From a young age, we are told that our words affect the people around us, and it looks like Brad Smith should have put more thought into what he says. In 2023, the president of Microsoft commented that the UK "was bad for business", this comment was made after the Competition and Markets Authority blocked the company's attempt at acquiring Activision Blizzard. He stated that the company's confidence in the UK was "severely shaken".
Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard has been a well-documented and tumultuous experience and was originally announced on 18 January 2022. The deal encountered many issues, with one of its biggest hurdles being that the UK Competition and Markets Authority blocked the merger for the acquisition in April 2022 over its concerns that if the deal were to go through, it would reduce innovation and mean less choice for consumers in the ever-growing cloud-based gaming market. However, Microsoft resubmitted their new restructured deal for the CMA to review in August 2023, and luckily, the deal has now been approved.
With the deal having gone through and being approved by the CMA, Brad Smith has suddenly changed his tune, saying that the Competition and Markets Authority's initial decision was tough but fair. In an interview with BBC's Today Programme, he then went on to say - "It pushed Microsoft to change the acquisition that we had proposed, for Activision Blizzard to spin out certain rights that the CMA was concerned about concerning cloud gaming".
What does this mean for players? Under the new offer that the CMA approved, Microsoft had agreed to give Ubisoft the rights to stream from the cloud Activision games, such as the Call of Duty franchise. This means that if players don't own an Xbox or would prefer to play on another console, they will still be able to do so by accessing them from the cloud. This isn't the only interesting development, as Brad Smith claims that Microsoft will invest £2.5 billion in the UK's AI infrastructure. This may be a response to the UK government's "critical" AI Safety Summit, which was held in November 2023. Hopefully, with the CMA's approval out of the way, things will be smooth sailing for the tech giant.
Daman Shelley (@UndeadandTired)
Editor, NoobFeed
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| Platform(s): | Xbox One, PS4, PC |
| Publisher(s): | Activision |
| Developer(s): | Infinity Ward, Sledgehammer Games |
| Genres: | First-Person Shooter |
| Themes: | Action, Shooter, Multiplayer |
| Release Date: | 2023-11-10 |
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