In his statement, Smith stressed that these types of agreements seek to promote competition in the video game market.
“We are committed to providing long-term equitable access to call of duty for other gaming platforms, bringing more options to more players and more competition to the video game market”, he assured.
On Wall Street there is no party for the agreement announced in the morning. Microsoft shares fall more than 2.4% and trade at $252.20, spinning its fourth consecutive day down.
Smith’s announcement came the same day that the Microsoft executive appeared before the European Union antitrust regulators to convince them that the acquisition of Activision Blizzarddeveloper of games like Call of Duty or World of Warcraft, does not represent a threat to free competition.
The purchase of Activision Blizzard for $6.9 billion, the largest purchase in the history of video games.
To take a decision, European regulatory authorities have solicited input from other players in the tech industry, including Google, from Alphabet, as well as from NVIDIA and Sony. The latter has opposed the transaction.
The purchase was announced in January last year, in a transaction valued at 69,000 million dollars and subject to the approval of regulatory bodies.
In the quarter ending in December 2022, Microsoft reported that revenue from the division of Xbox content and services registered a 12% drop compared to the same period of the previous year.
Source: Ambito
