2023-07-21 00:00:45
Microsoft had until July 18 to close on the Activision-Blizzard purchase. The acquisition did not materialize on time and, according to the terms of the initial deal between the two companies, the company led by Satya Nadella should pay the video game studio a compensatory fine of 3,000 million dollars. The company behind Xbox has just gotten rid of this sanction following reaching a new agreement with Activision. The deadline for the closing of the sale operation, valued at 69,000 million dollars, will be extended by three months. The deadline to complete the payment process ends on October 18.
The resolution was confirmed and communicated by Brad Smith, president of Microsoft, through a publication where he assured that the extension will give “sufficient time to work on final regulatory issues. We will comply with all the commitments agreed with the EC and other regulators”.
Microsoft will stop making games for Xbox One
They will focus their development efforts on the Xbox Series X | S consoles
The message was accompanied by a document explaining the details of the new agreement. If the purchase agreement is not closed before August 29 of this year, lThe termination fee that Microsoft will pay if it abandons the purchase will increase from $3 billion to $3.5 billion. If the deal is not finalized before next September 15, the figure will increase to 4.5 billion dollars.
The brief also clarifies that Activision Blizzard is entitled to pay $0.99 per share to its investors, and that “both parties have agreed that the deal termination fee is not subject to any condition other than failure to close.”
Microsoft and Activision, a complicated merger
The purchase process between Microsoft and Activision has been slowed down by antitrust regulatory bodies in important markets such as the United States and the United Kingdom. Once the acquisition is completed, the company founded by Bill Gates will become the third largest company in the industry in terms of revenue, behind Tencent and Sony.
What worries the market is the course that the industry may take following Microsoft adjusts its business strategy. It all has to do with him mobile gaming y cloud gaming. Data of Newzoo indicate that at the end of 2021 the mobile gaming left more than 93,000 million dollars in revenue. For him cloud gaming The income calculated for that same year was 1,571 million dollars, with a projection to grow to 6,532 million dollars in 2024.
Meanwhile, the income generated by the gaming in consoles they reached 50.400 million dollars, with a fall of 6.6% year-on-year. This makes clear the profile that Microsoft’s business will take in the event that the purchase of Activision is closed.
Microsoft already has approval from 40 countries. It recently won an appeal over the purchase ban that the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) imposed. For the agreement to materialize, the approval of the Competition Markets Authority (CMA), a regulatory body in the United Kingdom, is missing.
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