Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Beijing, February 21 (Xinhua) it is reported that Microsoft President Brad Smith will seek to convince EU antitrust regulators at a closed-door hearing on Tuesday that the US software giant's $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, the developer of call of Duty, will promote competition rather than form a monopoly.

Mr Smith will lead a delegation of 18 senior executives, including Phil Spencer, chief executive of Microsoft's games business, while Activision will be represented by its chief executive, Robert Robert Kotick, according to a commission document.

The hearing will allow Microsoft, the Xbox maker, to weigh the sentiment of senior EU and national competition officials and commission lawyers about the deal before submitting remedies to antitrust problems.

Microsoft announced the acquisition in January last year to counter gaming market leaders Tencent and Sony, but the deal has encountered regulatory resistance in Europe, the UK and the United States.

Sony, which hopes the deal will be blocked, will send its game director Jim Lane (Jim Ryan) to the hearing. Google, owned by Alphabet, and Nvidia, a chip design and computing company with a gaming business, will also attend the hearing, according to EU documents.

A Google spokesman said: "the European Commission asked for our views in the course of its investigation into the issue. We will continue to co-operate as requested in the process to ensure that all comments are taken into account."

Nvidia declined to comment. The European Game developers Union (EGDF), which will also be one of the participants in the hearing, said the deal would make Microsoft challenge companies such as Apple, Google and Tencent.

Video game distributor Valve, video game publisher EA and German competition watchdog and their counterparts in Belgium, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Italy, Portugal, Spain and Sweden will also attend the hearing.

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