A U.S. federal court has rejected the Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) request to block the deal between Microsoft and Activision Blizzard. It is a victory for Microsoft in the U.S. lawsuit, although the FTC still has the option to appeal the ruling.
The decision by Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley in San Francisco means Microsoft could close its merger with Activision ahead of a July 18 deadline everywhere except for the UK, which vetoed the deal in May, Bloomberg reports.
The court stated that the FTC failed to demonstrate how the Microsoft-Activision Blizzard deal could harm competition or lead to the removal of Call of Duty games from the PlayStation console. Microsoft's agreements with NVIDIA, Nintendo, and other companies will actually expand the availability of Activision Blizzard games across various platforms, rather than making them exclusive to Xbox and PC.
The court ruling highlighted Microsoft's commitments to release Call of Duty on both Xbox and PlayStation, as well as its agreement with Nintendo to bring the game to the Switch. Microsoft has also made multiple agreements to bring Activision content to various cloud gaming services.
While this is a positive outcome for Microsoft, the FTC is expected to pursue an appeal. A spokesperson for the FTC expressed disappointment with the ruling and stated their intention to take further actions to protect competition and consumers in the cloud gaming, subscription services, and console markets.
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