ATVI - Microsoft-Activision deal gets its closing after U.K.'s CMA approval
2023-10-13 11:59:28 ET
Microsoft’s ( NASDAQ: MSFT ) $69B takeover of Activision Blizzard ( ATVI ) became official on Friday after the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority approved the deal.
The CMA was the last hurdle to the competition for the deal.
After more than 22 months of negotiations since Microsoft ( MSFT ) proposed the acquisition of gaming firm Activision Blizzard ( ATVI ), the deal is finally official, and its CEO, Bobby Kotick, said in a CNBC interview on Friday that his firm never doubted there was any legitimate reason why these two companies couldn’t combine.
“We weren't looking to sell the company, but as we started to see how difficult it was going to be to find the type of specialized talent in AI and machine learning — realizing that we're competing against big companies like ByteDance, Tencent, Sony, Nintendo — we started to really think about how much of an advantage it would be to be a part of Microsoft,” said Kotick.
He said that Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO, and Brad Smith, its vice chairman and president, have created a company that “is really about partnership, operationalized at scale.”
Kotick also told CNBC that he sees the use of AI such as Neuralink, a software that lets gamers control a computer or mobile device through brain activity, as “a long way off,” but the Microsoft-Activision partnership could allow for remakes of games that have been in the library for the last 30 years.
“I think AI is going to make games more accessible,” he said. “I think it's going to make the creation of things like art and animation better… [with] richer, deeper experiences that will broaden the audience more.”
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Microsoft-Activision deal gets its closing after U.K.’s CMA approval