Xbox Activision Blizzard Deal Officially Approved In Brazil

Anyone hear Jim Ryan crying?

While I think some of what they said was hilariously brutal considering Jim Ryan's tantrums, I think there's a lot said here that is pretty sound and generally what I've been thinking. In particular PlayStation market share through exclusives and why the focus should be what it means for the consumers.

@Chaudy Jim cancelled his vacation to Brazil

I like this part
"It is important to highlight that the central objective of CADE's activities is the protection of competition for Brazilian consumers, and not the defense of the particular interests of specific competitors."

Some ppl are taking this badly on twitter and accusing Brazil of being a corrupt country , it's sad to see the negative comments about Brazil just because of a company takeover

@Martsmall While I don't need to go into detail if you watch world affairs, there's a ton of reasons to have issues with Brazil irrespective of this particular decision.

On the one hand I don’t want playstation to loose acces to acti bliz games. On the other hand acti bliz is in such a ***** state and I can’t see any other company than Microsoft fix it so I really want the purchase to go through.

Brazil is a very poor country and the cost of consoles cost over £1000 due to import costs, so of course they had no problem with the deal due to gamepass and cloud gaming.

Would be a different story if this was the beginning of the xbox one gen though.

The way CADE and Brazil in general operates is very nice, very open, and shows how it really works in real world. They listened all the involved players in the market, saw Sony was the only one crying, for no reason, and decided in favor of the merger.

Of course, corruption still exists, but it's problem that will take time to resolve. But this level of transparency is something we don't see in more developed countries.

This is funny:

"It is also necessary to consider that, as Call of Duty is an “essential” game, as defended by Sony, then the Nintendo Switch would probably not be able to compete effectively in the market, since no title in the franchise was released for the platform (until the moment). What can be observed, however, is that the Nintendo console has been showing a good sales performance since its launch in 2017, having even surpassed the numbers of the recently launched PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S in 2021, according to estimates."

@Kaloudz it was a ***** show. Poor Ryse: Son of Rome I only played the game after getting the X and had an absolute blast. I love that game and at the time it was caught up in all the other Xbox one drama 😞

That's what these Governing Authorities should be doing - not looking at how an 'individual' maybe impacted but the whole industry. Sony is a 'competitor' to A/B as well and CoD is NOT the most popular FPS played today - PUBG, CrossfireX, Fortnite and Apex Legends all eclipse the number of CoD players and even Warzone, the 'most' popular by registered Player count with 100m is 1/10th that of Crossfire (1000m or 1bn players and PUBG has 1.2bn). CoD also only releases on the 2 out of the 3 consoles and PC - without detrimental impact on Nintendo's ability to 'compete' with Sony/MS having outsold both with their Switch.

MS is promising to bring CoD to 'more' people than A/B could - thus being able to grow the Community and make it accessible to far MORE gamers and give those Gamers more choice on how and where they can access games. Yes they may 'opt' to buy an Xbox instead of a Playstation, but its up to Sony to 'compete' with its OWN studio's, its own platform and they have their 'own' IP's - inc Destiny, Killzone, Resistance etc.

The fact that you could play CoD on an Apple iPhone, Samsung TV/Mobile/Tablet, cheap student Laptop etc as well as play on the 'traditional' platforms means that its actually 'benefiting' more gamers than it ever could potentially 'hurt'. Sony has about 100-150m gamers and of those, about 50m could play CoD online (PS+ subs only) and sell about 10-20m copies of CoD. With over 3bn gamers in the world, Playstation is less than 5% of the market and its not as if they would be 'forced' to buy an Xbox just to keep playing CoD as they would have lots of alternative platforms from their Mobile, Streaming handheld device, Steam deck, tablet/laptops, etc etc etc.

I still think it will go through - no matter what Jim Ryan cries about - as its not detrimental to the competition and/or industry as a whole and certainly not detrimental to the Consumers. As more and more Governmental bodies come to the same Conclusion, the last few will follow as they won't want to fight in court against MS and the backing they have from the other Governmental bodies.

This is worse than the Eurovision Song Contest voting system 😂😂😂

@Titntin I'm Brazilian and... yeah, our current political situation is really ghastly right now Hopefully we can change that in the coming elections.

But while corruption is rampant in Brazil, I don't think CADE's decision has anything to do with that, the more transparent a government decision is, the least likely it is to find shady business and this whole process was very transparent.

