The FTC (Fair Trade Commission) of South Koreanot to be confused with the US one with the same abbreviation, ha approved the acquisition of Activision Blizzard from Microsoft.
The Korean antitrust has given the green light to the 69 billion dollar maneuver without imposing particular remedies, as in its view it does not represent a danger to competitiveness both in the console market and in the local cloud gaming market.
In the first case, the FTC states that the market shares of games developed and distributed by Microsoft and Activision is quite small when compared to the worldwide market. For example, in their view Call of Duty has between 6% and 8% of the global market, but in South Korea we hover between 0% and 2%.
He therefore predicts that even if the acquisition were to pass there would be no significant upheavals in the country, where in 2021 PlayStation held 70 – 80% of the market, Nintendo 10 – 20% and Xbox only between 0% and 10%. Indeed, in his opinion, the maneuver would bring gods benefits to competitiveness precisely because of the lack of relevance of Microsoft in the local market.
As for the cloud, the Korean FTC estimates a market share of 60-70% for Microsoft and 30-40% for Nvidia, but considering the business model of Geforce Now, in reality the acquisition would help increase the game sales, creating mutual benefits. While Microsoft’s cloud market share is high and there are barriers to entry, considering the characteristics of the market, the risk of hurting competition would be low.
At the moment 38 nations have given their approval to the acquisition of Activision Blizzard, with China giving its consent just a few days ago. Currently, the major stumbling blocks for the success of the maneuver are represented by the rejection of the CMA in the United Kingdom, with the issue currently under consideration by the CAT after the appeal by Microsoft, and by the US FTC, which will be discussed in court starting from since this summer.
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