As reported by VGC, the competition regulator of the United Kingdom CMA recently announced that it has made the decision to extend the deadline for publishing its report on the purposed acquisition of Activision-Blizzard by Microsoft by almost two months. The report was supposed to be shared until March 1, but now the deadline has been pushed back to April 26.

The inquiry group chairman at CMA, Martin Coleman, explained the reason for the delay by focusing on the complexity of the deal and the necessity of investigating a large volume of evidence. "In taking this decision, the Inquiry Group had regard to the scope and complexity of the investigation and the need to consider a large volume of evidence as well as main party and third party submissions, the necessity to allow sufficient time to take full and proper account of comments that will be received in response to the Inquiry Group’s provisional findings in due course and to reach a fully reasoned final decision in the statutory timeframe,” said Coleman.

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It was back in September 2022 that UK's CMA announced it would launch a second phase of investigation on the Activision-Blizzard deal. The UK's competition regulator seems to be convinced by Sony's concerns about the lack of competition in gaming as a result of this gigantic acquisition, but the final call on the deal is yet to be announced.

On the other hand, Microsoft did assure Sony and PlayStation fans on multiple occasions that the Call of Duty franchise will remain a multiplatform title on PlayStation consoles for the foreseeable future. The company even reportedly offered concessions to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation for up to 10 years.

Although Microsoft already has approvals from Brazil, Saudi Arabia, and Serbia on the deal, it still needs 17 more approvals to complete the deal. The US competition regulator FTC has already sued Microsoft to block the purposed acquisition of Activision-Blizzard, which makes the situation even worse for the American tech giant.

The European regulator is also running an investigation on this deal at the moment, with the final call arriving sometime this year.

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