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Ignore Microsoft’s whines about the Activision takeover. The CMA did its job

theguardian.com

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Re: Ignore Microsoft’s whines about the Activision takeover. The CMA did its job

#111

Post by criddell »

judge2020 wrote: post #68
hgsgm wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Limited Liability Corporations aren't citizens. Satya Natella is welcome to take MS private as a sole proprietorship.

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.

This isn’t making sense to me. Why does a corporation need freedom of speech? Are you saying that if it were otherwise, I would lose my first amendment rights when I’m on the clock?

Re: Ignore Microsoft’s whines about the Activision takeover. The CMA did its job

#112

Post by manuelabeledo »

gdsdfe wrote: post #100

this is honestly the most bizzare story in gaming ... first you have Sony that claims this acquisition will give MS an unfair advantage in cloud gaming yet they run all their cloud workloads on Azure, then you have the UK that agrees with Sony yet we all know they're just afraid that all the Activision players would leave their platform. And now people are acting like MS is the bad guy because what? they have money?

They both have money.

Using what one could only qualify as an utility from a competitor, does not make Sony any less right. Apple uses Google Cloud, Netflix runs on AWS.

> ... the UK that agrees with Sony yet we all know they're just afraid that all the Activision players would leave their platform

Yes, because the platform is not Azure, is Windows and by extension, Xbox.

Re: Ignore Microsoft’s whines about the Activision takeover. The CMA did its job

#113

Post by snowski3 »

COGlory wrote: post #101
snowski3 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Total input latency, not network latency. Referring to the issues with cloud gaming by discussing input latency is pretty spurious. I'm sorry but no, this not correct. XCloud is not available in most markets that Gamepass is present.

It is in the UK though, which is where the CMA operates

Again, please read the report

"With an estimated 60-70% market share in global cloud gaming services, it is already much stronger than its rivals"

GLOBAL.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/644939aa529ed...

Re: Ignore Microsoft’s whines about the Activision takeover. The CMA did its job

#114

Post by snowski3 »

manuelabeledo wrote: post #102
snowski3 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Total input latency, not network latency. Referring to the issues with cloud gaming by discussing input latency is pretty spurious. I'm sorry but no, this not correct. XCloud is not available in most markets that Gamepass is present.

> Total input latency, not network latency. Referring to the issues with cloud gaming by discussing input latency is pretty spurious. No, it's not. This is the actual quote from the report: > In terms of latency, some providers noted that they have already successfully streamed graphically complex games, such as CoD, with good results in terms of gameplay. Which is accurate, e.g. Doom Eternal. > XCloud is not availab…

This isn't correct. They use global numbers not UK numbers.

> In relation to cloud gaming services, we found that Microsoft already has a strong position. It owns a popular gaming platform (Xbox and a large portfolio of games), the leading PC operating system (Windows), and a global cloud computing infrastructure (Azure and Xbox Cloud Gaming), giving it important advantages in running a cloud gaming service. With an estimated 60-70% market share in global cloud gaming services, it is already much stronger than its rivals.

Re: Ignore Microsoft’s whines about the Activision takeover. The CMA did its job

#115

Post by scarface74 »

manuelabeledo wrote: post #105

This is what it says in the report about cloud gaming: > In relation to cloud gaming services, Microsoft has a combination of assets that we consider is difficult for other cloud gaming service providers to match. By owning Windows, the OS for which the vast majority of PC games are designed, Microsoft could stream games from Windows servers without having to pay a Windows licensing fee or adapt games designed for Wi…

I hate to admit it. But that was a decently argued point that CMA made.

I was thinking about how silly it was that they were worried about a “monopoly” on a market that doesn’t even really exist and most of my opinion was formed by both my usual prejudice about ignorant government officials and listening to Ben Thompson’s take (Stratechery).

I didn’t even think about the Windows or Azure angle since I don’t use either.

Re: Ignore Microsoft’s whines about the Activision takeover. The CMA did its job

#116

Post by yarg »

blibble wrote: post #43
endisneigh wrote: post #8

What would happen if Activision is acquired anyway by Microsoft? Could they simply exist as two separate entities in the UK, and a unified entity elsewhere? With all of the repercussions that entails for the users? Or simply they exit the market in the UK?

very large fines (10% of global turnover per year), arrest of directors/officers/senior managers of Microsoft UK, disapplication of copyright of Microsoft products, possibly extradition requests too and the shareholders would want the current board out not to mention the complete total global reputational damage of ignoring a G7 country's competition regulator

The UK's power in this situation is entirely contingent on microsoft continuing to do business there.

Now any threats that they make are probably just bluffs, but there's no way that senior staff of a defunct division would be arrested for something done by their former company, and the idea that there'd be any extraditions going on seems unbelievably far fetched to me.

Re: Ignore Microsoft’s whines about the Activision takeover. The CMA did its job

#117

Post by hbn »

nightski wrote: post #95
sofixa wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You had to sub + pay for the game too. And some of them were exclusives too. 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…

I mean paying for a game and then getting a low quality version of it without a sub isn't very compelling to a lot of PC gamers if I am being honest.

It was 1080p on the free version and 4k on the paid version.

I thought this was a stupid understanding of graphical fidelity anyway, when render settings are probably gonna be more important than 1080p vs 4k (and we know some games were set to play at essentially medium graphics settings), and the video compression algorithms the games were being run through to stream them wrecked quality regardless of if you were playing in 4k or not.

Re: Ignore Microsoft’s whines about the Activision takeover. The CMA did its job

#118

Post by manuelabeledo »

snowski3 wrote: post #114
manuelabeledo wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Total input latency, not network latency. Referring to the issues with cloud gaming by discussing input latency is pretty spurious. No, it's not. This is the actual quote from the report: > In terms of latency, some providers noted that they have already successfully streamed graphically complex games, such as CoD, with good results in terms of gameplay. Which is accurate, e.g. Doom Eternal. > XCloud is not availab…

This isn't correct. They use global numbers not UK numbers. > In relation to cloud gaming services, we found that Microsoft already has a strong position. It owns a popular gaming platform (Xbox and a large portfolio of games), the leading PC operating system (Windows), and a global cloud computing infrastructure (Azure and Xbox Cloud Gaming), giving it important advantages in running a cloud gaming service. With an…

The CMA is correct in saying that Microsoft is in the lead in cloud gaming.

The CMA operates in the UK.

Both statements are true, yet you are suggesting that together they are not?

Also, could you name a single cloud gaming company holding a larger market share in the UK, than Microsoft?

Re: Ignore Microsoft’s whines about the Activision takeover. The CMA did its job

#119

Post by voxic11 »

hourago wrote: post #13

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.

Activision was the one who said the UK is "closed for business". All microsoft said is that they plan to appeal the decision because they believe it was based on a flawed understanding of the cloud gaming market[0].

[0] https://twitter.com/BradSmi/status/1651182266406584320

Re: Ignore Microsoft’s whines about the Activision takeover. The CMA did its job

#120

Post by dogma1138 »

etempleton wrote: post #97
dogma1138 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sony doesn’t have anything close to the scale of Azure and they don’t have the rest of the business model as a backstop to cover the cost of their gaming services. 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…

Yes, but others could do the same and will have to do the same if they want to get in on the business. It is not some insurmountable problem if Sony, Google, or Amazon wanted to get serious about cloud gaming. Microsoft is making the investment. It might not pay off. You can’t say something might be a monopoly one day. That is ludicrous, anything COULD be a monopoly one day.

Yes in a complete hypothetical scenario anything could become a monopoly but those aren’t the facts we have or the reality we live in.

The point that the CMA made is that the combined advantages that Microsoft has already with this acquisition will position it well ahead of the competition to the point where it will get a natural monopoly. Natural monopolies are still monopolies even if no one else right now wants to compete.

This is literally what regulators like the CMA are here for.

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