You also do not want to create a power vacuum for FPS games to grab a foothold if COD leaves PS platforms. By staying there, the other shooters would have to out compete COD, when leaving you are just setting up competition to succeed on a very large platform.
Better to stay and keep control of the FPS market and use other ABK titles to persuade new xbox adoption.
The rNew report from MLex:
Microsoft hopes that the remedy package offered to the EC will put pressure on the CMA.
Microsoft has now formally committed to making Activisionâs portfolio of games, including Call of Duty, available on rival cloud-gaming platforms.
âMore striking is the absence of any formal commitment to address key concerns raised by rival Sony about the dealâs impact on its PlayStation, and Google about the dealâs impact on its ChromeOS cloud-first operating system.â
As recently as Feb. 21 (the hearing), the EC still had concerns about those markets.
Microsoftâs offer comes after intense discussions with officials probing the deal, and the market test should be considered a good sign.
Under the terms of its in-depth review, the commission has until May 22 to rule on the deal, although it will soon need to circulate a draft decision internally and to national authorities.
The support of Nvidia has been key, according to MLex.
The extent to which Sony would benefit from the remedy on cloud gaming is unclear. Sonyâs primary complaint has been that Microsoft would remove Activision Blizzardâs games from its PlayStation, or at the very least degrade their performance on the Sony console to drive its users to the Microsoft Xbox. âThat appears to have fallen on deaf ears at the EU competition enforcer.â
The offer from MS (to Sony) presumably still remains on the table. So, at some point Sony may say yes. In any case, most probably Sony will first shift its attention to the CMA.
âNo doubt Microsoft will have pointed CMA investigators to the EU regulatorâs latest conclusions on that point. If Microsoft can get traction there and put a dent in the narrative against the deal, that would be no mean feat â but it may not be enough.â
However, the CMAâs last public word on the subject (acceptance of behavioural remedies) still remains: âNone of the circumstances in which the CMA would select a behavioural remedy as the primary source of remedial action in a merger investigation ⌠appears to be present.â
Basically the EU at this point has told Sony to fk right off and I imagine the CMA will too, it seems that the EU concerns were all based on cloud concerns
This perfectly aligns with MS, as soon as the meeting with the EC on Feb 21st finished, Brad Smith made an announced that they partnered with Nvidia and since then other cloud providers
Weâre averaging 72.5 posts per day, if that holds weâll hit 10,000 around April 22nd. So, my guess is weâll not only get there, but blow way past it.
As the EU should really due to the fact that PlayStation is so dominant in Europe compared to Xbox. In fact, in my opinion it is actually an argument for the deal if Microsoft made CoD exclusive since it would increase competition.
Can we get another one of them cloud gaming deals?
Before all the madness with the FTC, CMA, EU and Sony started. This was my take.
Itâs why itâs wild that the one country in europe that Xbox does quite well in has the power to sink the deal.
Iâve said it before but in the future youâre going to see the need for UK to pass deal left off any contracts.
Now again, Iâve no idea how that solves of doing business in the UK but thatâs another issue.
Itâs ludicrous that so much power lies in the hands of the CMA.
Doesnât matter whether you include it as a closing condition or notâŚMicrosoft will always need U.K. approval. And it will always be as key as the ftc and eu Iâm afraid. Itâs just too big of a market.
I suspect the CMA will have their wings clipped somehow because their inflexibility is going to be noted. Should they block this or insist on divestment,
I donât see why itâs treated on par with the EU and US. Big important market, for sure but one of the top 3? It annoys me, irrationally, that these companies for whatever reason donât seem to give a shit about other big markets.
Itâs way over my pay grade, but I still donât know what would happen if say, Australia were the only market to reject the deal. MS would close the deal, and then pull out of Australia? Stay in the market and take huge fines?
Sorry, I know you canât answer that, but itâs something no one seems to talk about.
If the CMA blocks this deal, I do think theyâll be under huge pressure to reform. You canât have a single regulator swinging their dick around like this.
I believe U.K. is somewhere between 20-30% of Microsoftâs revenue. Itâs impossible to fully tell as itâs funnelled through Ireland and eu but I believe thatâs about where it lies.
In 2022, the UK accounted for around $5.2 billion of Microsoftâs total revenue of $198 billion. The UK accounts for only 2.6% of Microsoftâs total yearly revenue.
