It's pretty strange that the CMA is most concerned with a market that functionally doesn't exist right now, and may not ever be "a thing". Cloud gaming is still fundamentally not a great experience.
Having said that, I don't think the deal should go through anyway. Large companies should not be allowed to purchase other large companies within the same market as them.
> It's pretty strange that the CMA is most concerned with a market that functionally doesn't exist right now, and may not ever be "a thing".
Microsoft, Activision, and most competitors who were against the merger want it to be a thing, though. If the entire industry considers this to be an important future market, the CMA would be foolish to ignore that.
I have used it on my Series X and it's just not as good as playing it locally. I've got it hooked up to a 4K120Hz TV that supports VRR and ALLM, and the exeprience over the cloud will never be as good. It's very convenient that I don't have to download 50GB to play a game, but if it's a game I want to actually play, the 50GB is worth it.
I also have a PS5 with the PS+ Premium package, and their cloud offering is even worse.
I'm a fast twitch FPS person from the nineties so I expect low latency when playing a solo game. I played through Cyberpunk using GFN on a home connection in London (ping was 2, which is faster than my mouse latency) and it was fine.
Give the current uninspired bean-counter leadership at Activision and turmoil at their major studio Blizzard, this acquisition seemed like it would be a net positive to innovation and choice in gaming.
Microsoft is actually pretty good at games, has the deep pockets needed to make long-term investments in quality content that Blizzard at least seems to be struggling with atm (not sure about Activision’s other properties).
I don’t follow gaming that closely though, is there some reason this acquisition is a net negative and needs intervention by regulators? Or is this a case of regulators misunderstanding the situation and the market?
How long do you think Microsoft Activision would keep Call of Duty and Overwatch alive on other platforms? Or perhaps use discontinuing it as a threat to wrangle some concession out of Sony when it needs it.
Let's say the Windows or Internet Explorer days are far behind Microsoft and not relevant to games anyways. Well, remember their lock down attempt on the Xbox One ten years ago? https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2013/06/06/connected/ which was so bad they needed to back down in just two weeks.
Overall, the centralization of the gaming industry is worrisome. Sony in 2021 alone bought six studios including Valkyrie which also should've been blocked. Microsoft bought Zenimax, Nintendo bought Next Level but even Take Two bought up Zynga.
Also, this is a lot of money, even for Microsoft and if times get tough, they will squeeze Activision to get some of that back and creativity will go down.
Why do everybody treat Call of Duty like some sort of universal constant, even Microsoft, Sony and Activision? Does no one realize this is an artistic franchise that could be in a very different place in ten years?
It's as if someone was saying they were unfair because Disney refuses to release Star Wars to movie theaters. It changed into a bunch of TV shows, it went in a different direction!
Maybe the council environment is different, but I generally feel Microsoft has more often killed the PC game franchises that they have acquired, hurting innovation and choice.
The last 2 fallout games I can recall are a phone game and an MMO... And it took people bailing from the company (instead of the company supporting the initiative) to get Outer Worlds, which is the closest thing to Fallout. And then there's Skyrim... It's like MS acquires the intellectual property then goes DLC and/or MMO only.
I don't think many games that I loved for PC survived any acquisition.. at least before Blizzard (so far)
This is the second thread I've seen this take and I'm really curious why it's a popular statement. They completely dropped the ball with 343 Studios and Halo. Ruining their own tentpole franchise should ding them a few points. They haven't done much with Minecraft. Apparently games titled 'tell me why' and 'bleeding edge' were published by Microsoft in 2020, the latter being a multiplayer title abandoned 10 months after release. The Goldeneye remake was mediocre. Crackdown 3 took forever and was mediocre. They release so few games I am already in 2019 on their wikipedia page. And this is all after they've spent huge sums of money acquiring studios and publishing rights for games already in development.
They've certainly had some solid releases with games like Psychonauts 2 and the Forza Horizon series, and I'm thankful that their money got us Pentiment. But especially when it comes to the AAA titles you'd expect from a market leader with their own hardware platform, I don't personally see how Microsoft is that good at making games.
TBH, from my armchair expertise I might also agree that this acquisition isn't going to give MS unfair control over the market - but mainly because I don't expect MS could effectively manage Activision.
Like I said, I don't follow games that closely, but I was under the impression the whole Xbox system is overall pretty impressive, regardless of the occasional mistake they make with it. Maybe I'm wrong.
