As you know, Microsoft has announced that it intends to buy Activision Blizzard, the maker of Call of Duty and World of Warcraft, for $ 68.7 billion. According to published reports, this is the largest contract in the history of the video game industry, but it will not be finalized until 2023. Due to the very large scale of this transaction, there are many obstacles to its finalization.
Some industry analysts have pointed to a number of reasons that prevent the contract from being finalized, and one of the main reasons is the monopoly of the Call Of Duty game series.
The monopoly of this game has caused concern among many, and the general belief is that this is inevitable due to the high cost of Microsoft. However, GamesIndustry.Biz analysts believe that this will not happen, as it could jeopardize the finalization of the deal. DFC Intelligence analyst David Cole said:
It should also be noted that on consoles, Call of Duty is really the only major Activision franchise. The big problem is if COD becomes a proprietary Microsoft game.
At the moment, I do not think this will happen, because if they want to beat their competitor like this, the inspectors will prevent the transaction from being finalized.
To finalize this deal, a lot of anti-trust and anti-monopoly laws have to be examined, and undoubtedly the monopolization of the largest consular franchise will be a big obstacle to its finalization. Of course, it should be noted that large companies with their unlimited resources can always find a way to avoid such problems. Microsoft is the second largest company in the world after Apple, with a total market value of $ 2.271 trillion.
The Wall Street Journal quoted some sources as saying yesterday that Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotik would step down after the company’s acquisition was finalized. According to reports, the contract will not be finalized until 2023, and Microsoft does not intend to monopolize all Activision Blizzard games on Xbox and PC. Microsoft intends to add Activision Blizzard games to the gameplay service after purchasing this publisher as much as possible.
