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Microsoft Rejects UK Regulator’s Divestment Proposal, Offers 10-Year Licence

By  |  March 9, 2023

Microsoft is seeking to ease competition concerns from the British regulator, over its Activision Blizzard acquisition.

Last month the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) announced it had provisionally concluded that Microsoft’s $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, announced in January 2022, raises competition concerns.

Microsoft has no intention of making Call of Duty exclusive to the Xbox platform. The franchise will still be available on PlayStation and PC, as well as appearing on Nintendo and Nvidia platforms as part of new 10-year agreements.

Read more: UK Competition Watchdog Opposes Microsoft-Activision Merger

As part of the proposed remedies, the company guarantees quality and content parity between the PlayStation and Xbox platforms to “protect all CoD gamers in the UK, as well as the incentives to invest and innovate.”

Microsoft believes that the prohibition of the merger is “wholly unjustified” given that the main concerns relate to only one franchise and its position on consoles and cloud gaming services in the UK.