There will undoubtedly be action from Microsoft such as pulling new investment at a minimum. More likely they would also begin work to minimize their presence in the UK and exclude the CMA decisions from any further requiremenets to close forcing the CMA to instead prove a business needs divested which is a much higher bar to clear.
Beyond that they may pay politicians to begin work to limit the CMA powers.
Eh, this would hurt consumers more than the U.K.
Yup, might not influence the CMA and their decisions(at present time), however this could get mentioned in the future when the US and the UK negotiate for a trade deal, so its more of a long term play to pressure the UK to put judiciary oversight on the CMA in the near future, not necessarily to overturn the ruling on ABK.
Sorry to hear how this acquisition is affecting you. My advice would be to ignore this thread. The uncertainty here will continue for at least another month if not year. Most of us have no idea what will happen so this discussion isnt even very fruitful.
Making multibillion dollar investments outside the UK instead of in the UK and pulling billions in business revenue from the UK wouldnt hurt the UK? All the while lobbying their technology partners to also stay away from the UK?
None of that hurts consumers
I think you are correct in analysing the routes.
The issue is that MS wonât agree to divest xcloud - that obviously would have been the easy way round the SLC but they wonât do that. Nor will they agree to omit ABK games from gamepass as thatâs completely contrary to their business model.
So that route - may succeed but MS donât want either of those outcomes and would not close a deal with those options.
A simple route would be not to put ABK games on cloud for say 10 years, giving time for the market to develop and evolve 
The CMA is so confident that it will and that gives plenty of time for it to do so based on their projections.
So if MS wins appeal and it goes back to the CMA, they can then offer new remedies. Maybe a settlement is possible depending of how far MS is ready to go to get this salvaged (including structural).
Florian also says this on his blog but could the CAT really makes its own decision and not remit it to the CMA ?
I also think that the CMA has produced so much material that the appeals court may even find a way to just resolve the matter directly.
10 years isnât long enough and again the cma wont like it cos someone will have to monitor it. They will claim that it isnât well defined what an ABK game is and then in the future it could become murky.
I also think ms simply donât want to do that. Their business plan relies on it.
That someone is literally every gamer and company in the world lol. It requires zero monitoring by the CMA.
They donât see it that way.
Okay then Ill be more specific the CMA had a problem with four titles: Diablo, COD, WOW, and Overwatch. Simply none of those titles can be made available on cloud gaming services. It doesnt get any easier to monitor.
Thats an easy basis for irrationality
Thatâs irrational? Like literally anyone or any third party can tip off the CMA, not to mention other regulators.
WOW, COD, Diablo = ABK games.
The CMA doesnât want to act as a regulator. They are happy for monopolies to exist and not be challenged as long as the status quo is unaltered. What they hate is having to regulate competition.
I love how he have people who arenât M&A lawyers or regulators arguing against the former and latter based on reading some documents and no actual experience.
If the worry is, âwell after 10 years MS might stop letting other companies have ABK games on their cloud serviceâ
Why not just have a contract that says when the 10 year contract is coming to an end, look at the state of the cloud market and if required, re-up the contract for another 10/x amount of time
I believe someone mentioned this is already a thing in the EU, if so, I donât see why the UK canât just do the same
Yes, Google and EU agreed to this for one of their acquisitions.
Because they donât want to be bothered doing that work.
What I donât get is how the CMA dont really take account of what other cloud providers who support this deal(and some of them are small) are saying, and decide that their opinion/point of view is the right one, disregarding cloud providers who knows the business much better than them, reeks arrogance imo. Anyhow, I wonder what Microsoftâs next move after this if it goes no where, they have to keep buying/investing if they want gamepass to succeed, will be interesting what they plan next.