Xbox’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard has had multiple hurdles to jump over to get closer to actually happening. The acquisition of Activision Blizzard by parent company Microsoft, which is the biggest of its kind in the gaming industry, is set to provide a monumental change for both companies involved and the world has kept its eyes on the deal since its announcement.
According to financial site Seeking Alpha, Microsoft has now provided the FTC with the information it was looking for. Apparently, this happened “several weeks ago” and the company is now waiting on the FTC’s response.
As per the FTC’s guidance page, once both parties (in this case Microsoft and Activision Blizzard) have handed over all of the FTC’s requests, there’s a 30-day wait for the merger to move forward to its next stage.
There’s no word yet whether Activision has provided its share of the requested information but if that hasn’t happened, the 30-day window will presumably only start when it does.
If the FTC has no issues with the information provided the deal could potentially be approved once the 30-day window closes. If not, we may have to wait a little longer for the two companies, along with the FTC, to figure out the next steps.
Once the FTC has received the information from both companies, there are three potential outcomes. The FTC could either:
- Close the investigation and let the merger proceed unchallenged
- Negotiate with the companies to add some agreed rules that will make sure the market stays competitive
- Seek to stop the deal by filing for a preliminary injunction in federal court
There are other government bodies looking at this deal as well, notably the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), but given that both companies are US-based, FTC approval is seen as the most important of all.
The CMA has set a deadline of September 1 to give its initial decision on the matter, and if it decides the merger shouldn’t go ahead for whatever reason, then the deal may still not be done.
When the deal does eventually go through and clear all hurdles, Xbox is expected to add as many Activision Blizzard games to the library as it can, barring any existing deals with PlayStation of course.
Are you excited about the possibility of the acquisition coming to a close? Are you excited to play more Activision Blizzard games over Game Pass once the Xbox purchase completes?
Source: VGC, Pure Xbox, Seeking Alpha
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