US Senator Elizabeth Warren and her colleague Mondar Jones have introduced a bill to ban anti-competitive mergers. If it is accepted, companies will not be able to make transactions more expensive than $5 billion.

Microsoft has announced its plans for Russia. The IT corporation stops “all new sales” in the country. This applies to both its products and services.

A number of human rights organizations have expressed concern about the purchase of Activision Blizzard, which Microsoft plans to make. They demanded that the US Federal Trade Commission carefully study the deal in order to prevent possible consequences for the market. One of the reasons is the direct threat of competition.This is stated in an open letter published on March 1.

Sarah Bond, vice president of the Microsoft gaming ecosystem, hinted at a possible reduction in the commission in the Xbox store. According to her, in the future, a more flexible model may replace the 30% fee, when the commission amount will depend on the store functions used by developers.

Microsoft has published new operating principles for its app store. This is a consequence of the announced deal with Activision Blizzard. The company decided to show regulators its openness and desire to encourage competition. However, so far we are talking only about the PC store.Microsoft announced the changes on February 9 in its official blog.

Several indie developers shared with the BBC their concerns about the Microsoft and Activision Blizzard deal. They stated that a lot of AAA projects are already included in the Game Pass subscription, and after the purchase of the Call of Duty publisher, there will be even more of them. Because of this, small games can simply go unnoticed by gamers.

After the acquisition of Activision Blizzard, there were predictions that Microsoft’s next step could be the purchase of a conditional Capcom or SEGA. However, analyst Serkan Toto dispelled these myths and explained why the chances of absorbing a Japanese company tend to zero.Yakuza: Like a Dragon

Microsoft has reported on the results of the second fiscal quarter of 2022, which ended on December 31. It also became known how the entire calendar year 2021 passed for the company — it turned out to be a record for the gaming direction.

The meeting of Bobby Kotick with employees, the official position on the future of the Call of Duty series on PlayStation, the fear of mass layoffs and the chances of the revival of old franchises. We tell you the main thing about all the latest news related to the Microsoft and Activision Blizzard deal.

Yesterday, Microsoft announced the purchase of Activision Blizzard for a record $68.7 billion for the gaming industry. As a result, Sony‘s shares collapsed, and information appeared in the media about the possible departure of Bobby Kotick. We tell you what else happened after the news about the deal.

Deal of the year. Microsoft has announced that it has agreed to acquire Activision Blizzard.

New details of Microsoft’s negotiations with Apple have become known from the published emails. For the sake of launching a cloud gaming service in the App Store, the company was ready to make a number of compromises. On iOS, among other things, AAA Xbox exclusives could appear. However, the negotiations have reached an impasse due to financial and technical differences.This was reported by The Verge with reference to documents related to the litigation between Apple…

Fritupley Call of Duty and Fortnite attract the bulk of Xbox users. However, Microsoft is still making a big bet on the Game Pass. Using the example of Outer Wilds and Bethesda projects, analysts from Newzoo talked about the impact of the subscription service on the popularity of both AAA titles and small indie games.The most popular games of October on Xbox

Activision Blizzard employees demanded the resignation of Bobby Kotick. The petition has already been signed by over 1300 people. Meanwhile, Phil Spencer announced that Xbox will reconsider the terms of cooperation with the scandalous company. According to him, such an attitude towards employees has no place in the gaming industry.Overwatch

The Xbox Cloud Gaming Cloud Gaming service has become officially available on consoles. Xbox users will now be able to play games from the Game Pass library without installing them on their hard drive. Russia, however, is not yet on the list of supported countries.Microsoft announced the launch of Cloud Gaming on the official Xbox blog.

Yesterday, Microsoft, in honor of the 20th anniversary of the Xbox and the Halo franchise, opened access to the free-play beta of the Halo Infinite multiplayer — three weeks earlier than planned. In the first hours after the release of the game, its online on Steam exceeded 270 thousand people.

Microsoft has announced metaverse, a project based on its mixed reality Mesh platform. It is designed to work together in a virtual space and will be integrated into Teams. In the future, the company plans to add its own games to the metaverse.The Mesh for Teams project was presented at the Ignite conference, which took place on November 2.

SEGA has announced a strategic partnership with Microsoft. The deal will allow it to develop “next-generation global games based on the Azure cloud platform.” According to analysts, this partnership is important not only for the companies themselves, but also for the entire gaming industry.

Microsoft has prepared a report for the first fiscal quarter of 2022. In July-September, its gaming direction earned $3.6 billion, which is the best result for the first quarter in the company’s history.