Satya Nadella says he's confident that Microsoft can gain approval for its $69B Activision Blizzard purchase, citing several recent acquisitions by Sony
Microsoft Corp. Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella said he's confident the company can gain regulatory approval for its $69 billion purchase …
Context & Ripple Effects
At the time of this report, Microsoft's $69B Activision Blizzard bid was the largest test yet of whether a mega-acquisition could clear antitrust review, and Nadella's public confidence rested on precedent: Sony's own recent studio purchases had faced no comparable blockades. The bet paid off on the terms he implied — by early 2023, sources said EU regulators were likely to approve the deal, satisfied by Microsoft's Nintendo and Nvidia licensing commitments.
The endgame came in the UK, where the CMA only signed off after Microsoft restructured the offer to sell some of Activision's cloud gaming rights to Ubisoft — a reminder that Nadella's confidence was about negotiability, not inevitability. The acquisition closed as one piece of a much larger pattern: Microsoft has spent over $170B on deals under Nadella, per Dealogic, making M&A central to its push into AI and gaming.
First-order effects
- Regulators reviewing the deal now weigh Microsoft's argument that Sony's own acquisition spree sets an accepted precedent for large console-makers buying studios — directly shaping the scrutiny applied to the $69B price tag.
- Activision's shareholders and employees get a clearer signal the deal will close rather than collapse, since the CEO is publicly staking Microsoft's negotiating posture on approval.
Second-order effects
- The remedy structure that ultimately satisfied reviewers — pre-emptive licensing to Nintendo and Nvidia, then divesting cloud gaming rights to Ubisoft per the CMA's revised-offer assessment — becomes the template other acquirers must budget for: approval increasingly costs concessions to rivals, not just legal fees.
- Sony gains leverage either way: its own deals legitimize consolidation arguments, while any Microsoft concessions route content access to Sony's competitors like Nintendo and Nvidia.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, mega-deals in gaming and adjacent sectors close not by outmuscling regulators but by converting exclusivity into licensed access — antitrust review shifting from blocking scale to taxing it with behavioral remedies.
- Under Nadella, acquisition-led expansion into AI and gaming (over $170B deployed per Dealogic) points toward an industry where platform control is bought, and regulators' role is setting the terms of resale and access rather than preventing concentration outright.
The trend: Big Tech mega-acquisitions are clearing antitrust review through negotiated licensing and divestiture remedies rather than being blocked, with Microsoft's Activision deal as the defining case.