There appears to be progress in the never ending story of Microsoft’s attempt to acquire Activision-Blizzard for 68.7 Billion dollars. Brazil is one of the countries that must allow the deal to go through and it appears they have done just that with no restrictions.
Brazil became a subject of interest when questions from the Brazillian government to Microsoft and other companies in the space were published online a few months ago. Sony was the clear outlier in their response, showing concern about the future of Call of Duty and Xbox’s strength in subscription services.
Brazil even seems to have directly responded to Sony’s concerns about the acquisition and responded saying “Furthermore, it is important to highlight that the central objective of CADE’s activities is the protection of competition as a means of promoting the well-being of Brazilian consumers, and not the defense of the particular interests of specific competitors .
After all, one cannot lose sight of the fact that the holder of the legal assets protected by Law No. 12,529/2011 is the collectivity, and not the competitor/economic agent as an individual entity. In this sense, although it is recognized that part of the users of PlayStation consoles (from Sony) could decide to migrate to Xbox in the event that Activision Blizzard games – and especially Call of Duty– become exclusive to the Microsoft ecosystem, SG/Cade does not believe that such a possibility represents, in itself, a risk to competition in the console market as a whole.”
While the approval by Brazil is good news for the progress of the Activision-Blizzard acquisition, Microsoft still has a long way to go to get this deal across the finish line.
