EU Digs Deeper Into Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard Acquisition With “Advanced Probe”

We recently reported about Phil Spencer, Microsoft’s Head of Gaming, and his confidence in the possible Acquisition of Activision Blizzard. Now, The European Commission is digging deeper as they have until November 8 to launch “Phase 2” of its probe into Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard acquisition.

The EU’s competition department is worried about the deal, scared that Call of Duty may become an Xbox-exclusive title that could complicate the market and be seen as anti-competitive. However, Phil Spencer has talked on this issue countless times, most recently sharing that, “Most of the dialogue that’s out there has been around consoles, and how Xbox and PlayStation consoles compete with each other. But when we think about three billion people playing video games, there’s only about 200 million households that play on console. The vast majority of people who play, do so on the device that’s already in their pocket, which is their phone.”

This idea of mobile being the future of gaming is an important factor to bring up, but at the end of the day, even if Microsoft says they have no plans of making CoD an exclusive title, if the deal goes through, anything could happen.