Very little is missing for the European Commission, as the body that regulates company concentrations in this area, to rule on the acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft. For the moment, everything indicates that the European Union will follow the path of other countries and will be favorable to the purchase process, as was the case with the merger of Microsoft and Zenimax. However, the market has changed since then, with Microsoft’s position in games and services becoming more important. For this reason, perhaps the European Commission will adopt a position closer to the one offered, for the time being, by the British CMA.
This would be the date of the decision of the European Commission of the purchase of Activision by Microsoft:
What happens if the CMA rejects the purchase of Activision and opposes the European Commission?
In any case, whether the European Commission is in favor or against, it is likely that we will have a date for its decision. If we we set in the process of accepting acquisition of Zenimax by Microsoftwe can see that the merger notification was published on February 5, 2021 and that the Commission’s decision was released a month later, on March 5, 2021.
Therefore, since the notification of the acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft was published in the Official Journal of the European Union dated October 7, 2022, the final decision may be made public just a month later, on November 7, 2022. However, considering that the situation of Zenimax and Activision Blizzard they are different – both because of their market size, because the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland are no longer part of the European Union and especially because of criticism from Sony – the decision may be delayed a little longer.