Honestly, if Sony doesnât sign the contract by the time the acquisition complete, I would not release it on PS. Treat it like a cable company, put the blame on the one who is not allowing it.
The thing that annoys me about the CMA the most is that they specifically state they want actions taken worldwideâŚto fix an issue they imagine for UK consumers.
MS could come out and say that EA will publish CoD in the UK with a remit to publish on every available device cloud or local with the same terms. Why the fuck would that not be suitable for UK consumers?
Watching the news cycle regarding this acquisition has been fascinating, regulators being tough on MS has resulted in some major benefits for future customer choice (giving full access to Microsoftâs entire gaming portfolio to multiple cloud providers is potentially amazing), but at the same time thereâs some major disconnect between how Microsoft has been acting as a corporation for the past decade and the arguments the opponents of the deal have been making.
In 2013 (or thereabouts) Microsoft had to eat a massive humble pie by having their initiatives - that it introduced to the their corporate benefit at the expense of how their users had interacted with their products - completely rejected by the market, namely the Windows 8 interface and store and the early Xbox One policies, that it accepted the fact that it canât have one ecosystem to rule them all and that they need to meet its customers where theyâre at. So we have the Office suite on MacOS, we have Visual Studio Code on all the relevant OSes (free and open source, but still an important product for MS). In general, Microsoft know it canât outcompete every rival on every front, so itâs focused on reaching as many people as possible while still sustaining their long-time platforms and making sure they have unique selling points.
So if Microsoft acquires something thatâs already massively popular on competing platforms, itâs not going pull that product from those platform to coerce a small percentage of its userbase and cut off the rest loyal to that competing platform. Thatâs not its modus operandi and hasnât been for a while. Microsoft does not want to have its presence in the gaming space hinging on the fate of its console platform. Consoles are simply too volatile, you can have a successful console like a Wii or a 360 and a heavily underperforming follow-up (though Playstationâs presence has been relatively stable). Instead, MS wants to have its presence on every major facet of gaming, so that it could reach those mythical 3 billion gamers in one way or another.
The funny thing is Microsoft has been pretty open about why itâs acquiring ABK - to increase its presence on mobile, PC and to have a profitable cash cow that theyâre going to milk for all itâs worth. Conspiracy theories about MS introducing bugs to the final steal Playstationâs users are laughable. Even if the calculus was slightly in favor on making COD XBox/PC only (which it doesnât appear to be), Microsoft would not backtrack on the public commitments it has been making for the past year. Spencer said he intends to release COD on Playstation as long as thereâs Playstation to play on, etc. etc. MS is not going to burn the goodwill of regulators by openly breaking such promises, the reason for that being they have too much going on other fronts and relatively little to gain or lose from CODâs presence. Eg. through the investment into OpenAI, Microsoft is at the forefront of the AI development, groundbreaking tech thatâs going to rapidly change the modern society. Imagine governments using Microsoftâs finnicky behavior in the gaming space as a reason to hamstring and regulate its behavior in the AI space.
That said, Microsoft does want to increase its marketshare in the console market and IMO they still have a shot of doing so, even if the momentum is not super strong at the moment. All the investment they made half a decade ago into their first party studios is yet to bear fruit, but once big hitters start releasing (and if they deliver), on top of having fantastic value, players on other consoles might start feeling the burn of not owning an Xbox similar to how Xbox-only players feel the burn when a huge title is releasing on Playstation on Switch only. Itâs going to be interesting few years ahead, Starfield is probably the first big test for the ânewâ Microsoft since they started taking gaming seriously back in 2018.
Sorry for the long rant. 
I know that might be tempting but think of all that money paying for new games and more stuff on GamePass.
Less people playing Call of Duty also hurts Xbox and PC players. Put the game everywhere regardless.
I would test water before reconsidering. Thatâs like if Starfield does weak, they make it multi platform. Show them whoâs the boss.
âNothing compares to Call of Dutyâ, they say.
Xbox Live charts:
US UK France Germany Poland Austria Italy Spain Portugal Mexico Brazil Steam, globalI notice a strange pattern 
This place is cool. You can say why wanted it to fail without worry of a ban.
I know youâve come around but what was your initial thoughts?
