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In October, Microsoft closed the $69 billion deal acquiring Activision Blizzard. The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which tried to block the merger earlier this year, is once again trying to stop the deal. The antitrust regulator argued that a federal judge got it wrong by giving a green light to the company to buy the “Call of Duty” maker.
Microsoft closed the deal after the UK regulators approved it following changes proposed by the Xbox maker in the original proposal in the region.
What FTC is saying
The FTC argued that the federal judge held the agency to too high a standard, requiring it to prove that the deal was anticompetitive, news agency Reuters reported. The FTC claimed that by acquiring the video game maker and publisher, Microsoft could make Activision’s games exclusive to its own platforms.
This was a reference to allegations that the company made some Zenimax games exclusive after buying that company.
FTC’s case weak: Microsoft
Meanwhile Microsoft’s lawyer said that the FTC’s case was “weak”.
“It is also clear that the standard can’t be as low as the FTC is suggesting. It can’t be kind of a mere scintilla of evidence,” the lawyer said, adding that the agency failed to show that Microsoft had an incentive to withhold “Call of Duty” from rival gaming platforms.
Microsoft has, in the past, highlighted that it doesn’t want to keep Activision games exclusive to Xbox. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella during a court hearing in the case earlier this year said that making Activision games exclusive makes “no strategic sense” for the company.
“It makes no economic sense or no strategic sense. Our goal with Activision in particular, in their content and our content, is to get it on more platforms. That’s what we’ve done with Office and that’s what I want to do with gaming,” he said.
Nadella, in fact, blamed Sony for the ‘exclusive culture’ and said, “If it was up to me I would love to get rid of the entire exclusives on consoles, but that’s not for me to define especially as a low share player in the console market.”
Microsoft closed the deal after the UK regulators approved it following changes proposed by the Xbox maker in the original proposal in the region.
What FTC is saying
The FTC argued that the federal judge held the agency to too high a standard, requiring it to prove that the deal was anticompetitive, news agency Reuters reported. The FTC claimed that by acquiring the video game maker and publisher, Microsoft could make Activision’s games exclusive to its own platforms.
This was a reference to allegations that the company made some Zenimax games exclusive after buying that company.
FTC’s case weak: Microsoft
Meanwhile Microsoft’s lawyer said that the FTC’s case was “weak”.
“It is also clear that the standard can’t be as low as the FTC is suggesting. It can’t be kind of a mere scintilla of evidence,” the lawyer said, adding that the agency failed to show that Microsoft had an incentive to withhold “Call of Duty” from rival gaming platforms.
Microsoft has, in the past, highlighted that it doesn’t want to keep Activision games exclusive to Xbox. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella during a court hearing in the case earlier this year said that making Activision games exclusive makes “no strategic sense” for the company.
“It makes no economic sense or no strategic sense. Our goal with Activision in particular, in their content and our content, is to get it on more platforms. That’s what we’ve done with Office and that’s what I want to do with gaming,” he said.
Nadella, in fact, blamed Sony for the ‘exclusive culture’ and said, “If it was up to me I would love to get rid of the entire exclusives on consoles, but that’s not for me to define especially as a low share player in the console market.”
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