It's been a tense couple of months for Xbox and Blizzard, the purchase of the latter by Microsoft put the company in the eye of the hurricane and has pitted them against an antitrust commission trying to prevent the purchase of the giant along with all its intellectual properties (aka Call Of Duty).
It looks like we are just a couple of days away from this lawsuit being resolved and I wanted to talk a little bit about how historic this standoff has been, heck this buyout has been from the beginning controversial and at the same time one of the most important events in gaming history.
It all comes down to the judge's decision after the trial as such ended a few days ago, there is a lot of speculation in the air and it seems that in the middle of it all a possible release date for a new Call Of Duty game has been leaked, the sensible thing to do is wait and see although there are already some voices that say that Microsoft is the winner by a wide margin.
But if all bets are off, that's where it could get ugly for Microsoft, it's no secret that in Microsoft's initial purchase agreement with Blizzard there is a clause of nothing more than 3 billion if the purchase does not go through,
From the point of view of the FTC there are some criteria that seem to me, at least, interesting to see, according to the demand imposed on December 8th of last year they stipulate that the purchase of Activision by Microsoft would have a notorious effect on the competition in the video game sector, being the first owner of a huge catalogue of games that go from the most profitable franchise Call Of Duty, passing through games like World Of Warcraft or Overwatch.
The dominant player [Sony] has defined competition in the market through exclusives, so that's the world we live in. I don't like that world at all."
Satya Nadella, Microsoft's CEO
Of course another stakeholder in this whole conflict is Sony and Playstation who have put their foot down by launching several messages to the FTC and the Redmond company to stop this acquisition claiming that it would severely affect the market if Microsoft decided not to release games like Call Of Duty on Playstation, in fact there is a precedent for this behaviour and that is the acquisition a few years ago of Bethesda, studio that today is developing Starfield, one of the Xbox exclusives.
I think Microsoft have got themselves in a lot of trouble with the FTC, I'm not sure if they will get out of it, this year they are having a couple of litmus tests for Xbox and they have to minimise the damage as much as possible, Starfield is another doubt I have, I don't know if I will play it or not but coming from Bethesda I'm sure there will be more than one eye on the final quality of this game.
Regulatory bodies are something you don't fuck with, although I'm sure most of the guys behind this lawsuit know little to nothing about the gaming industry I think the mere fact that they have set foot on it is scary for Microsoft, I also remember this same body was the one that banned Facebook from doing any kind of monetization using cryptocurrencies and that was effective.
There is an excellent schedule of events on everything related to the case, I will be leaving a link below if you want to find out more.
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/everything-we-learned-from-the-microsoft-vs-ftc-hearing
There's a little bit of everything in these wiretaps that have emerged over the days, from the insinuation that Microsoft might bring a poorer version of games like Call Of Duty to Sony consoles to emails of conversations between the two companies negotiating both the terms of the 10 year Call Of Duty deal on Playstation as well as the condition that Bethesda games would also be included in that deal.
The final outcome of the trial will be in the next few days and it looks like it will be a historic decision whatever it is, it would be nice if you could leave your thoughts in the comments on this, the biggest purchase in the history of gaming.
All yours, @slashint - Gamer, Video Game Analyst.
