LONDON, July 31 Reuters Britain39;s antitrust regulator on Monday called for public responses on whether Microsoft39;s 69 billion takeover of Activision Blizzard, maker of video game Call of Duty, should be cleared ahead of a final decision by Aug. 29.

Microsoft says the deal, which the Competition and Markets Authority CMA blocked in April, should be revisited given legallybinding commitments to the European Commission and a licensing deal with Sony.

The U.S. software giant said, in arguments published on Monday, that its agreements with NVIDIA, Boosteroid and Ubitus to licence Activision games for a decade after the merger had already improved competition in the cloud gaming market.

The CMA said Microsoft believed there were material changes of circumstance andor special reasons why the regulator should not impose its final order to prohibit the deal.

Submissions of this nature are possible but are very rare, a CMA spokesperson said.

We will consider Microsoft39;s submissions carefully, along with other responses from interested parties, ahead of the 29 August statutory deadline.

Microsoft also said any breach of its commitments would mean European approval would no longer be valid and put it at risk of fines of up to 10 of its worldwide turnover, which would amount to 19.8 billion if based on its 2022 turnover.

Its deal with Sony to keep Call of Duty on its PlayStation console for a decade was also significant in terms of the impact of the Activision deal and…