Ooof, don't even get me started on Elizabeth Warren, not a fan of her at all. Glad to see she is getting ratio'd at least.

Sell CoD to who? lol

Apparently by not filing an injunction, it delays the case significantly, Microsoft can still close but FTC can drag this out for a long time, if they filed an injunction, they'd have to do a quicker court case.

If that is true, then I'm even more convinced they know that they have no case, they're purely relying on either CMA or EC blocking the deal and if either one does that then FTC can say "we beat big tech!" because Microsoft will abandon the deal. If EC/CMA approve it with concessions then FTC will, knowing they have no chance in court, instead get Microsoft to sign the same concessions with FTC, again, making FTC look like they gained a win.

CMA or EU expecting to block? Any time table what they have, or their current direction.

Anybody really. For instance, when Disney acquired Fox, Disney was forced to sell off most of their sports channels in Mexico by their regulator COFECE before they were allowed to acquire Fox, as they would have owned 70% of sports channels in Mexico. They sold a bunch of their channels to Sony in order to get the deal passed. Similarly Brazil's CADE regulator forced Fox to sell off Fox Sports channels in Brazil in order to get their acquisition approval.

One of these regulators could force Xbox to sell CoD and the CoD studios to another publisher potentially. Though I don't think it will come to that, Xbox would sooner pay the $2b to back out of the acquisition than they would pay $69b for Activision-Blizzard-King with no CoD, ABK with no CoD isn't even worth half that amount probably. 

Essentially to the highest bidder.

I don't think an absence of potential buyer is relevant to the FTC as of now, also a court order may have limited scope like forcing MS to sell a controlling 50% share of the franchise enabling more potential buyers and even Sony to acquire some/all of the remaining share. 

Also you have to consider that if your forced to sell something that have no buyer, unless the court themselves fixed a value, the value of said something would fall until a buyer is found.  

January-April, Lol.

EC had a fairly positive response in Phase 1, it mirrored Brazil's in many ways, they're also very open to concessions and don't tend to follow America in everything like UK does, they also haven't became as politically motivated as FTC has and they represent all the EU countries, an EC person even says there is a very high chance of approval if concessions are given.

EC will (Imho) likely approve it, EC still regulates in the same manner that they always have. Once EC approves it, China will almost certainly approve it as well as they're waiting for EC's decision, China wants to align themselves with Europe more and more.

CMA is a complete wildcard, it seems ever since Brexit they've been waving their dick around and blocking quite a lot, they can block the deal and there's shit that Microsoft can do about it except complain to CAT who then send it back to CMA, CMA's Phase 1 response was awful but their Phase 2 team is different. It's a complete unknown.

If I were to bet, I'd bet on CMA blocking it, UK is more often than not aligned with America, a one two punch combo of FTC suing to block and then CMA blocking it in UK will for sure kill the deal and both of them will come out of it looking like they just got a massive win against big tech.

Activision-Blizzard have already sadly recovered from all the abuse allegations and lawsuits as well, their pipeline is doing incredibly well, Modern Warfare just sold fucking amazing, Diablo is right around the corner and Overwatch 2 despite the complaints is doing amazing.

If the deal fails then there's two scenarios Imo.

• Bobby Kotick and all the abusers and enablers remain, as ABK decides not to sell because they're doing amazing now, everyone forgets about the shit they did and the rest don't care because they're making insane money, a net negative for workers overall.
• ABK instead sells to someone else, which given their size, will just be a different huge company not called Microsoft, is FTC going to block every single person who attempts to acquire ABK? Lol.

Realistically, the only ones that could would be Amazon (though unlikely), Tencent (would be blocked because they're a Chinese company), maybe Apple? Maybe Comcast?

Imho...Likely PIF will end up acquiring them, Lol.

Noticed that too...Another regulator completely disregarding Nintendo so it fits their argument, Lol.

Microsoft might as well acquire Nintendo since they aren't a competitor, right?

"High-Performance Video Game Console" market, what a joke, Lol.