After the competition watchdog blocked the takeover earlier this year, Microsoft’s president Brad Smith hit out at the CMA’s decision, which it said was “bad for Britain” and contradicted “the ambitions of the UK to become an attractive country to build technology businesses”.
But the CMA’s Ms Cardell said with the sale of Activision’s cloud streaming rights to Ubisoft, which makes Assassin’s Creed, “we’ve made sure Microsoft can’t have a stranglehold over this important and rapidly developing market”.
Under the restructured agreement, Microsoft has agreed to transfer the rights to stream Activision games from the cloud to Ubisoft for 15 years outside the European Economic Area (EEA).
The deal with Activision also means Microsoft will own its studio solely purposed for mobile games, with hopes of expanding on the successes of titles such as Candy Crush.
The takeover further cements Microsoft as a video game giant and could catapult it ahead of Nintendo to become the third-biggest player in the industry behind Sony, the owner of the PlayStation console, and market leader Tencent.
“[It will lead to] more choice, more innovation, better value and improved gaming experiences and a healthy, competitive market,” said Ms Stewart, who is also a former head of ICT at the Cabinet Office government department.
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