Welcome to the Tech Mem Right Home for Wednesday, July 6, 2022. I'm Brian McCullough.

Today, will regulators wreck the great gaming consolidation? Can the U.S. bully its way to blocking China's chip development?

Are Delithium crystals the key to saving crypto from quantum computing and why the

crypto crash has been a footnote for Wall Street at least so far.

Here's what you miss today in the world of tech.

I feel the need to mix things up a bit as I assume you do too, so we'll leave the

crypto crash headlines for later in the show today and instead let's elevate some things

to the top to get a little bit of variety.

First up, the UK's CMA has launched an antitrust investigation into Microsoft's Activision

Blizzard acquisition, setting a September 1st deadline for its initial decision,

quoting CMBC.

It marks one of the first probes by a major antitrust enforcer into the 68.7 billion dollar

deal, which was announced in January.

In a statement the UK's competition and markets authority said its investigation would

quote consider whether the deal could harm competition and lead to worse outcomes for consumers, for example,

through higher prices, lower quality, or reduced choice."

The acquisition has huge implications for the ninety billion dollar video game industry

handing control of incredibly lucrative franchises including call of duty

candy crush and warcraft to one of the world's biggest tech companies

Microsoft hopes the purchase will help it in the race to build the so-called metaverse, a hypothetical

network of large virtual worlds.

Various other companies are vying for a role in the space, including Facebook parent company

...