81–90 of 207 posts
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Corporations have the same rights as people; otherwise your freedom of speech and other rights could be abridged while you're conducting business as a corporation, which we don't want.
You don't conduct business as a corporation. The corporation conducts business.
Microsoft basically said that the UK is a bad place to do businesses because they didn't got what they wanted. An extremely entitled and childish comment coming from someone that should know better. Microsoft is showing its most unprofessional and belligerent face going back to the worst times of the company. Remember the FUDs about Linux, the lies about DR-DOS, ... Microsoft is back and needs to be corrected.
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> 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 Stadia which felt like most popular "Cloud" gaming? but let's assume that Nvidia also has something similar 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.
Only Xbox Cloud Gaming reportedly had 10+ million users in 2022; meanwhile GeForce Now reportedly had 20+ million in 2022.
I do not get the hate/dismissiveness coming out of a position of total lack of even the faintest idea about cloud gaming.
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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…
The CMAs rationale is definitely not bizarre and is in line with how UK regulators operate. They tend to look far further into the future and are very much risk averse since they know that their powers are diminished when it comes to managing monopolies than preventing them emerging in the first place. Yes Cloud Gaming and GAAS is very much a meme still but what about 10 or 20 years down the line? Microsoft currently…
Google has their own infrastructure and Nvidia has their own as well. I assume Amazon has their own for Luna as well.
And let’s not kid ourselves, no one is subscribing to Gamepass for cloud streaming. It just happens to be bundled in, so the argument that they have a monopoly is a bit of a farce.
I 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…
Normally we have to let lies and bullshit from corporations wash over us, all we can do is complain on forums and still have to argue with Kool Aid drinkers.
If bullshit over cloud gaming meant Microsoft couldn't get what they wanted then it is payback... Sometimes you gotta learn that actions have consequences.
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Also there is a huge amount of confusion about what "cloud" means. For instance most of Adobe Creative "Cloud" is a set of desktop applications with limited cloud integration. What is has in common with with real cloud products (Salesforce.com, Figma) is that you pay for it with a monthly subscription.
Microsoft would love to just get your money month after month so you can play Assassin's Creed Episode 4215 and Call of Duty: Battle of Bakhmut and they don't care if you as a consumer know what kind of hardware it is running on but you'd better be sure the bean counters are aware that they could sell a "gaming PC" equivalent cloud instance to somebody in Azure for a dollar an hour so the economics can't possibly add up. Yet the cloud gaming bullshit still keeps rolling, at the last keynote NVIDIA's CEO was saying kids might game from the back seat of a car but what phone company is going to invest the last 800% of costs to get cell phone coverage in the last 20% of places?
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>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…
> likely these franchises will never see a day of light on any other cloud gaming platform except Xbox Cloud. Do you know somebody nobody else outside MS does? Cause that doesen't seem at all likely to me. I looked at some of the most recent games released or to be released by Microsoft, like: Grounded - Age of Empires IV - Forza Horizon 5 - Halo Infinite - Psychonauts 2 - Minecraft Legends - Ara: History Untold Gues…
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Do you think this is a good analogy? You think we should have the same process for an individual painting their house and a multi-trillion dollar corporation attempting to dominate markets? Do you see any differences in the two situations?
>You think we should have the same process for an individual painting their house and a multi-trillion dollar corporation attempting to dominate markets? I'm not claiming that microsoft should be allowed to do the merger on the basis that individuals can choose to paint their house blue, only pointing out that "microsoft isn't elected either" isn't a valid rebuttal to the objection that unilateral decisions by unelec…
The thing is that the CMA is appointed by the government, which is elected.
It’s like complaining about a speeding ticket because the cop wasn’t elected.
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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…
> 60-70% of global cloud gaming services Their point is that cloud gaming is likely way less than 1%, maybe even 0.01% of any gaming activity. The cloud gaming experience still isn't 100% there in terms of latency, so it only makes sense to play single player games, and then most people who have an xbox just use their existing hardware rather than pay Microsoft to play it remotely.
What Microsoft is dominating is the market for game subscription services and they, as part of the industry, are not clearly articulating what it is, partly to ride along with the bullshit (When VR and AR got replaced with XR I'm sure that Dilbert's boss was asking "What's our XR strategy?")
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The CMAs rationale is definitely not bizarre and is in line with how UK regulators operate. They tend to look far further into the future and are very much risk averse since they know that their powers are diminished when it comes to managing monopolies than preventing them emerging in the first place. Yes Cloud Gaming and GAAS is very much a meme still but what about 10 or 20 years down the line? Microsoft currently…
Sony has their own cloud infrastructure. They were incredibly early and bought the two largest startups in the space—Onlive and Gaikai. Sony could compete in the space, but their subscription is unappealing to consumers because it costs more and offers less. Google has their own infrastructure and Nvidia has their own as well. I assume Amazon has their own for Luna as well. And let’s not kid ourselves, no one is subs…
Google doesn’t have a major gaming brand like Xbox and doesn’t own any publishers - Microsoft has Microsoft Studios and Zenimax already.
NVIDIA same thing they have the hardware business on their side but they don’t have a cloud like Azure, GCP or AWS nor do they have gaming IP in their pocket.
Again the issue is you are looking at this problem from the perspective of today and by taking into account only individual elements.
What the CMA is looking at is Xbox Brand + 70% of the current market + 2nd largest CSP with datacenters all over the globe and the ability to share the cost across other profitable offerings + Being the 3rd largest publisher and owning a fuck ton of gaming IP.
Now extrapolate 5, 10 and 20 years down from that staring point.
And remember you can always make an argument what if Google or NVIDIA invest every last cent they have to give Microsoft a run for their money but you can also make a counter argument what if Microsoft does the same.
In that case Microsoft still is in a far better position because of their current position in the market.
But when you extrapolate more realistically based on existing business models and ventures as well as the actual cost of developing these services further Microsoft is in a very strong position already and possibly the strongest of all players. Making them even stronger is exactly what regulators like the CMA are here to prevent.
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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…
Microsoft has a couple options all of which are viable IMO: 1. Appeal 2. Withdraw from the UK market and force the issue politically. Microsoft can eat the loss of the UK market for a long while if they want while forcing UK politicians to answer constituent questions why Microsoft/Activision games are banned in the country.