A new report claims that tech giants Google and Nvidia have expressed some concerns about Microsoft’s proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard. The FTC sued Microsoft to try to block the deal, and the case is now going to court after a year pre-trial hearing earlier this month.
Bloomberg reported that “Google and Nvidia provided information supporting an important FTC dispute” that Microsoft would claim a specific unfair advantage in the areas of mobile games, subscriptions, and cloud.
The report goes on to say that Nvidia told the FTC that “public and equal access is needed” to games. However, the company is not directly opposed to the deal, the report said.
Google runs the hugely popular Google Play store for mobile games and tries its hand at the streaming service with Stadia; it will shut down on January 18. Meanwhile, Nvidia makes GPUs and has its own streaming service, GeForce Now.
Microsoft is trying to buy Activision Blizzard, in part to help gain a foothold in the mobile games space. Currently, Microsoft doesn’t have much of a presence in the mobile games space, but if their deal to buy Activision Blizzard goes through, it will get the rights to Candy Crush, Call of Duty Mobile, Diablo Immortal, and everything else. Activision Blizzard’s other mobile game.
Google and Nvidia join Sony in raising concerns about Microsoft’s attempt to buy Activision Blizzard. Sony’s PlayStation division competes with Microsoft’s Xbox, and in particular, Sony has raised concerns about the possibility that Activision’s Call of Duty series will become an Xbox exclusive. Microsoft said this won’t happenand offered Sony a 10-year contract for Call of Duty.
Making Call of Duty exclusive to Xbox would be a “disastrous” business decisionsMicrosoft said.
Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard has been approved in places like Brazil, Saudi Arabia and Serbia, but finalization in the US and UK is much more difficult. Keep checking back with GameSpot for the latest information.
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