Ignore Microsoft’s whines about the Activision takeover. The CMA did its job • Hacker News Board

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

#171

Post by pwthornton » Mon, May 01, 2023, 4:40 PM UTC

georgemcbay wrote: post #161

sangnoir wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I am symmetrical gigabit fiber internet with an Eero 6 Pro in the U.S., and the lag is quite robust. I don't see a way of solving that.

And, as you say, a lot of people don't have access to high-quality internet, and there is no reason to believe they will any time soon.

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

#172

Post by pwthornton » Mon, May 01, 2023, 4:41 PM UTC

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.

How was your experience with lag and what kinds of games were you playing the most?

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

#173

Post by rospaya » Mon, May 01, 2023, 4:42 PM UTC

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 don't mind the complaint about CMA being undemocratic because it's a council of unelected bureaucrats

Is there a country where the organization ruling about competition cases is elected directly?

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

#174

Post by selectodude » Mon, May 01, 2023, 4:53 PM UTC

pwthornton wrote: post #171

georgemcbay wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I am symmetrical gigabit fiber internet with an Eero 6 Pro in the U.S., and the lag is quite robust. I don't see a way of solving that. And, as you say, a lot of people don't have access to high-quality internet, and there is no reason to believe they will any time soon.

Wireless internet will always make lag unbearable for that kind of stuff.

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

#175

Post by PaulHoule » Mon, May 01, 2023, 5:01 PM UTC

bobthepanda wrote: post #154

PaulHoule wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It made no sense at all, but there was a time when major parts of the game industry was talking about cloud gaming as if it were a thing and the media was going along. 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…

The reason cloud gaming comes up because on the off chance someone makes it work, it's a very lucrative market with a high barrier to entry. Steam is still pretty much undisputed leader in today's games marketplace and it's a very comfortable position worth billions of dollars. And that's just on one platform.

There are other angles.

NVIDIA likes it because it could justify higher prices for graphics cards. Suppose somebody plays 2 hours a game a day and they can justify an $1800 graphics card for that. (Over 3 years it's about $1 an hour, I'd compare that to about $0.45 an hour for the cheapest Azure instance with a less capable GPU)

22 hours a day the card is doing nothing, if other people were gaming on it and it were training neural network models the rest of the time the card could be worth $21,600. It's a throwback to IBM mainframes at the worst but NVIDIA could easily conclude it can't afford to sell 40-series cards to gamers.

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

#176

Post by hourago » Mon, May 01, 2023, 5:14 PM UTC

ff2400t wrote: post #82

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.

I think anyone would be grumpy if they didn't get what they wanted and they will have to pay a 3 billion Dollars penalty to Activison when the Deal falls Apart

> I think anyone would be grumpy if they didn't get what they wanted

Only if you are a child. One thing is that Microsoft leadership does not like the situation the other one is to insult the UK and lash out. That is a sign of entitlement and a very destructive way of looking at the rule of law.

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

#177

Post by mtlmtlmtlmtl » Mon, May 01, 2023, 5:14 PM UTC

oh_sigh wrote: post #166

izacus wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Kant would like a word.

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

#178

Post by gigatexal » Mon, May 01, 2023, 5:16 PM UTC

Nope. Ben Thompson's take here is actually more compelling. The CMA is hoping to help the nascent cloud gaming market when many a company has tried and failed and is -- I think -- needlessly punishing Microsoft in order to help the cloud gaming initiative that hasn't even proven is a viable business model.

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

#179

Post by hbn » Mon, May 01, 2023, 5:17 PM UTC

nightski wrote: post #163

hbn wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think when you're using a desktop OS with tiny high-res icons and fonts, then higher res beyond 1080p matters. But for video games they generally have big fonts and icons because they're made keeping in mind a lot of people will be viewing them on a TV from across the living room.

In most cases a higher framerate or better bitrate would be a more improved experience than more pixels.

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

#180

Post by smileybarry » Mon, May 01, 2023, 5:20 PM UTC

manuelabeledo wrote: post #125

etempleton wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. Ah, I remember this one. > No one likes Windows better than any other OS, it just happens to be bundled with almost 99% of the computers sold out there. > No one wants Word over Wordperfect, it just happens to be bundled in the Office su…

"Xbox LIVE Gold" -- AKA online multiplayer on Xbox consoles which most users buy ever since the Xbox 360 -- is $10.

Xbox Game Pass is $10.

Xbox Game Pass Ultimate -- which includes both -- is $15. That's the tier that also has cloud gaming.

Not only is it $20 vs $15, I doubt the account system would let you subscribe to both separately instead of Ultimate.

In addition, consider that Ultimate is available anywhere both Game Pass and "Gold" are available, even where cloud gaming is not. I'm subscribed to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate in Israel, except cloud gaming is not offered here (and not even as "ping may be higher than optimal", it's not even in the UI unless I VPN).

If someone's counting Ultimate subscriptions as "cloud gaming subscriptions", they would be heavily inflated from "cheaper bundle" users and users from countries where cloud gaming isn't even available.