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.
In the same way, Smith also announced that all Xbox PC games and Activision Blizzard (if the purchase is finalized) will be coming to the Nvidia GeForce Now cloud gaming platform. According to Smith now Nvidia agrees to the purchase of the gaming giant Under these conditions.
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.
During the press conference that Smith held in Brussels this Tuesday, Microsoft president described Sony as “a super dominant company” that it sells more consoles than Xbox and still opposes the purchase of Activision Blizzard. “Do you want to prevent a deal that will solidify Sony’s position and its 80% market share? in the European economy… or do they want the future to arrive with behavior restraints and solutions for that these titles reach 150 million more players? That is the fundamental choice that the regulatory agencies they have to respond,” said the head of the technology company.
The purchase of Activision Blizzard for $6.9 billion, the largest purchase in the history of video games. Smith and other executives met with European lawmakers on Tuesday. Phil SpencerCEO of Xbox and other Microsoft executives discussed with the CEO of PlayStation. Jim Ryan, the one of Activision, Bobby Kotickand representatives of Google, Nvidia, Valve, Electronic Arts and the European Federation of Game Developers. In addition, half a dozen more representatives of the competition in Europe were present.
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