I agree. I was really hoping this would go through so Microsoft had some chance to keep Activision Blizzard from destroying itself. Dragonflight has been one of the best WoW expansions and yet the dev team continues to lose talent due to terrible management decisions from people who must neither understand video games nor people.
This is great for gamers. Bethesda/Zenimax Media and Bungie were ruined by Microsoft. Way too many of Microsoft acquisitions have actually made it harder to compete and stymied innovations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...
I’d add Rare and Mojang to the list as well. Rare for obvious reasons (kinect, etc), and people are finally starting to realize that most of the additions to Minecraft in the last 5 years have been kinda terrible.
Yes, which is why I don’t understand how ‘market forces’ ( I’m quoting the cma) will magically improve things for me, the end user/ consumer.
What I want is a simple regulation which says that if I buy a game, I should be able to run it locally, or on a rented box, whether operated by a third party or not.
Yes. If you have Gamepass on the Xbox you can, for many games, choose between installing a game locally or playing it "in the cloud". It's quite frankly a fantastic feature for all those time you want to try out a game, but don't want to clear 100 GB of free space on your Xbox hard drive to actually download the game.
maybe the CMA worded it wrongly in terms of cloud gaming.
but the gist of it remains the same. Microsoft wants to weaken Sony's exclusive moat by buying their own big property to make it an exclusive down the line, thereby either increasing the value proposition of Game Pass, or Xbox cloud gaming anywhere.
by now Microsoft already knows they're not going to catch up to Sony or Nintendo in terms of console sales.
game pass is probably one of the best deals in entertainment though, and by that I mean all forms of entertainment whether sports, film, music etc.
I don’t understand why Microsoft doesn’t build up their exclusive library the way Sony does. Yes, it’s riskier but so what. Sony could do it. Microsoft definitely has the money to do it.
Not to mention making former multi-platform franchises exclusive to their machines just makes everyone who isn’t in their camp hate them.
If you read the CMA's statement it is specifically about Cloud Gaming, so they didn't word it incorrectly. They are talking specifically about streaming games from a data center to a thin client.
Can someone explain to me how a UK regulator has the power to block a merger between two US companies - I get that they can say its blocked - but what kind of powers do they have to enforce it from not happening?
They can issue fines to Microsoft UK and ultimately block Microsoft from the market.
UK is 67 million people, so not as big as USA and EU, but significant enough that in balance it’s not worth the perpetual multi-year headache that Microsoft would have explaining the situation to shareholders if they were not to comply.
They would never be allowed to block Microsoft from the market though - the NHS runs on windows, and basically every other arm of our government - surely the fines wouldn't ever be more than the gain due to the merger?
The CMA can block access to the UK market and impose fines amounting up to 10% of a firm's global revenue plus impose other requirements to restore access to the UK.
It's broader than that. The CMA considers impacts of mergers (and other competition-related concerns) on UK markets regardless of where an entity is headquartered. It has broad investigative and enforcement powers over any entity selling in UK markets with over $70M GBP in revenue from UK markets or 25% of market share in a given vertical. If Microsoft and Activision merged without making accommodations to satisfy the CMA, the CMA would be able to block their access to the UK market and fine them.
>If length is longer, you're supposed to condense it as truthfully to the original as possible.
But there are ways to do that not buy leaving out literally the most important word.
They are not concerned about the retail or digitial sales of games. They are concerned about the market share of GamePass and streaming market where after Google left pretty much only MS and Nvidia Geforce remained.
Readit News
Having said that, I don't think the deal should go through anyway. Large companies should not be allowed to purchase other large companies within the same market as them.
Microsoft, Activision, and most competitors who were against the merger want it to be a thing, though. If the entire industry considers this to be an important future market, the CMA would be foolish to ignore that.
- Residential bandwidth (and to a lesser extent latency) will decrease in the future
- It will be cheaper to have hardware at home than in a datacenter
- Game console manufacturers will prefer designing, manufacturing, and shipping systems vs data center upgrades
- Game companies will prefer allowing end users to own bits vs leasing access a la SaaS
- Game companies will prefer targeting custom console architectures vs standardized data center architectures
None of these seem plausibly likely.
