Microsoft køber Activision Blizzard

Konsolkongen>Fordi du skriver “ Det er ligesom deres annoncerede (og udgivne) line-up for i år. Hvad er mest unikt og definerende?” og derefter nævner begge spillene.

Konsolkongen> Der er nogle sammentræf mellem spillenes loop og progression, men det er vidst også det :)

First, a few words on policy. Currently, some people think that agencies should either block or clear mergers. Nothing in between. So if you block you are a “tough” enforcer. If you clear, well, let's just say you are not perceived as tough.

That is not our policy. The European Courts have held that we cannot, as a matter of principle, dismiss remedy proposals. We have to investigate the merits of every solution offered. Of course we prefer structural remedies. And in fact, looking at the past 5 years, 80% of our conditional clearances relied on structural remedies.

But the nature of merger control is that it requires a case-specific assessment. In certain situations, we can accept solutions other than divestitures. Generally speaking, those solutions consist in granting access to a technology or an asset.

The criteria for doing so are stringent. But it is important that we have this flexibility. The reason is not just because the Court are telling us to do so. It is because framing enforcement in a binary decision (to clear or to block) is limitative. There will be cases where competition issues cannot really be solved by a divestment, and the market will not necessarily be better off if we block the merger.

Which leads me to my second point, on our assessment and the divergence with the CMA in Microsoft/Activision.

Occasionally, we reach decisions that are not aligned with every other jurisdiction. So I'd like to take a few moments to set out why we believe the Microsoft/Activision merger - with appropriate remedies - is not only compatible with the Single Market, but in fact represents a positive development.

No one doubts that this was a landmark transaction in the gaming industry. Gaming is a dynamic market that impacts millions of consumers in Europe. So the deal deserved a thorough investigation. We looked at impacts on gamers today and in the future - whether they play on PC, console, or on their phones. We focused on the development of cloud streaming, which will play an increasing role in how consumers access games.

An important finding was that the overall market share for Microsoft and Activision was generally low in Europe. It's only when you look at specific segments like ‘shooter games' that you get to above 20%. And for consoles, Sony sells about 4 times more PlayStations than Microsoft sells Xboxs.

With this context, we did not think the merger raised a vertical issue. I am told Call of Duty is a very popular shooter franchise. But we found that Microsoft would probably not shoot itself in the foot by stopping sales of Call of Duty games to the much larger PlayStation player base. Our colleagues at the CMA agreed with us and ultimately reached the same conclusion.

Where we did have concerns was in cloud gaming - still a nascent market but one we expect to grow, because it offers many advantages for gamers. For one, it enables gamers to untie games from specific devices - that means more accessibility and lower cost. So cloud gaming deserved an in-depth assessment. This was a common concern because, like us, the CMA focused on this market.

We were worried that Microsoft would make Activision games exclusive to its own cloud gaming service. This would have restrained access to games and strengthened Window's position as an operating system.

Where we diverged with the CMA was on remedies. We accepted a 10-year free license to consumers to allow them to stream all Activision games for which they have a license via any cloud service. And why did we do this instead of blocking the merger? Well, to us, this solution fully addressed our concerns. And on top of that, it had significant procompetitive effects.

Consider the pre-merger situation, where Activision does not license its games to cloud services. So, in this case, the remedy opens the door for smaller cloud services in the EU to offer big games on their platforms, widening choice for gamers. The merits of this remedy was recognised across the spectrum - by developers, by cloud gaming providers, by distributors and of course also by consumer groups. And that is because it unlocked the potential of the cloud market.

This is not the only case this year where we were able to safeguard a market's potential. I can also mention our clearance of the Orange/Voo/Brutélé merger last March. In that case, the merger reduced the number of fixed telecom operators from 3-to-2 in Wallonia. To solve this, we accepted Orange's commitment to grant access to its newly acquired fixed infrastructure for ten years to Telenet. This access effectively replaced Orange, an access seeker in the region covered by the target's network, by another access seeker: it is structural in effect, targeted and not hard to monitor. With Telenet entering Wallonia with fixed telecom services, the number of players remains the same and we preserve consumer choice.

In other words, with our remedies Belgian gamers may soon be able to play Call of Duty with their Telenet internet connection throughout Belgium, and they could do so using a cloud gaming service that has not yet been launched.

Again, let me emphasize that these types of remedies are the minority of our cases, by far. But when they work, why deprive ourselves of the option? This is what useful enforcement is all about.