The lawsuit they started once ran aground, but that didn’t stop them either.
Microsoft’s deadline to complete the acquisition, which has been ongoing since last January, has passed, but according to press reports, Redmonds and Activision Blizzard are discussing continuing, as both parties want the 68.7 billion business to come together. The deal Sony had vehemently opposed from the start, but after the US Competition Authority (FTC) lost a lawsuit against Microsoft, and the British position (CMA) seemed to have softened, the PlayStation manufacturer signed the contract, which guarantees that new Call of Duty parts will also appear on its consoles for another 10 years.
So it looks like all the hurdles to acquisition are slowly being cleared, and Phil Spencers can start planning what to do with Call of Duty (will annual releases remain, will studios release spin-offs), which active franchises they should continue to support, and which they should return from their legacy releases.
However, there was another highly publicized lawsuit in addition to the one the FTC failed in, the Gamers case, in which a ruling in Microsoft’s favor had already been made in March. The same group of just 10 people sued in the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) after failing in the appeals court last week as the Federal Trade Commission.
They asked the presiding judge, Elena Kagan, who is in charge of the case, to intervene and prevent the acquisition of Activision by Blizzard, and not to allow the Call of Duty publisher to merge with Microsoft. Kagan, however Claim denieddid not give reasons for his decision, so now everything really depended on when and under what conditions the people of Redmond could come to an agreement with the British.