Personally I disagree. Cloud gaming on Game Pass is a fantastic deal and quite frankly the Xbox's killer feature
I also have a PS5 with the PS+ Premium package, and their cloud offering is even worse.
Future is here, it's just unevenly distributed.
On the other hand, _Google_ shelving a product is perhaps not as indicative.
Microsoft is actually pretty good at games, has the deep pockets needed to make long-term investments in quality content that Blizzard at least seems to be struggling with atm (not sure about Activision’s other properties).
I don’t follow gaming that closely though, is there some reason this acquisition is a net negative and needs intervention by regulators? Or is this a case of regulators misunderstanding the situation and the market?
Let's say the Windows or Internet Explorer days are far behind Microsoft and not relevant to games anyways. Well, remember their lock down attempt on the Xbox One ten years ago? https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2013/06/06/connected/ which was so bad they needed to back down in just two weeks.
Overall, the centralization of the gaming industry is worrisome. Sony in 2021 alone bought six studios including Valkyrie which also should've been blocked. Microsoft bought Zenimax, Nintendo bought Next Level but even Take Two bought up Zynga.
Also, this is a lot of money, even for Microsoft and if times get tough, they will squeeze Activision to get some of that back and creativity will go down.
It's as if someone was saying they were unfair because Disney refuses to release Star Wars to movie theaters. It changed into a bunch of TV shows, it went in a different direction!
The last 2 fallout games I can recall are a phone game and an MMO... And it took people bailing from the company (instead of the company supporting the initiative) to get Outer Worlds, which is the closest thing to Fallout. And then there's Skyrim... It's like MS acquires the intellectual property then goes DLC and/or MMO only.
I don't think many games that I loved for PC survived any acquisition.. at least before Blizzard (so far)
Deleted Comment
This is the second thread I've seen this take and I'm really curious why it's a popular statement. They completely dropped the ball with 343 Studios and Halo. Ruining their own tentpole franchise should ding them a few points. They haven't done much with Minecraft. Apparently games titled 'tell me why' and 'bleeding edge' were published by Microsoft in 2020, the latter being a multiplayer title abandoned 10 months after release. The Goldeneye remake was mediocre. Crackdown 3 took forever and was mediocre. They release so few games I am already in 2019 on their wikipedia page. And this is all after they've spent huge sums of money acquiring studios and publishing rights for games already in development.
They've certainly had some solid releases with games like Psychonauts 2 and the Forza Horizon series, and I'm thankful that their money got us Pentiment. But especially when it comes to the AAA titles you'd expect from a market leader with their own hardware platform, I don't personally see how Microsoft is that good at making games.
TBH, from my armchair expertise I might also agree that this acquisition isn't going to give MS unfair control over the market - but mainly because I don't expect MS could effectively manage Activision.
Their lacklustre stewardship of Minecraft notwithstanding.
What I want is a simple regulation which says that if I buy a game, I should be able to run it locally, or on a rented box, whether operated by a third party or not.
but the gist of it remains the same. Microsoft wants to weaken Sony's exclusive moat by buying their own big property to make it an exclusive down the line, thereby either increasing the value proposition of Game Pass, or Xbox cloud gaming anywhere.
by now Microsoft already knows they're not going to catch up to Sony or Nintendo in terms of console sales.
game pass is probably one of the best deals in entertainment though, and by that I mean all forms of entertainment whether sports, film, music etc.
To me this says it's a subsidized loss leader and will get a whole lot crappier once Microsoft has a dominant position.
What's annoying is that GeForce Now could be much better if publishers stopped blocking their games from appearing there under dubious legal pretense: https://www.ign.com/articles/activision-blizzard-pulls-games...
Not to mention making former multi-platform franchises exclusive to their machines just makes everyone who isn’t in their camp hate them.
UK is 67 million people, so not as big as USA and EU, but significant enough that in balance it’s not worth the perpetual multi-year headache that Microsoft would have explaining the situation to shareholders if they were not to comply.
Big difference in context. I don't know why edited titles like this are allowed
They're not, but there's also a max length at play. The current headline right on the 80 character limit.
If length is longer, you're supposed to condense it as truthfully to the original as possible.
But there are ways to do that not buy leaving out literally the most important word.
They are not concerned about the retail or digitial sales of games. They are concerned about the market share of GamePass and streaming market where after Google left pretty much only MS and Nvidia Geforce remained.