As @UltimateOtaku91 said, Brazil is a poor country. Few people have access to videogame consoles or PC gaming. Cloud gaming technology is a game changer that is very beneficial for Brazilian consumers and certainly that point may have swayed CADE to decide in Microsoft's favour.

@Fenbops @Kaloudz Agree with both of you...Ryse is a great game. It was the first one I beat on my Xbox Series X after I skipped the Xbox One gen

@BAMozzy I agree with most of what you wrote, except for your last point: "As more and more Governmental bodies come to the same Conclusion, the last few will follow as they won't want to fight in court against MS and the backing they have from the other Governmental bodies."

In one of his videos, Hoeg Law answered what happens if some regulators approve the deal and others do not. An it turns out that all that matters in the end are the major markets, USA and UK/Europe.

If Brazil does not approve the deal, but all the bigger markets do, Microsoft can just stop selling Xbox in Brazil, as it won't be a major blow for them (they stopped selling in Russia due to the war in Ukraine, for that matter). And Brazil, as well as other smaller markets, are well aware of that, so they are more likely to approve the deal without restrictions.

With the major markets that's a totally different matter, they have way more sway over Microsoft, since just stop selling in the European Union, for example, is not an option. So those regulating bodies are way more likely to impose restrictions on the deal or kill it altogether. And that's why Jimbo went all the way to Brussels instead of Brasília.

@Magabro What I meant by that is if for example the 'rest of the world' have agreed to approve the deal, then if the EU/UK authorities attempted to 'block' it, MS could fight them in court with the support of all the other governing bodies who have approved it with NO stipulation/changes required. Even if they tried to add some extra stipulation - like guaranteeing they release CoD on PS for 5-10yrs (instead of the '3' MS supposedly offered), that becomes increasingly difficult with all the others backing the deal globally.

Of course, MS could just decide to change the way they operate in certain territories but they could also decide to 'appeal' and fight the decision of that Governing body in the courts - where they would have to 'provide' evidence and valid reasons why they alone decided not to approve the deal whilst MS can use the support and backing of all the other governing bodies to argue that the one trying to block is 'bias, corrupt, unfit to assess etc'.

The more Support, the more authorities back it, the harder it will be to oppose and argue against it...

@Kaloudz We need a sequel yes. It still looks amazing, imagine a sequel on the consoles we have now. After a quick Google search it seems Crytek have the IP still.

Well on the bright side, i wont be tempted to play cod every year

Of course it was approved. Everyone will approve this in time.

I think this will go through regardless but the FTC, EU and CMA are the key ones to sign off on this as they are the biggest markets.

I think they will all approve it in the end and this is just a massive drama the media thrive off of.

Sony raising concerns is natural. Boot was on the other foot same thing would happen. But ultimately it will go through.

Brazil is not a poor country. It has a lot of poor people. But it's the 9th largest economy in the world. Maybe that's where the corruption thing comes into play.

@CunningPig Brazil is the 10th economy of the world by GDP, but it's number 88 in GDP per capita (accounting for purchase power parity). Brazil is behind Botswana, for example. So, yeah, poor country is poor. And although corruption contributes to that scenario, it's mostly used as an easy scapegoat to oversimplify that matter without tackling all the major structural problems that affect our economy, such as the overdependance on exports of commodities with low aggregate value.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita

@raftos Ha! This is freaking brilliant! Nintendo (and Nintendo fans) have dealt with total absence of critical 3rd parties for decades now (since N64). It didn't kill competition. It forced Nintendo to find new ways to compete and led to some of the most successful electronic devices of all time in the Wii and Switch, along with devices that were not as successful but still beloved, like the GameCube.

@Magabro GDP per capita is not a good indication of standard of living. Better than GDP alone, but it's more a measure of output than income. Botswana has almost 60% of their population living on $5.50 a day or less. Brazil has 13%. It's not even close. Brazil has greater wealth disparity and a weaker middle class than the other nations in the top 10 GDP, but the country as a whole is still one of the richest in the world.

@Titntin you mean things like this

https://labsnews.com/en/news/business/microsoft-partnership-with-the-brazilian-government/

Sorry for the lengthy post ahead of time.

I been doing some homework on this whole international acquisition stuff. The question keeps being: if the US approves the deal, is there anything the EU can do to block it?

