If dropping xcloud for games in the UK was enough to get this deal done, I’d imagine they’d do it in a heartbeat
I love how well it works for me here but if it’s a choice between a $70b deal and a few thousand cloud users in the UK including myself, then it’s an easy choice
What Microsoft need to do in my opinion, is to tell their own government(Congress, the President etc.) to grow some balls and assert itself more on the world stage in terms of trade, and that might change the direction of the regulatory crusade that is happening right now.
Oh I know they can’t negotiate right now, I was saying under the possibility that they just drop the deal in a few months and then ABK is free to continue operating normally like they were before, should this happen Microsoft cannot let COD marketing go back to PlayStation imo, negotiating that marketing deal with benefits such as COD on Xcloud would be smart.
Considering how useless and spineless the current administration is, I don’t see them doing anything
If I was MS and this deal does ultimately fail, i’d be buying as much of a minority share in ABK as possible
It lets them rake in their profits, make things easier to negotiate on like marketing for future games and maybe if things change with regulators down the line, buy the remaining shares and attempt the full purchase
If they can’t outright buy big companies right now, they can at least use that money and invest into guaranteed profit makers
Its not a bad plan actually. I’d drop it globally, under the guise of the beta ending. Say it needs more work so its been suspended., make up some bullshit saying it needs more time in the oven before it becomes a viable market.
Give it 18 months to 2 years and use CoD and ABK to build up gamepass subs (effectively the same thing)
When they bring it back big time, Nvidia will have such a lead no-one could call Xcloud the market leader.
Yeah, not to be too political or anything, but you got to use your economic power(both Microsoft and the US in general) and swing it around to protect your interest , its the reality of interconnected global trade unfortunately, whether you agree with it or not.
Exactly Ilumina grail damned all the regulators after they were blocked and closed despite all odds. Amazon dared the FTC. I say if EC approves this. Ringfence the UK legally. Why let a rogue process hold you back. The EC can be challenged as the rest.
This is from the CMA itself:
“Given its already strong position, even a moderate increment to Microsoft’s strength may be expected to substantially reduce competition in this developing market, to the detriment of current and future cloud gaming users.”
This is why Microsoft is fighting for this, as this would literally kill the growth of their Xbox platform, and if they have to purchase a studio, it has to be at or below 70 million pounds to avoid regulatory investigations. Studios below these prices tend to not have valuable IP’s, and are usually smaller studios.
This is unacceptable, I get regulating big tech in things like data collection, or dangerous aspects of AI, or Social media, gatekeeping, price manipulation etc. But essentially stopping them from diversifying their perfolio, and"preventing" them from growing, this needs to be looked at by our own government.
This is also why I’m not entirely sure that there is any future at this point in time where a big US company should continue doing business in the UK. There is a clear, demonstrated prejudice to big foreign companies (mostly US) and combative nature where they are willing to go to ANY lengths to harm those companies. If you look at the fines sent out the past 5 years by the CMA, over 99.5% of the fines have been aimed at US companies. Thats a trade war.
I think that the CMA is overreacting to past tech deals. The problem with that is that now tech companies are going to be hesitant to invest in the UK. Why would you if they won’t allow you to grow.
Yeah, I accepted the deal was likely not gonna go through and Microsoft should move on, but how can you move on when one foreign regulator is essentially hand cuffing you. This would essentially kill the chance for Microsoft to rival or catch up to Sony, for the short term atleast, just because of a perk that was bundled with gamepass ultimate 
(if this is counted as doom and gloom, sorry mods not my intention).
And its not just with regard to this deal. They could use the same type of insane logic to go after every area of growth for Microsoft or any big tech company. For instance, they could next go after AI for Microsoft and ruin literally the past 7 years of working with OpenAI, as well as any ability to challenge google in search.
Maybe MS should look more carefully to other markets witha good potential to grow, based on their model. I dont know of I read right a chart that ppl dropped here, but seems that xbox relevance of Xbox in Brazil, for example, is very close to that on UK. Gamepass here is really disruptive for gamers, due to price of HW and SW. Xbox has historically a good support in Brazil, but that could be better. India as well, is a good candidate for investiments, where the support is much worse than Brazil (as far im concerned), at least for now.
They could try to renegociate the deal with ABK or ringfence Xbox in UK, and close the deal if EU clears it and keep battling in court in other places. These are too painful processes, but at this point I think MS is going until the last consequencies, because this is not only about Xbox or gaming, it is about the biggest source of MS revenue; cloud business.
I think bruteforce might be necessary when the other side is being unreasonable. For now, MS is playing by the rules, appealing to higher courts.
Those don’t count because “reasons”.
They can try but my point is it would need to be introduced as a formal remedy the CMA accept. I think it’s highly unlikely and the people who have mooted it are ones like Pachter who have been clueless all along.
Ringfencing is not a remedy. Its assuming a deal with the CMA wont be reached. Its a method of isolating Microsoft or ABK from being actionable to the CMAs fines.
Fundamentally Microsoft could make a new company to act as an intermediary for Microsoft in the UK. They would act on their behalf as a seperate, outside operator. They didn’t buy ABK. Microsoft Corp did. They just buy and resell xbox, Windows and Office to the UK.
You see they need to create a studio from the ground up and hire all new staff, but not experienced talent from other studios, no that would be “stealing” and not “organic”. You know “Oh MS has steal talent from other studios by throwing money at them, they can’t develop their own talent.” So you can’t have that obviously.
They need to hire people fresh out of college and grow and nurture them before it counts.
Catch them as babies even, then literally raise them as developers!
https://twitter.com/WolfOfDarknesss/status/1652343199413727232?s=20
