More “Tech CEO refuses to comment meaningfully on a controversial idea relating to a matter under active litigation”.
Also it wouldn’t work - getting ActiBlizz stuff out of the UK market before the merger would be an obvious antitrust violation, and promising to do it after the merger would in effect still be a reduction in competition in the UK gaming market - why would the CMA agree?
The appeal tribunal can only act on judicial review grounds which are pretty strict.
I think the CMA’s decision makes sense if you think that the “Cloud Gaming Market” (which I think they mean in the sense of game streaming and/or subscription to a game library) makes sense as a distinct market and is worth protecting compeition in. This doesn’t feel right to me - none of MS’s very well heeled competitors have succeeded in presenting a compelling offering - they either can’t, or they don’t want to. I don’t think MS has particularly blocked them. Guarding potential future compeition by companies that might not really want to compete seems excessive and counterproductive.
I’d much rather the CMA went after MS for something like their windows licensing on non-Azure cloud which is just nakedly anticompetetive.
Ya, this is where my mind’s at here… I don’t understand the actual legal argument that would be made that would spare Microsoft from CMA’s ability to block this deal, and then fine them if the deal went through.
On a separate note, if the deal does end up going through, the concessions that the EU got for cloud gaming could be beneficial to other streaming services, as it apparently requires that all activision/blizzard IP be automatically offered up on all competing streaming services.
The joke/meme/expectation is that the CMA denied the merger in hopes of getting MS to uh… ‘donate’… funds to CMA’s ‘favorite charities’ in exchange for reversing their decision (as a sign of MS’ good will, of course). But if they pull Activision from the UK instead, their taking their ball and going home and those poor CMA charities will suffer.
That has to include sunk costs in Azure infrastructure, Xbox as a whole, and licensing income to possibly be true. Everybody I know is paying ~$4/month for Game Pass. I’m sure the vast unwashed majority are paying $15/month but even that seems unlikely to break even.
In response to the announcement of the EU’s approval of the Activision Blizzard acquisition, the CMA stated that it stood by its decision. An EU official, on the other hand, said that the UK regulator had “overstated” the position that Microsoft held in the cloud gaming market. In its report, the CMA had declared that the gaming giant already “accounts for an estimated 60-70% of global cloud gaming services.” However, it seemed to many people that the regulator had included all Xbox Game Pass subscribers in its calculation, which is not necessarily an accurate interpretation of the numbers.
Xbox Game Pass offers a variety of perks to subscribers, mainly access to a rotating selection of games, including first-party day-one releases. Ultimate members also receive access to EA Play’s exclusive library of titles, two free games a month via Xbox Live Gold, discounts, and the ability to stream games using Xbox Cloud Gaming. The CMA’s analysis did not seem to take into account that many gamers who subscribe to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate do so for the free games and sales, and a lot of people have no interest in and don’t use the cloud gaming service.
I think they are talking about the difference between subbing to gamepass for access to games which you download and play, vs. playing actual games via streaming.
The latter is a new, emerging market… but not one that many gamepass subscribers actually use yet.
Ah, sorry, that makes more sense and I agree that I would guess the high percentage of Gamepass users are not streaming or use the streaming as a small portion of their Gamepass time.
