Sky's Ian King explains why the CMA's decision to block the Activision Blizzard acquisition by Microsoft will have come as a shock.
Microsoft had pledged to make Call of Duty available on other platforms for at least a decade to satisfy regulators' concerns
Armed with Activision's big money-spinning titles, chiefly Call of Duty, World of Warcraft and Overwatch, Microsoft would have had plenty of scope to hurt PlayStation sales were it to make games exclusive only to the Xbox.the merger would not result in a substantial lessening of competition He told IGN that, even though work had been started to make a PlayStation version of Redfall, Microsoft had cancelled that work in order to make it exclusive to Xbox.That interview may well have informed the CMA's change of heart and particularly in view of the fact that in the UK, more gamers own a PlayStation 5 than own an Xbox series X or its cheaper sister product, the Xbox series S.
And bear in mind also that Microsoft is doing well enough - Wednesday night's quarterly results showed a business firing on all cylinders - for it not to need Activision.That may not be true for the latter which, shortly before the takeover was announced, was beset by allegations of sexual assault and mistreatment of women at the company in recent years.
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