That’s right, if you’ve been thinking, ‘golly, I wish I had a way to explain why consolidation on a massive scale is good and or bad,’ then today is your lucky day. The CMA has entered Phase 2 of its investigation of the deal, in which it’s trying to determine whether the acquisition will “lessen competition.” So now it wants to hear the public’s thoughts on the matter. As reported by GamesIndustry.biz, the CMA has released its Issues Statement, which goes over the details of Phase 2, where it discusses some of its concerns, like the effect the deal might have on things like cloud gaming and Activision titles not appearing on other consoles or multi-game subscription services. Now that the Issues Statement has been published, the CMA has said that, “At this point we invite anyone, including members of the public, to share their views with us,” which you can do so here. The CMA will continue to gather evidence related to the investigation before producing a final report. It’s also set a deadline of March 1 for a ruling on the investigation, so it won’t be too long until we know the results. It is noted that “due to the anticipated volume of submissions,” the CMA “may not be able to individually acknowledge and respond to your email,” so don’t get your hopes up if you’re desperately excited by the idea of having your contributions to this whole situation officially acknowledged in some form. Whether or not the deal will have a huge impact on rivals like Sony is unclear and likely won’t be until the deal goes through (if it does), but according to Xbox head Phil Spencer, the main reason for the acquisition isn’t actually to do with the console market, but because of the mobile gaming opportunities, a market the company hasn’t successfully cracked.
