Sony PlayStation: Bungie acquisition under investigation by the FTC

Sony PlayStation's acquisition of Bungie will also have to go through FTC scrutiny, as Bloomberg and other sources have reported in recent hours, as part of the much tighter scrutiny of these transactions that has been characterizing recent trends in the tech industry.

Exactly as it's already happening for the maxi-acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft, then, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission has opened an investigation procedure also on the acquisition of Bungie by Sony PlayStation, announced last January with a maneuver by 3.6 billion dollars.

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During a wave of video game industry consolidation, the FTC is scrutinizing anti-trust more than it has in years. Get your popcorn ready https://t.co/2qA5KpEavA

— Jason Schreier (@jasonschreier) May 5, 2022

This is, also in this case, a procedure that can be considered standard in front of an acquisition of this calibre, even if the entity of the manoeuvre is surely smaller than the one underway on Activision Blizzard. However, the fact that it's the FTC that will examine the acquisition and not the Department of Justice, which is usually the body in charge of this kind of investigation, shows how the federal body is particularly intent on tightening the mesh of the consolidation trend that is characterizing the technology industry in general and videogames in particular.

As Jason Schreier also points out, the FTC's focus on practices that may run into problems with antitrust has risen considerably in this period compared to previous years, a sign of the new policy imposed by Lina Khan, the new head of the federal agency in question.

As reported by the reporter in question, the FTC hadn't even considered Microsoft's $7.5 billion acquisition of Bethesda, but with the arrival of Khan and her tendency to want to fight consolidation within the tech industry, the situation has profoundly changed.