The antimonopoly regulator of New Zealand has moved up the date by which it should render a verdict on the deal between Microsoft and Activision Blizzard. He decided to check again whether the purchase would damage competition in the country’s cloud gaming market.
The agency fears that in the future Microsoft may stop releasing Activision Blizzard games in competing cloud services or force NVIDIA, Sony and other companies to raise prices for titles. However, it is worth noting that Microsoft previously signed a 10-year partnership with NVIDIA and several other companies to release games.
The regulator will issue a final verdict on the deal by July 17.
The verdicts of three antimonopoly experts are decisive for the deal: from the USA, Great Britain and the European Union. The first two opposed the sale of Activision Blizzard and are now preparing for trial with Microsoft.