I guess the remedy demands they make has a high bar, like how overturning the verdict has a high bar when appealed to the CAT. Like, would a company want to go through so much bureaucracy and effort just to invest in the UK, doesn’t sound like a great environment for business.
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The CMA takes itself for God and decides to abuse its power to prevent the development of Xbox without any valid reason. What are the possible remedies against a corrupt CMA determined to hurt Microsoft? The deal seems dead just because the CMA is too stupid to do its job properly and without abusing its power. I don’t know what the options are for Microsoft, but I wouldn’t blame them if they chose drastic decisions in the UK, even if they have to lose money. If COD doesn’t come out on Xbox in the UK, it won’t come out on PS either. CMA is really terrible for the industry and the development of Xbox in the future. This decision is total nonsense and proves that the CMA can do whatever it wants regardless of the evidence. I am very worried about the future of the industry with such malicious regulators rigging the numbers and protecting the interests of Asian leaders.
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- Appeal for a CAT ruling.
- Appeal to UK supreme court.
- Appeal to the government.
- Close the deal and pay a fine (might be cheaper than £3B ABK fee) and litigate for the future until its overturned.
- Bribes.
- Threaten to pull out of the UK.
- Close down Xcloud.
- Geogate ABK content from Xcloud
This aint over by a long shot!
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So, Idas posted highlights from the report. In it, one third party suggests that, if the deal falls through, then MS could strike up exclusivity deal for COD.
Now, that is one thing that has always confused me. In theory MS could sign a exclusivity deal for COD and regulators would have no power to stop it?
To be clear, I don’t think this will happen as it doesn’t make financial sense for either party.
I’d say they should go for a 10 year exclusivity deal on COD, just to send a message.
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Tried to see what Bing Chat/Bing AI would say if I tried asking about the CMA blocking the acquisition.
I had to get a little creative with how I asked the question, and I wanted to make sure it didn’t mix anything up, so apologies for the numerous times that the same sentences were repeated.
Note that it is AI and it doesn’t get everything right, but I thought some of you may be interested to see what it said.
While I don’t agree with what it responded with (I think the CMA is completely wrong, and I absolutely hope it gets successfully appealed and the acquisition is finally completed), I still thought it would be interesting to post anyways.
Also how do I make it so that you have to click to expand something in a message on XboxEra?
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So, the CMA wanted remedies in perpetuity that made no business or financial sense for Microsoft.
It seems completely obvious that the remedies were designed from the start to be impossible to meet (or so insanely impractical that they are effectively impossible).
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Never mind. Figured it out 
It all starts with the way the CMA is set up, very little liability, too much God complex because the companies can’t challenge in court. I don’t know how the UK thought the way CMA was set up was a good idea.
Even though Microsoft will tear up all the holes in the arguments, CMA using the cloud makes it harder for MS to argue against facts clearly because they are all hypothetical scenarios even though they make more sense than CMA’s. Who knows that even after a relook into the case with a new panel after the CAT appeal will lead to anything different if it’s led by similarly incompetent people fueled by their ideologies.
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My thoughts exactly, its just formalities for them but they really wanted to block this from the very beginning. Dropping the console SLC was just done to focus everything on cloud to make it harder to appeal because they can use a bunch of speculative and hypothetical reasoning that is hard to prove or disprove as it hasn’t happened yet.
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Oh and people didn’t sign up for gamepass ultimate for cloud gaming, its part of it but its mostly because there are more games because of EA play, Gold for multiplayers, and being able to use PC gamepass. Makes you question if they really done their research.
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I don’t think they did and I don’t think they cared. This was all a big tech bad farce. From the constant reaching for gotcha’s, to the bad math. Just seems like they tried to find anything to say that they are hard on big tech when in reality they are just hard on consumers.
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I hope Microsoft will fight back and opt for one of these solutions. I would be disappointed if the deal fell through because of this ridiculous decision. Pulling Xcloud out of the UK would be better than fail with the deal. I think the Xcloud user base must be quite small.
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In the UK according to Brad Smith, its 5000 Xblades.
Losing a 70 billion deal for 5000 active users…
Does Microsoft need to have the deal reconsidered by the CMA if it decides to shut down Xcloud in the UK?
They would need to win the appeal, but in the appeal im sure a judge would throw that out. They could use it as backup if they didnt. Even at 5000 users per hour thats the equivilent of 120,000 consoles a day. A months worth of UK sales.
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It’s not won… we still have many months of frustration ahead of us. Hoping that Europe accepts the deal, otherwise it will be game over.
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I feel optimistic about the EU, but who knows this whole thing has been twist after twist. M Night writing the script
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Can they shut down cloud in uk? Theyve have to restructure gamepass in uk too.
A poster from the other era made a good point, he said that during the Giphy Meta appeal, the CAT basically told the CMA to limit their examination of harm for 5 years, because its hard to predict an outcome far into the future with great accuracy, and yet they argued in this case that 10 year deals are too short and that after, Microsoft will somehow take them off, causing SLC. They basically disregard what the CAT told them lol, man this is a clownshow lol
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