Microsoft Defends Activision Blizzard Deal With Eyebrow-Raising Statement

Yeah, this is a weird one. You remember how a couple of days ago, we reported that Sony seemed a little bit worried about Xbox’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard, and specifically the Call of Duty franchise? Since then, RPS has pointed out that Microsoft had an interesting way of justifying the acquisition in a separate response back in June.

At the time, Microsoft was responding to the New Zealand Commerce Commission, and suggested that there was “nothing unique” about Activision Blizzard’s games that would be considered a “must have” for a rival video game distributor that could give rise to a foreclosure concern.

Here’s the full little snippet from the response:

“Specifically, with respect to Activision Blizzard video games, there is nothing unique about the video games developed and published by Activision Blizzard that is a ‘must have’ for rival PC and console video game distributors that could give rise to a foreclosure concern.”

Basically, then, this isn’t a case of Microsoft admitting that Call of Duty is bad or anything like that, but rather that there’s nothing particularly unique about it (or any other ActiBlizz IP) that they believe should cause a foreclosure issue.

It’s still a bit of an eyebrow-raising quote though… it’s been getting a lot of attention on social media!

What do you make of this? Let us know down in the comments section below.