Time for Biden and Sunak to have a phone conversation.
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While this is extremely frustrating, Matt Booty and Co are not acquisition lawyers so Iâm pretty sure it wonât affect âgetting exclusives outâ.
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Biden wants to block big tech though. He give FTC Lina lol.
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I doubt its going to go into 2024. That Gamerindustrybiz article stated within 9 months, not 9 months exactly and bigger mergers with more $ involved get expedited
I would assume MS is going to push to get this resolved asap
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Can CAT overturn this?
Also, the rational for this being blocked (cloud gaming) makes it seem like any decent sized publisher is off the table for MS to buy?
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They can and likely will toss the CMA cloud argument in the trash where it belongs off the basis of irrationality, it would likely go back to tue CMA but theyâd no longer be able to use the cloud argument
Real question is how long is this all going to take
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Our political system is but I donât really appreciate you calling my country it!
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It looks like the hope now is that EC approves the deal and MS can use that in their appeal to the CAT
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The frustrating thing is letâs say Microsoft gets the CAT to overturn the ruling and the CMA just comes up with a new bs reason to block the deal
The goal is clearly to prevent Xbox from having a chance to compete in the industry.
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I owe you an apology, you were right about the CMA blocking
Well done, I will take my L
Itâs not incompetence⊠when itâs deliberate.
They were caught with the math error with their prior console concerns so they threw in some fantasy about future cloud gaming instead because they needed something to stick & justify the block theyâd already decided from minute one.
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The CATâs standard of review is very deferential, but not infinitely deferential. In the Apple case, the CMA made a procedural error that was overruled rather quickly. Microsoftâs announcement today mentions nothing procedural, though itâs too early to tell whether the appeal will raise procedural issues as well. The CMAâs substantive findings are reviewed under the âirrationalityâ standard. The CMAâs position on cloud gamingâand its decision to block a merger over a nascent market (where there are new entrants all the time) after actually recognizing that its key concern (foreclosure in console market) was based on its own mistakeâis irrational even in a literal sense. The way the CAT applies the term, the CMA will have a hard time explaining to the CAT that its decision was reasonable.
The CAT will see that the people working for the CMA on this deal werenât even capable of correctly calculating foreclosure costs when they wrote up their provisional findings (a very important document in the CMA process). Thatâs not going to look good, though in a strictly legal sense itâs not going to be relevant, just like it shouldnât be relevant (and hopefully wasnât relevant to the CMA) that Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan is a Brit.
The bigger issue is this: the CAT will easily see that the CMAâs reasoning concerning Microsoftâs âother important strengthsâ is nonsensical, and it will particularly see that if a regulator could just block a deal based on totally speculative concerns about a nascent market, many more mergers would have to be blocked.
The CMA decision is so utterly unreasonable that only a successful appealâor a settlement along the wayâhas the potential to restore my faith in the UK as an antitrust jurisdiction. It is now about the rule of law. Otherwise the CMA will know that it can get away with whatever arbitrary and capricious decisions it makes. This will also have political implications, and regardless of what happens here, UK politicians should see now that the so-called âjudicial reviewâ standard in the UK may lead to institutionalized regulatory excess.
https://twitter.com/FOSSpatents/status/1651204775440941056?t=mz2Z4jwk1w4Gz8z7rfvKsQ&s=19
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I was talking to a friend about this yesterday, told him I wouldnât be surprised if this goes to 2024 because of it.
He is old school yes, but he appeals to the small radical portion of his party, Thus making things worse for big tech.
Dont think they can pull a new concern out of their ass tbh at that point the UK secretary of state and parliament would have to get involved
Eh Iâm from Scotland and it is a total shite hole. Absolute mess.
Yeah while Xbox may have been quieter than people would have liked, i donât think thereâs a link between them getting exclusives out and this deal being done. Unfortunately the alleged slower release schedule has just coincided with the whole Activision drama.
I did ask the question the other day whether we were maybe getting our hopes up before the official announcement but even iâm shocked itâs been blocked. Microsoft will do what they feel is right regarding the deal, what Xbox needs now is to continue releasing top quality games and bringing good news beats to the fans. That way the focus will be on whatâs important the actual games and console features and not acquisitions. Personally i do think thereâs far too much focus on who Microsoft should buy next as opposed to the actual games. Their current first party line up is pretty vast as it is.
Hopefully Redfall ends up being a top quality game, if that ends up disappointing itâll be one heck of a one-two punch of bad news for Xbox in the space of a week.
Destin is the first off the block with a commentary:
