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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

#161

Post by georgemcbay »

sangnoir wrote: post #147
pwthornton wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are missing the point. Cloud gaming is not a thing. Almost no one plays it. The experience is terrible. MS only has that position because it is thrown in as part of Xbox Game Pass. No one is buying it on their own. I have it as part of Game Pass. It's terrible. I never use it, outside of once or twice a year to verify it still sucks. I am not convinced that cloud gaming is anywhere near being a thing. We could be…

> The experience is terrible. That is an implementation issue. I was on Stadia (r.i.p.) and the experience was superior to consoles: pure plug and play with no slow software updates getting in the way of gaming.

I'd say its more of an infrastructure issue than an implementation issue, at least in the US where consistent uninterrupted broadband access is still kind of a giant clusterfuck in many places due to de facto regional monopolies and ISPs not feeling much pressure due to real competition.

No amount of delivery tech is going to make up for the infrastructure being unfit for purpose in so many areas.

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

#162

Post by phatfish »

snowski3 wrote: post #69

If you read the report then the CMA comes across terribly. They don't understand basic technical facts. Apparently a competitor to Microsoft told the CMA that they solved latency issues with cloud gaming by increasing GPU power. Someone should alert the nobel prize committee about conquering the speed of light. They make other bizarre claims like apparently everyone that subscribes to xbox game pass does so for cloud…

Why are there so many green accounts making baseless claims about the CMA? Looks like Microsoft mobilised the gang on this one.

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

#163

Post by nightski »

hbn wrote: post #117
nightski wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pl…

1080p vs 4k is a huge difference, that's pretty amusing. Also what about someone with an ultra-wide monitor such as myself at 1440p? Overall it's just terrible, and good riddance it failed.

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

#164

Post by forty »

Aunche wrote: post #107
capableweb wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, obviously it does matter if there is literally no competitors, but that's not the case here. There are competitors in the space already. One major difference between how the US and Europe views monopolies is that most of Europe tries to prevent even the formation of them (exceptions apply), while the US tries to prevent "dangerous" monopolies, while allowing monopolies themselves. It could be useful to shift th…

>It could be useful to shift the perspective if you're used to the US one, when looking at decisions made by European agencies like the CMA. Sure. On the other hand, it could be useful to listen to Microsoft's perspective on being obstructive to business rather than accusing them of "whining" given that Europe lags behind in technological innovation despite being similarly well educated.

What do you mean by "Europe lags behind in technological innovation"? Do you have any data to back that up? US Big Tech is going well thanks to near monopoly on online advertising, and as a result can afford spending ridiculous amount of money on anything, but I'm not sure I'd call that technological innovation.

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

#165

Post by meroes »

screye wrote: post #110

Using cloud gaming as an argument to block this merger, sets a dangerous precedent. Effectively, CMA is dreaming a future where cloud gaming has taken over. It is passing a judgement based on where the industry could go, rather than where it is now. This allows a bureaucratic organizations to impede companies based on arbitrary & unsubstantiated fears.

> It is passing a judgement based on where the industry could go, rather than where it is now. This allows a bureaucratic organizations to impede companies based on arbitrary & unsubstantiated fears

Seems disingenuous that MS wouldn’t leverage their monopoly on client/game OS into the cloud as well. It at least doesn’t seem arbitrary and unsubstantiated. And prevention is better than reaction in many cases.

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

#166

Post by oh_sigh »

izacus wrote: post #98
gruez wrote: post #53

Earlier 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?

What kind of mental model breakage made you put "a citizen" into a position of an unaccountable megacorporation in your analogy?

A corporation is just a group of people deciding to do something together according to certain rules. It wouldn't make sense that one person, with a lot of resources could do something within their rights, but a group of people with the same pooled resources couldn't do that thing.

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

#167

Post by CodeWriter23 »

daniel-s wrote: post #18

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…

Cloud Gaming: a solution to network latency that depends on pushing even more data down the pipe.

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

#168

Post by oh_sigh »

pkilgore wrote: post #141
aardvarkr wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unaccountable mega corporations are part of the commonwealth. Per citizens United they have rights too

I can't really tell if this is sarcasm, but whatever rights corporations have in the UK certainly isn't established by a United States Supreme Court decision.

You're right, the concept of legal personality was established by common law from before George Washington was even a twinkle in his father's eye. See: Case of Sutton's Hospital.

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

#169

Post by akhosravian »

daniel-s wrote: post #18

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…

I think everything you said is true, but also that the reasoning from the CMA is sound:

Microsoft believes in cloud gaming, and regulators have been caught with their pants down by thinking they knew better than industry. Repeatedly.

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

#170

Post by acomjean »

trynumber9 wrote: post #153

It is a tough one. Microsoft is already huge and has some unclear intentions. They say they want some killer apps to serve as flagship games. But Sony is concerned they'll stop releasing games for Playstation. However the Xbox division is so far behind Sony it doesn't seem particularly worrying to me. Microsoft looks like a giant in gaming when including PC gaming but there Valve takes most the distribution money.

Its not like MS haven't done the "buy company, make new stuff exclusive" stuff before (recently bethesda). Hardware companies buy software and making it platform exclusvie (Apple, Microsoft, Sony..). Its generally just bad for us consumers.

[1]https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/22/23523576/microsoft-three...

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