MS are the lead in the cloud gaming market. It’s not the regulators job to worry about individual competitors but the market as a whole. In the same way it’s not their job to wave through the acquisition because Xbox is behind Sony in the console market.
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The process may take a while, however they can tie up the process until a regime change at the CMA occurs. It would likely occur after a prolonged tough period at the UK, so it would likely include someone more pro business in charge.
You get that and make them revisit the acquisition without the major involvement of Sony (would be part of the improprities) then it goes through with no issues.
People point to CMA as hard to appeal and overturn because of its setup. However, it is a sample size of 3 years and there hasnt been a turnover in leadership with different thoughts yet.
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The U.K. isn’t the US. The CMA have a framework they work to. It’s agreed by government. Someone changing at the top doesn’t mean everything is ripped and changed, the framework and approach remains constant.
The current CMA head has only been in the role for 8 months so I suspect you are a few years away minimum from any change. Even then the underlying framework and decision making wouldn’t change. This was a panel of industry experts - it’s not someone at the top calling the shots.
https://twitter.com/JezCorden/status/1623302306925084672?t=M441yg6Vd7q24piJS_8EBA&s=19
Critics of behavioural remedies say that MS could make Call of Duty lag on rival consoles putting PlayStation gamers at a disadvantage when playing online against those using an Xbox. If so, how do you police that? The argument goes that gamers would no doubt get frustrated and switch to Xbox before enforcers could intervene.
You heard it here, folks. Microsoft will build a lagswitch to specifically target PlayStation CoD players. I don’t think even the most egregious fanboy could come up with this (and they say some ridiculous stuff), so to see this theorized by “critics” is hilarious, albiet sad.
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That’s an mlex article not the CMA.
All leadership at the CMA is appointed and controls the direction the CMA goes. So while politicians aren’t the ones directly controlling the sails doing so, the politicians are choosing the people changing the sail for the CMA anyways.
This rejection makes a Take Two purchase trivial, wouldn’t it?
CoD was the one title that threatened Sony. They can’t just add another title like GTA or RDR.
TT is also much smaller than Activision. 1/4 the cost.
That’s why I specifically mentioned them.
Grand Theft Auto specifically is one of the biggest games in the industry. TT might not be as big as Activision, but there will absolutely be the same conversation surrounding GTA potentially going exclusive, and if I’m microsoft and I have egg on my face from this deal falling apart I’m not risking going after another publisher that might lead to the same outcome.
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It’s still going to be around $27B by the time they add a premium on the stocks.
GTA is also normally in the top 10 most played games on PS, often above COD like it is now, therefore it will absolutely be the same argument as COD.
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But their reading of the cloud in this case, which is a big sticking point, is highly speculative. I simply don’t see any probabilities in their findings. It’s a ‘finger in the air and guess which way the wind is blowing’ type finding.
It would be interesting how the team of experts come to the conclusion that they did on cloud.
To my earlier point, if the politics were different, and because it’s such a debatable point, I suspect a different finding would have occurred.
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It’s really hard to tell facts from opinions with your posts.
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There are plenty of publishers that could have road blocks and are therefore could be off the table.
- T2 - GTA
- EA - Apex + EA Play + EA store
- Ubisoft - AC + Ubisoft+
- Epic - Fortnite + Rocket League + Unreal Engine + Epic store
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Not going to lie, this has my full attention than CMA.
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Any Western publisher seems off the table to me after ABK. Which persuades me to think that the next big acquisition will be in Asia and more particularly with a Japanese publisher. Plus there are a lot of indie western studios that have big IPs that could allow Microsoft to continue to grow in the west, but that’s not really the case in Asia where a publisher seems inevitable if you want actually grow in the market or just acquire a catalog of Japanese games with a strong aura.
Yes, that’s what makes this so appropriate.
CoD was argued as being the most important title to PlayStation. Sony can’t make that same argument again.
MS can’t buy any publisher as they would have likely had a successful title on PlayStation, if they’re allowed to claim that any popular title is necessary for PlayStation’s survival.
This is a side observation: this is all silly when MS could buy exclusivity for all GTA and CoD titles going forward, and that’s all kosher. What they can’t do is buy the publisher and make these titles available for other platforms. Just bizarre.
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I agree it is very bizarre indeed, like you say they could pay for exclusivity for all the major games going forward with no problem at all.
However when it comes to paying for the developers and providing them much better working conditions (potentially) while also retaining status quo it’s not ok.
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I’m not sure that’s bizarre is it? Acquisitions are regulated whereas business deals tend not to be. The reason for that is actually pretty well emphasised by Microsoft themselves. If they chose they could probably buy the majority of major western publishers and developers if not regulated, whereas in reality no other competitor could. This would give them a significant hold on the market and would obviously impact on competition, prices and choice.
Alternatively they have the cash resources to make all sorts of content exclusive deals but these are subject to competition from others in the market meaning that it’s less likely that they could secure a sizeable portion of the market on competitive terms.
This AI thing is scary.
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