Europe greenlights Microsoft’s $68.7B Activision acquisition

techcrunch.com:

The European Commission (EC) has given the go-ahead to Microsoft’s proposed $68.7 billion bid for gaming giant Activision.

The news comes a few weeks after the U.K. emerged as the first jurisdiction to block the megabucks deal, while the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in the U.S. is suing to block the deal.

Europe had been mulling an in-depth probe for some time, confirming back in November that it was concerned that the coming together of Microsoft and Activision could reduce competition in both the console and PC video game market. The EC had set a deadline of 25th April to announce a decision, but it pushed its decision back after receiving further remedies and commitments from Microsoft. It was widely expected that the deal would be rubberstamped today, and that has now been confirmed, with the EC’s final report noting that the approval is “conditional on full compliance with the commitments offered by Microsoft.”

Microsoft first tabled its bid for Activision in January last year, a deal that sought to combine Microsoft’s distribution might in the console and PC realm with one of the largest third-party game publishers in the world — Activision is responsible for mega-franchises such as Call of Duty and World of Warcraft. With Activision under its wing, Microsoft would effectively become the third-biggest gaming company in the world by revenue, behind Tencent and Sony.

At the heart of antitrust legislators’ concerns is that Microsoft would have too much clout and control over the distribution of games, vis-à-vis it would have the incentive to either withhold popular gaming titles from rival gaming platforms, or otherwise create a lesser playing experience on alternatives to encourage people to switch to its ecosystem