Well turns out, they can. It has happened only once that I can tell (would need to do more research to be sure) in Oct 2000 when General Electric, an American company, attempted to acquire Honeywell.

The important thing to note is why, and how that happened.

The EU considered that the merger would had resulted in a single company controlling almost all of engine manufacturing in Europe, or something along those lines. That is a far cry from "they own the best selling brand of thermostat" (the closest thing you can compare to "They own Call ofDuty".)

But even then, the EU didn't simply block the merger. They were given the chance to go ahead with the merger under certain conditions. That is basically always going to be step one: this merger can go ahead with conditions A B and C. General Electric refused those conditions, and when the merger was blocked they took it to court. Of further interest is that the court also blocked the deal, but for entirely different reasons, although they also were about monopolies, if I understand correctly.

It is worth noting that at the time both companies (or maybe only Honeywell?) employed around 80k people across the EU, and this was critical workflow you cant just get rid of.

I have talked about Disney's acquisition of Fox, it was also approved by the EU, under only one (2?) condition:

[quote]
The EU competition regulator said in a statement that Disney had committed to divest its interests in channels including History and Lifetime in the European Economic Area (EEA) to avoid harming competition following its purchase from Fox.[/qupte]

This was not even requesting a complete divestment, it was exclusive to the EEA. Lets even pretend for a minute that they tried to do the same with Call of Duty, it would only be within EEA. Disney still owns the History channel and Lifetime, but I guess they are not in direct control of them in the EEA.

On the other hand the FTC required the sell of Fox’s 22 regional sports networks.

TLDR: this deal will go through, and at the worst possible case, there will be some conditions that only impact the EEA. Should MS decide to sell CoD exclusively on XBox outside the EEA, there is nothing they would be likely to do.

Not only does Brazil approve it, they approved it without restrictions. They look at the deal for the consumer vs for the specific competitors. This must hurt Jim Ryan as they addressed a lot of what he has said. This isn’t going to hurt competition. Wonder if PlayStation or Jim Ryan will respond to this announcement.

Jim Ryan is not going to be able to block this deal when Nintendo is not in any way joining them. Google, a company that has been recently fined by the EU for anticompetitive actions, and not an actual player in the gaming industry. This is not going to go Jim’s way.

I’m pretty sure this deal approved from US. EU. UK and others…

@UltimateOtaku91 Thats astonishing. The timing makes it look very much like Microsoft is buying this approval, so I take it back. This does look dodgy af...

EDIT - As was kindly pointed out to me, the news story is from a while ago and not current which was was I thought I saw!
Appologies, my mistake!

@UltimateOtaku91
Oh... no, no,no,on you caaan't)
Show now like everyone have windows OS, this will be shock)
Give a HI to Jim Crying)

@Titntin oh yeh the timing .... It was two years ago that happened lol

21st October 2020

@Martsmall Lol - trust me to not look at the date! Sorry I wrongly assumed it was current
I cant link the two things TBH, if one had followed the other, perhaps, but not after this time.
Thank you for pointing out my error, appreciated!

Yw matey , it's common a lot of ppl have fell for it on twitter too , they all been grabbing Thier pitch forks about it ,I guess whoever put it up didn't like that Brazil has approved it lol

@Martsmall Lol, people are always looking for a fight! I'm just looking for the next game

@Titntin and more games we will get once it goes through lol

Some of wording in Brazil’s ruling was brutal towards Sony, they’re well aware that Sony are trying their very best to block the deal or at least force MS to accept conditions that are favourable to PlayStation going forward in regards to COD. Brazil was having absolutely none if it though 😂

Should've been an easy approval everywhere. Even after this acquisition, Microsoft is still a close 3rd in market share behind Sony at 2nd. Meanwhile, no one gives a crap that the CCP owns the highest market share (via Tencent)... Sony's argument is that it'll hurt them. Well of course it will! What do you think all your paying devs to prevent them from going to Xbox does to Microsoft? It's called competition and Sony is mad that they have to compete now and can't just walk to the podium as usual. It's totally obvious that there is no monopoly at play in the acquisition, not even by genre. So, it's just governments flexing their power and being a nuisance because they can at this point...

Take that Jim Ryan

The way their statement basically tells Sony to F off is wonderful to see. But this is only one regulator, another three to go and they all have different mandates, and outlined by government.