South Africa has joined Japan, Brazil, Chile, Serbia, and Saudi Arabia in unconditionally approving the company's takeover of Activision Blizzard. The Competition Commission of South Africa has concluded that the acquisition is"unlikely to result in a substantial prevention or lessening of competition in any relevant markets."Competition Commission
said,"The primary competition concern in this transaction arose from the concern that Microsoft may, post-merger, restrict the distribution of Call of Duty to the Microsoft console, Xbox, or make Call of Duty available on terms that exclude or undermine the ability of other console manufacturers to compete.
"The Commission found that the proposed transaction is unlikely to result in significant foreclosure concerns as the parties do not have the ability and incentive to foreclose competing game distributors, particularly Sony and Nintendo . Furthermore, the merging parties have made undertakings to continue supplying Call of Duty games to other console manufacturers.
"Therefore, the Commission found that the proposed transaction is unlikely to result in a substantial prevention or lessening of competition in any relevant markets. The Commission further found that the proposed transaction does not raise any substantial public interest concern."Xbox Activision deal will not"substantially lessen" UK console gaming competition
. However, the regulator is still investigating the deal when it comes to cloud gaming services. The CMA is expected to publish its final report by April 26th. Elsewhere, European regulators are still deliberating over the acquisition and the US Federal Trade Commission, which sued to block the takeover, has an initial court hearing about the deal set for August.
Finally
South Africa has unconditionally approved the Xbox and Activision Blizzard merger.