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A new report claims that the two companies expressed their concerns to the FTC about the potential impact of Microsoft's acquisition of Activision on competition, including the possibility of Microsoft withholding games from other competitors.
Google and NVIDIA have reportedly joined in on expressing concerns to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) regarding Microsoft's proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard.
As reported by Bloomberg, which cites people familiar with the matter, the two companies argue that the acquisition would give Microsoft an unfair advantage in the cloud, subscription, and mobile gaming markets. However, according to one source, at least one company, NVIDIA, is not specifically opposed to the acquisition, although it does emphasize the importance of equal access to game titles.
NVIDIA and Google are both major players in the gaming industry. NVIDIA dominates the market for graphics cards and offers the popular streaming service, GeForce Now. Meanwhile, Google tried to compete with Microsoft in cloud-computing services – it attempted to enter the gaming market with Stadia, although the service is set to shut down this month.
Google Stadia serves as an example of the difficulties in the cloud gaming market. It launched in 2019 with exclusive content, with Google hiring numerous game developers to support the service. Nonetheless, Stadia failed to gain popularity among gamers, and in September, Google announced that the service will be shutting down on January 18.
Meanwhile, NVIDIA's GeForce Now, which was opened to the public in 2020 and allows customers to play games streamed from its servers via high-end gaming hardware over the internet, seems to be gaining traction.
The two companies are said to have joined Sony, whose PlayStation console competes with Microsoft’s Xbox, in raising issues with Microsoft's Activision deal. The PlayStation creator previously argued that the deal to buy Activision will be anti-competitive – the company expressed its concerns that Activision's hits like Call of Duty may become exclusive to Microsoft's Xbox console and that this move may influence users' console choice.
Microsoft's Activision deal is currently being investigated by a number of global regulators. Most recently, the US FTC sued the company in an attempt to block the deal. The trial is set to take place in August 2023. The deal is also being scrutinized by the European Commission and the UK's Competition and Markets Authority which are now continuing their phase 2 investigations.
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