Almost two weeks ago, in the United State’s theater of regulation wars regarding on Microsoft wanting to buy Activision Blizzard announced more than a year ago, the Federal Trade Commission, has officially given the thumbs down and challenged legally that the two companies finish the transaction.

The rationale of the FTC is that the transactions is that the tech giant would gain control of top video game franchises, enabling it to harm competition in high-performance gaming consoles and subscription services by denying or degrading rivals’ access to its popular content.

While it's true that they botched big time after trying to tag the European Union's past deals with Microsoft to make a case with the public, it is also true that the current FTC under the Biden Administration has prepared an agenda of zero tolerance of big companies getting bigger just because of the sake & pleasure of getting bigger.

Well, both companies Microsoft and Activision Blizzard have responded and let’s start with Microsoft and summarizing the 37 page long response (via CNBC).

The main points of the response of Microsoft is that Xbox brand is no near as top tier as Sony’s Playstation is and basically Microsoft have been self-degrading the brand to actually maintain a healthy competition and of course, in terms of acquisition, Sony is actually a leader in acquiring studios and having a strong gaming exclusivity mindset.

With this, Microsoft also defends its acquisition of Bethesda owner ZeniMax, while admitting that it’s planning to make three future titles from the company exclusive to Xbox and PC.

Again, the company have been very publicly about the main concern of Sony and its the future of the Call Of Duty franchise, a natural top selling game historically and Microsoft reminded that it has offered 10 year-long terms of availability for PC (Steam) and Nintendo (which is a surprising development being COD Ghost the last Nintendo produced variant of Call Of Duty for the Wii U) and not only the same for Playstaiton, but Playstation continuing being the “focus platform”.

On his part, this is the public response from Activision Blizzard covers 35 pages (via CNBC) and the important details basically accuses the FTC of disregarding actually the public interest and listening to Xbox competitor due being more powerful and protecting Xbox competitors via this lawsuit is actually an monopolistic move.

With this, Microsoft is just a lawsuit away and that the United Kingdom’s and European Union market regulators finish the deep scrutiny  and elsewhere in the world, the acquisition have been already approved, notably in Brazil which is interesting the rationale for the approval by the South American country and basically ignoring Sony’s plea because regulation jobs is not protect competitors.