Microsoft’s Xbox now owns Call of Duty, Guitar Hero and Candy Crush, some of the world’s most popular video games, after it completed its acquisition of Activision Blizzard in a $69 billion deal, one of the largest in gaming history. But the company was keen to reassure gamers on Friday that the games will be available on other consoles.
The merger had been blocked by regulators who were concerned that Microsoft ownership of Activision would result in anticompetition in the gaming landscape as the tech behemoth could control access to the world’s most-played games.
On Friday, this all changed, after the U.K. watchdog the Competition and Markets Authority, one of the last hurdles for the deal, granted it permission to go ahead.
Women’s soccer stars Julie Ertz and Becky Sauerbrunn play the new Call of Duty: Modern Warfare multiplayer mode in Los Angeles on August 1, 2019. On Friday, Microsoft closed its acquisition of the publisher of Call of Duty Activision. CHARLEY GALLAY/GETTY IMAGES for ACTIVISION
Microsoft agreed to sell cloud gaming rights to French company Ubisoft in August, meaning that it will not have exclusive streaming rights to the products it would now own from Activision. That move assuaged the anti-competitive concerns of the CMA. The British agency regulator was the last remaining regulatory hurdle to the deal.
Xbox Owns ‘Call of Duty’ But PlayStation Gamers Can Still Play
