Interesting…so Fox was always going to get rid of the sports division regardless…
With the ABK deal though I highly doubt MS would want to get rid of Blizzard as they’re vital for their PC plans
Imagine the crazy monthly active users COD will have should the deal go through, Game Pass, a bunch of different streaming platforms including Xcloud and then new releases also on Nintendo consoles, I bet Microsoft gets it to 150+ million monthly COD players, if Minecraft is their model for the COD franchise they are about to take it to new heights.
COD being available to a much bigger audience, Game Pass and appearing on Xbox shows is something Sony probably hates the most too, it’s the fact that they will no longer be able to automatically get COD marketing and exclusive deals due to their market share alone, that’s one of the reasons why I think this deal should go through.
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improbably, even if hypothetically cma wants to ms divesture something, they will aim to Activision than Blizzard, mentioned on PF.
Im more interested in the MAU once they add warzone to Xcloud.
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I doubt it would see that big of a spike. Xcloud is still not as big as it should be.
Divestiture of Activision doesn’t make any sense for the CMA anymore. It removes customer benefits all over the place and competition benefits for cloud gaming.
Ultimately the CMA identified that they are looking for enough RCBs to accept behavioral remedies, and Microsoft has delivered in that respect. Tack on some more and make it just wildly absurd for the CMA to state divestiture is preferred.
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If CMA block this deal. It will be worse for Sony in the long run. So baffled as to why sony wants it blocked.
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Well they dont want Microsoft to catch up in gaming
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It will be nothing but a political statement if they do block, I wonder should an independent ABK make their own streaming service if the deal is blocked, will they also be forced to have to allow their games on rival streaming services? Because if they are as essential as the CMA claims then ABK themselves would never be able to do that… Honestly if the UK regulatory system was like the US where it can be challenged in court Microsoft wouldn’t even have taken the CMA so seriously and challenged them in court, or maybe the CMA would have been far more reasonable.
I think it’s just a power move by a dominant market leader to see what they can get away with, it’s not a secret that most of their 3rd party deals are pretty much just anti Xbox whether they’re timed exclusives or exclusive DLC, as we’ve seen with Destiny and COD, and them going after some established franchises important to their respective genres like Street Fighter (last gen) and Final Fantasy, gotta remember that Sony did step on their necks when they were down, to be fair Xbox also did extremely awful last gen because Microsoft themselves clearly didn’t do anything to remedy the situation for the vast majority of last gen, giving Sony a massive lead in market share and exclusive games and deals, if Microsoft had been investing since 2014 in their first party Xbox is likely in a much different position today since that was almost 10 years ago, as opposed to just beginning to acquire just 4 and a half years ago.
Anyway, Sony currently enjoys a distant 1st place and safe position compared to Xbox, they know that even with ABK Xbox wouldn’t be a threat to their market position at least in the short term, but longer term all they have to do is not pull a PS3 2.0 and they’ll be good, they sell on brand power alone worldwide, COD is currently the biggest yearly franchise and Sony has exclusive marketing rights to it plus exclusive yearly perks on the games which is really aggressive considering Microsoft never went that far with their deals when they had the COD marketing deal, it was just exclusive maps to Xbox for 30 days and marketing.
Sony clearly feels confident they’ll automatically get the marketing rights again even if they’ve seemingly burned a bridge with ABK, they probably think the shareholders will make another deal with them due to PlayStation’s market share or maybe they don’t and expect Microsoft to get it the next time around but are happy with Microsoft not controlling the IP and putting it on Game Pass, I think it’s less that but just trying to avoid a future where Xbox is in a better position than it currently is, they must hate the idea of Xbox marketing COD and all those ads with COD Xbox bundles for the holidays plus all the other exclusives they’ll have.
So IMO Sony just doesn’t want a healthier and more competitive market, the status quo is perfect for them so why would they? and as many of us probably expected it is clear they get a lot of benefits from being market leader, one of the reasons why Microsoft had to start buying publishers to put themselves in a better position, it isn’t surprising either considering most of these games sell better on PlayStation, Sony know this and use that leverage to their advantage, with their efforts to block the deal by talking to regulators they’ve probably managed to make sure Xbox doesn’t get the same exclusive perks they are getting should the deal go through so that would be a small win for them.
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I think more than anything this comes down to GP
Sony are terrified of the market being shifted to subscriptions because they are dominant in traditional sales and don’t want to lose that
MS getting CoD on GP is basically as big of a draw as you can get when it comes to subscriptions, the only thing that rivals it is GTA and while it sells insanely well and brings in millions of players a decade later, it’s still not the same draw that CoD is considering they can release a new title every year keeping people accustomed to subscribing to a service and not paying full price for games anymore
This isn’t just about Sony losing some money because of CoD, it’s about them potentially losing their entire strategy for the last 25 years
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I think gamepass will exceed 40m this year (thanks to diablo and starfield) and 47-50m before CoD even launches on the service. Once it does 75m is inevitable(and beyond). Imagine how big the launches of Xbox exclusives will be compared to other platforms when 75M accounts can play them day 1 at launch.
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Any predictions for what goes down this week?
- New Cloud deal, with who?
- Sony make hypocrites of themselves
- Lulu wins again
- Someone new supports the deal/who?
- FTC update
- CRM move the date back
Etc
Those aren’t my predictions just possible ideas.
I’m expecting a quite week after what just happened tbh.
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Jim Ryan claims he was sent back from one possible future to prevent the rise of Gamepassnet and stop the deal that led to AIs creation from ever existing.
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I just read somewhere that two more deals were made for cloud gaming. This is getting beyond ridiculous at this point. Just pass the damn merger! Microsoft out here making whole government bodies and Jim Lyin Ryan look like fools.
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so if everyone approves this deal but the cma can that stop the whole thing? i feel like if everyone else approved it why should one place stop it. especially in a market they dont have much marketshare in.
2 more beyond the ones already announced? where did you read that?
I agree, unfortunately they can
In a sensible set up if their arguments were terrible MS could just bring it to the courts and show that legally there’s nothing wrong with the deal but the CMA isn’t set up the same way so they can be more strict
I think we’ll see additional cloud deals this week. It sounded like Microsoft has focused their attention on making deals with cloud gaming companies after the have stopped tryingbto bring Sony to the negotiating table. When Microsoft has wanted to make a point with this acquisition they have gone really big to the point of seemingly excessive every time.
I’d wager they will put the pressure on the CMA and EC with additional moves that benefit the small cloud gaming companies. One area that I could see them trying to smooth out is the fact that they’ve only given deals to buy to play models for cloud gaming and their concession is only for buy to play models.
A couple of European based smaller cloud gaming companies with subscription service type offerings could help clear that up. Blacknut, Gamestream and Shadow are legitimate services based in Europe, they amongst the most recognized services too. Having 6 deals with cloud gaming providers to bring all the games would be quite the commitment.
Sony increases prices to €600 for PS5 and €90 for games, writes another response to CMA that the Microsoft-ABK acqusition could lead to increased prices for consumers.
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According to the CMA the market share between Microsoft and Sony is actually way closer than Microsoft says but they haven’t shown us how they arrived to that conclusion or what the market share percentage actually is, my guess is that in the UK it is much closer than the rest of Europe but we already knew that, unless the CMA is only using current generation numbers but that would be quite misleading when the PS5 still managed to have a bigger market share even with massive stock issues, stock issues that seem to be a thing of the past now, granted Xbox Series X also has issues but there is no indication that Xbox would be able to catch up even without stock issues.