Another market has now approved the $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard King by Microsoft. Following the USA's Federal Trade Commission failing to halt the deal, and with the European Commision on board, and the UK's Competition and Markets Authority looking like it will rescind its former block and eventually approve the deal, now New Zealand's Commerce Commission has also approved the deal as well.
In a short release on its website, the Commerce Commission states, "we are satisfied that the merger is unlikely to have the effect of substantially lessening competition in a market."
As for how it came to this decision, the Commission noted that it "focused on the importance of Activision games (such as Call of Duty, Overwatch and World of Warcraft) to New Zealand gamers, and whether Microsoft would be likely to stop rivals like Sony and NVIDIA from offering those games on consoles and on cloud platforms."
To conclude, Commission chair, Dr. John Small added, "While Activision games, in particular Call of Duty, are popular with New Zealand gamers, our enquiries did not find that they are likely to be 'must have' in order to compete with Microsoft in New Zealand."
Long story short, another region is on board with the mega merger, putting even more pressure on the decision that the UK's CMA will have to make this October at the latest.