Microsoft has announced its intentions to fight against the lawsuit brought by the Federal Trade Commission attempting to block Microsoft from purchasing Activision Blizzard for $75 billion.

Back at the beginning of the year, Microsoft announced that it had intentions of purchasing the popular video game development company, Activision Blizzard. This has caused concern in the gaming community as Activision Blizzard is responsible for the development of the popular gaming franchise Call of Duty. Microsoft’s ownership over Activision could result in Call of Duty becoming an exclusive Xbox title or at the very least, the games would be offered through Xbox’s subscription service.

The potential acquisition of Activision has brought up antitrust concerns and resulted in the FTC filing a lawsuit against Microsoft on December 8, 2022, in an attempt to block the deal from finalizing.

Microsoft has denied these allegations stating that the company is actually behind other competitors such as Sony and Nintendo in regard to gaming consoles and the mobile gaming market. Microsoft has stated that the company expects the industry to become more competitive as cloud gaming continues to expand.

Microsoft has until Thursday to devise a legal response to the FTC in which the company has stated that it may be willing to sign a legally binding contract dictating that Microsoft will be unable to prevent the Call of Duty franchise from being sold on other platforms.

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‍Source: Wall Street Journal