I think a lot of people are ignoring MS. It does seem more like an I'll judged emotional outburst than a reasoned reaction. The competition authority in the UK is well respected so their conclusion is going to be given great weight by the EU and the US. Given the EUs track record, they're likely to be stricter than the UK, so the CMA adjudication is a good forward indicator that the deal is basically dead.
Ignore Microsoft’s whines about the Activision takeover. The CMA did its job
61–70 of 207 posts
Re: Ignore Microsoft’s whines about the Activision takeover. The CMA did its job
#62I don't mind the complaint about CMA being undemocratic because it's a council of unelected bureaucrats, it's just trash-talk from someone that didn't get what they wanted; to be expected. IMO the reason why this decision is really dumb is because the reason given was cloud gaming. I think that people are missing this. This isn't a market. Almost nobody plays on cloud gaming platforms, like Stadia which recently clos…
> This isn't a market. Almost nobody plays on cloud gaming platforms, like Stadia which recently closed down, or similar. It's a market. Google bungling Stadia doesn't make it any less of a market, or we wouldn't be seeing Microsoft, Nvidia and Amazon (to a much lesser extent) pouring money into it. Regardless of your bubble, lots of people use cloud gaming services. There is no way to have concrete numbers, but the…
> 110k subscribers months after the service shut down. That's not "almost nobody" on the dead service
It is approximately close to zero. Especially considering that subscribers != active users (not even close).
Re: Ignore Microsoft’s whines about the Activision takeover. The CMA did its job
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did you actually read the report that the CMA released? They are not basing the block on some "maybe" future, but on current reality. > Microsoft already accounts for an estimated 60-70% of global cloud gaming services and has other important strengths in cloud gaming from owning Xbox, the leading PC operating system (Windows) and a global cloud computing infrastructure (Azure and Xbox Cloud Gaming). Microsoft alread…
>It did not sufficiently cover different cloud gaming service business models, including multigame subscription services. This is actually incredibly funny reading because Google Stadia was 100% worse than Xbox Cloud. You had to sub + pay for the game too. And some of them were exclusives too. Compared to that how Gamepass works in tandem with Xbox Cloud (you can play on PC, Xbox, and streaming) is day and night YET…
It's showing how much Google failed with Stadia, people still don't know how the service worked. You paid for the games to stream them, and optionally there was a subscription for better quality and free games. Also you could link Ubisoft+ to stream their games for "free", and there were free to play games.
And there were only time limited "exclusives", which were only indie games. Nothing to do with actual Xbox/PS only exclusives.
Re: Ignore Microsoft’s whines about the Activision takeover. The CMA did its job
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
>It did not sufficiently cover different cloud gaming service business models, including multigame subscription services. This is actually incredibly funny reading because Google Stadia was 100% worse than Xbox Cloud. You had to sub + pay for the game too. And some of them were exclusives too. Compared to that how Gamepass works in tandem with Xbox Cloud (you can play on PC, Xbox, and streaming) is day and night YET…
> This is actually incredibly funny reading because Google Stadia was 100% worse than Xbox Cloud. You had to sub + pay for the game too. And some of them were exclusives too. It's also incredibly irrelevant, Google is not the ones being investigated here, and Stadia has also been shut down so it's not relevant at all how much better or worse it is. The question is not which platform is better or worse, but if Microso…
Re: Ignore Microsoft’s whines about the Activision takeover. The CMA did its job
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
>who elected Microsoft? citizen: I want to paint my house blue mayor: I unilaterally forbid you from doing that, on the grounds that blue houses look unsightly citizen: that's undemocratic! mayor: who elected you to decide painting your house blue?
Limited Liability Corporations aren't citizens. Satya Natella is welcome to take MS private as a sole proprietorship.
Re: Ignore Microsoft’s whines about the Activision takeover. The CMA did its job
#66I don't mind the complaint about CMA being undemocratic because it's a council of unelected bureaucrats, it's just trash-talk from someone that didn't get what they wanted; to be expected. IMO the reason why this decision is really dumb is because the reason given was cloud gaming. I think that people are missing this. This isn't a market. Almost nobody plays on cloud gaming platforms, like Stadia which recently clos…
> This isn't a market. Almost nobody plays on cloud gaming platforms, like Stadia which recently closed down, or similar. It's a market. Google bungling Stadia doesn't make it any less of a market, or we wouldn't be seeing Microsoft, Nvidia and Amazon (to a much lesser extent) pouring money into it. Regardless of your bubble, lots of people use cloud gaming services. There is no way to have concrete numbers, but the…
So let's say 250k cloud gaming, meanwhile "gaming" as a whole is like bilions of users
Thus this Cloud gaming is basically non-existent.
Re: Ignore Microsoft’s whines about the Activision takeover. The CMA did its job
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I also think the CMAs rationale for their decision is bizarre and shows a lack of understanding of the space. They blocked the acquisition on a premise that cloud gaming will be huge in the future and that Microsoft might make Activision Blizzard games exclusive to their Xbox Cloud. Taking in consideration Microsoft's enormous comparative advantages like owning Xbox, Xbox Cloud, Game Pass, Windows, Microsoft Azure p…
The problem is by size Sony is larger, with more studios and more exclusives. Nintendo is also huge. Cloud gaming has a lot of competition and they all are companies with deep pockets: Microsoft, Sony, Nvidia, Google, Amazon. They can afford to do what Microsoft is doing if they so choose. This isn’t some new paradigm. This is how this business is run. If it is not console exclusives it is platform exclusives. It is…
Re: Ignore Microsoft’s whines about the Activision takeover. The CMA did its job
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
>who elected Microsoft? citizen: I want to paint my house blue mayor: I unilaterally forbid you from doing that, on the grounds that blue houses look unsightly citizen: that's undemocratic! mayor: who elected you to decide painting your house blue?
Limited Liability Corporations aren't citizens. Satya Natella is welcome to take MS private as a sole proprietorship.
Re: Ignore Microsoft’s whines about the Activision takeover. The CMA did its job
#69They make other bizarre claims like apparently everyone that subscribes to xbox game pass does so for cloud gaming. Cloud gaming isn't even offered in most markets. There is no way people are subscribing to game pass for cloud gaming, its not even good.
Its obvious to anyone with a brain that peer-to-peer is the way forward with game streaming because it solves the latency problems.
Re: Ignore Microsoft’s whines about the Activision takeover. The CMA did its job
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think they could possibly say that they will move forward with the merger, but cease to publish or sell games in the UK, but I very much doubt they would. The UK is still too big / profitable of a market. As an aside, it is interesting to see how this merger is received in the tech space vs gaming space. Most folks in gaming seem to welcome the merger because Activision has long been anti-consumer / bad stewards of…
> ... but cease to publish or sell games in the UK, ... Does they have to? I guess they can have separate entity (or a reseller) to import those software and sell them in UK.
Compemt of courts is no joke