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The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) says that they will more forward with an administrative case against Microsoft's $69 billion purchase of Activision Blizzard. This plan was announced by the FTC (PDF) themselves on September 26, 2023. The good news here is that the FTC's tomfoolery cannot prevent Microsoft from closing the deal before the deadline of October 18, 2023.

The FTC's decision to continue wasting taxpayer money on a battle they've already lost, comes after...

This is the acquisition that never ends. Yes it goes on and on, my friend.

As reported on several times last week, the only remaining hurdle standing in the way of Microsoft closing the deal on their Activision Blizzard acquisition was the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). Microsoft and the CMA got together on Monday, July 17th as planned to try to either finalize a deal that would satisfy the CMA.

After a few hours of talks today, both sides agreed that Microsoft...

Microsoft is now (almost) free to close the Activision Blizzard deal after 11:59PM (PT) today.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals just denied the Federal Trade Commission's request to issue an emergency stay to extend a temporary restraining order. The current restraining order ends July 14, 2023 at 11:59PM (PT). This failure to get that temporary extension means that Microsoft, if they wanted to, could close the deal with Activision Blizzard tonight.

The FTC made the...

Xbox is well behind the competition from Sony and Nintendo.

Microsoft has flat-out admitted that they have long lost the console wars. This remarkable but unsurprising admission came in its proposed findings of fact that Microsoft submitted on the first day of its court battle with the FTC. Special thanks to IGN for sharing this information.

This week's court battle came after the FTC filed a preliminary injunction to halt Microsoft's $69 billion acquisition of Activision...

This approval "represents a significant improvement for cloud gaming."

Hot on the heels of the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) blocking the merger between Microsoft and Activision Blizzard comes the approval of the merger from the European Commission (EC). This approval brings Microsoft's $70 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard that much closer to being completed.

Interestingly, the European Commission had very similar conclusions and concerns...

Sega seems keen on entering the mobile market.

Sega confirms that they are acquiring Rovio, the development studio that made Angry Birds back in 2009 and have been riding that wave ever since. The deal, valued at $775 million (USD) was officially announced on Monday morning. Speculation late last week about this acquisition started to circulate with a $1 billion price tag associated with it.

Sega is looking to dive deeper into the mobile gaming market. They plan to combine...

In case you wanted another reason to want the acquisition to be approved.

Current Activision Blizzard CEO, Bobby Kotick, will remain as the CEO of the company should Microsoft's $69 billion (USD) acquisition be blocked by regulators. This is according to sources speaking to Fox Business. They flatly say that if the deal falls through, Bobby Kotick "will absolutely remain at the gaming giant to run the company."

Unfortunately, it's not particularly clear what...

The Gamers™ are rising up.

About two weeks back, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced that they have filed a lawsuit in an effort to block the $69 billion (USD) acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft. Yesterday, a new lawsuit was filed in an effort to stop this acquisition, this time by a group of Call of Duty players, or "video gamers" as the suit refers to them.

This new lawsuit is a private consumer complaint from 10 players. The suit claims...

Back, the console wars are.

Xbox head honcho Phil Spencer says that PlayStation wants to "protect their dominance on console." He continues on to say, "the way they grow is by making Xbox smaller." These statements by Spencer were said on the Second Request podcast.

Spencer says that Sony just wants to retain its console dominance by opposing Xbox's acquisition of Activision Blizzard. His full statement can be seen here.



Spencer...

The FTC just filed a complaint to stop the acquisition.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) of the United States of America (USA) just filed a new complaint today that aims to block Microsoft's $69 billion (USD) acquisition of Activision Blizzard. This complaint is essentially a lawsuit, or a legal block, that will place at least a temporary stop to the acquisition being approved until such a point that this complaint is settled. This news comes in an email that the FTC sent to me this...

Get ready for all your old favorite sites to have a lot of auto-playing video ads!

Fandom, the company that calls itself "the world's largest fan platform," just announced that they have acquired a lot of gaming and entertainment brands from Red Ventures. The sites and services they just acquired include: GameSpot, Metacritic, TV Guide, GameFAQs, Giant Bomb, Cord Cutters News, and Comic Vine.

Fandom's press release announcing these acquisitions wastes no time...

Cross-platform play also confirmed for these Activision Blizzard titles.

Head of Xbox, Phil Spencer, took not to the Xbox Wire page but rather to the official Microsoft Blog to talk about some of the changes and concerns over Microsoft's potential acquisition of Activision Blizzard. In the blog, Spencer tries to put to bed fears that long-standing multi-platform titles like Call of Duty would suddenly become Xbox exclusive.

In the blog post, Spencer also says that franchises...

NetEase moves from being a minority stakeholder in Quantic Dreams to outright owning them.

The Chinese gaming and tech giant not named Tencent is again making acquisitions. NetEase Games, a division of NetEase Inc., have acquired the French development studio Quantic Dream.

Quantic Dream is the studio led by David Cage and Guillaume de Fondaumière. The studio specializes in creating choice-based adventure games that can feature a number of diverging story paths. Some...