I finally had time to read the
full notice (81 pages) that Microsoft sent to the Commerce Commission in
New Zealand explaining why the acquisition of Activision Blizzard should be legally fine.
Almost all the interesting info is blocked for confidentiality reasons :S For example, there are almost 2 pages of blank space where MS explains the commercial reasons for the acquisition.
Anyway, there are some cool pieces of info beyond the legal reasoning:
- MS says that they have
24 first-party development studios (because they also count
Casual Games Suite as one, the developers of Solitaire, Mahjong or Sudoku). So, we have to update the OT :p
-
Tencent is constantly mentioned (23 times), as well as
Sony and how the new PS Plus offering is a Gamepass competitor.
- Lots of references to
new entrants in the video game market (Apple, Netflix, Amazon, Meta, Google, Nvidia, etc), how easy is nowadays to start a studio and create a super successful game even with just one developer (for example, Flappy Bird is mentioned).
-
Valve and
Epic are also mentioned quite a bit as competitors post-transaction.
-
Call of Duty, World of Warcraft and Candy Crush represented 82% of Activision Blizzard's 2021 net revenue :o You can bet that those franchises are going to remain multiplatform in the future.
- The only
Japanese publishers mentioned as competitors post transaction are
Nintendo and
Bandai Namco, no mention of SEGA, Capcom, Konami, Square Enix, etc. In fact, they also include Roblox or CD Projeckt RED as competitors. It makes economical and legal sense because CD Projeckt RED was Europe's most valuable game company in 2020 and Roblox had around 190 million average monthly players in 2021. But I find it funny how for MS all those Japanese publishers are just a
"long tail of smaller competitors". :p
- Lots of talks about how
online display advertising, cloud services and merchandising are also relevant markets for this acquisition, but that they don't believe that the transaction could cause competition problems in those markets. They also say that there is nothing unique about the video games developed and published by Activision Blizzard that is a "must have" for rival PC and console video game distributors. So, that a new competitor could do what they do and be successful (that's true but not everyone has +3000 developers working on a single IP). :p
Anyway, cool document! Let's see if the final decision includes a little bit more of data.
