquisition despite all of this happening and has worked to align its plans with regulators. Microsoft President Brad Smith previously provided an official statement to Windows Central stating, “even with confidence in our case, we remain committed to creative solutions with regulators that will protect competition, consumers, and workers in the tech sector. As we’ve learned from our lawsuits in the past, the door never closes on the opportunity to find an agreement that can benefit everyone.” Furthermore, CEO of Microsoft Gaming, Phil Spencer, has recently stated that he is “more confident now than [he] was a year ago” about the deal going through since he has been working with regulatory boards around the world informing them about the industry and how this deal would work.
At the time of the initial announcement, Microsoft stated that it planned to finalize the Activision Blizzard acquisition for about $70 million in about 18 months on July 18, 2023. We’re currently about 13 months into that timeframe.
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Gain access to several games, both old and new, with the Xbox Game Pass. More titles are added regularly and there are plenty of games this year that have already been slated to join it later this year.
