Yeah it’s a tough one. It’s why they are throwing the best legal resources possible at it.
It’s a long shot but it’s their only real chance of saving the deal.
The point that they only have one SLC to overturn made earlier and to an extent that being unusual is probably something I hadn’t considered previously.
They have a chance but it’s not a huge one.
Funny tought but unlikely, since its estimated that the cloud gaming market is only going to be worth a few hundred million in the next few years, if I were Microsoft I would just offer to subsidize it in
Microsoft: drops 1 billion on the cloud gaming market every year
Just a funny scenario 
Key Points from Rishi Sunaks Linkedin post (which is ironically a Microsoft owned product 
)
“To do that we need a regulatory system in the UK that doesn’t get in the way. It needs to allow companies to get on with doing what they do best: creating jobs and growing the economy.”
“We’ll reform the Better Regulation Framework so that regulation is the last, not the first, response of government. This is game-changing in the way we approach British business as it ensures that regulation at the heart of government decisions is streamlined and forward-looking.”
“We’ll make sure regulators are laser-focused on prioritising economic growth by ensuring regulatory action is taken only when it’s needed. We expect all regulators to be working towards economic growth, so we’ll lead a consultation on refreshed guidance to help them achieve this”
“We’ll encourage innovation, investment and growth by announcing two strategic policy statements to steer our regulators. This week we’ve published the first of three statements for consultation on energy policy. Next up is our strategic steer to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA)”
There’s no way to spin this, these are directly in regards to reigning in the CMA. Rishi talking about “streamlining” the CMA is likely wanting to enforce more government oversight
It seems that Brad Smith turning this into a political stunt and calling out the UK is starting to pay off. Its also ironic as MS a few days ago invested in a British AI start up and Rishi probably wants MS to keep investing. I wager Rishi is going to have a backroom chat with Sarah Cardell
Thread starting on the “gamers lawsuit PI hearing”
I want to be optimistic about this strategic steer, but it’s so vaguely worded that I can’t really conclude anything useful from it.
The government can claim to want “pro growth” and “pro investment” regulatory bodies and policies, but the different sides of the political divide will interpret that guidance very differently and will frequently come to opposite conclusions about how to implement it.
Edit: the longer statement posted by @TheWorthy is definitely more specific (and better), but we won’t know the impact of any of this until we see implementation strategies. Never underestimate a bureaucrat’s ability to cause mischief and chaos.
I noticed that the place that ResetEra has to talk about the Activision Blizzard acquisition has been temporarily closed. 
ResetEra screenshot is below:
Edit: Nevermind. I just refreshed the page and saw this 
The best part about this? It was Idas, the topic creator and lawyer that everyone has been quoting since day one, who officially started the ringfencing back and forth by theorizing it might be a viable tactic for Microsoft in one of his updates.
But of course, that doesn’t count and anyone who mentions it as a possibility (no matter how extremely slim the possibility is) will be automatically banned.
Again, can’t make this shit up.
That’s ironic the thread has been raided by fanboys who don’t want the deal to pass soon as the UK blocked it and post constant console war comments met with no staff input 
Its more of a timing thing than anything else, I don’t want to go down conspiracy rabbit holes but there’s too much to ignore, in the last few weeks we’ve had
-The CMA block over something they clearly gerrymandered which really indicates they wanted to block all along and just used what they believed MS would have the hardest time appealing
-Microsoft investing in a British AI start up despite Brad Smith comments about tech investments in the UK…if regulators, specifically the CMA, are going to be a huge hurdle in big techs future endeavors, it seems weird that MS would invest in a company that’s in the CMA own backyard
-Rishi comments today
All in the span of less than 3 weeks? At the very bare minimum it seems incredibly sus…the only conclusion I can think of is that the reason the CMA blocked is because the UK wants something from Microsoft…because I highly doubt they blocked for altruistic reasons such as “we must protect the cloud gaming market”
I don’t see the big deal. Foss, Pachter and Hoeg all said “Technically you can close an acquisition every where but the UK”
Lmao that’s not even true Sony has a marketing contract still, would be rather dumb to have a marketing contract without it being written in there that the game has to be on their platform 
Cmon
Lmao yikes
Oh no they’re spiralling now, trying to tag on the FTC/CMA issues hmm, some input from Sony on what might work.
OK…some real conspiracy theory things that I had a discussion with someone recently. ARM (a British company) recently applied to be listed on the NYSE and not the London Stock Exchange…that’s gotta be embarrassing for the UK.
Ihttps://www.reuters.com/technology/softbanks-arm-aims-raise-least-8-billion-us-ipo-sources-say-2023-03-05/
Softbank wants to raise $8-10 Billion for the initial IPO…
hmmm…who do we know that has $8-10B they can drop? 
Lets keep in mind that anything Microsoft touches the value shoots through the roof…Discord was discussing selling to Microsoft, even though it fell through, Discord value increased.
Or when Microsoft invest in OpenAi, it was a boost to Nvidia stock
Its also funny because last year Microsoft hired an chip designer who previously worked at ARM and Apple
Interesting …
This remind me a little bit about the war chest meme, everyone’s laughed about it but then 2020 comes… and rest is history
Hell, Microsoft spending nearly $70B on ABK would have been considered fantasyland over a year ago.
Still is to some, expecting Microsoft to shut Xbox down if it doesn’t get ABK
That thread was always going to be ruined by PS fanboys if the deal was blocked, whenever there was bad news about the deal so they smelled blood in the water you could always see the same and new posters swooping in, but if you checked where they were regular posters at? That’s right, the PlayStation thread lol.
I don’t know what to make of the policy steer. Reads like political drivel.
Something nice and substantial would be CMA can now be changed in court on merit.
In the video I posted above, Tobii submitted their application for CAT appeal in September 2019, hearings occurred in November and the judgement was in January, overall about 4 months between appeal and judgement
Hard to say if MS/ABK would get a faster appeal or if it’ll take longer. Kotick said he expects an accelerated appeal but the size of the deal could also make a longer appeal process…hard to say for sure but I do believe it’ll all said and done before the end of the year
It’s crazy how long the appeal process can take, it’s like it was designed specifically to get companies to just drop their deals, I don’t understand how that can even be legal, there has to be a line, with the current power the CMA has they can act as irrationally as they want and almost never lose because many companies could just drop out instead of fighting them, not because they think they don’t have a case but to not go through the whole process again.
Why do people even want regulators to have this type of power? Sure there has to be strong regulation like I’ve always said here and I do think some corps have too much power but does it really does anything for anyone to go this hard on Microsoft for ABK? They don’t dominate any sector of the gaming industry and Cloud is far too small to even be used as an argument in this deal, it’s even possible that over regulation kills that market before it even takes off because you could make the argument that only Microsoft and other big companies like Amazon and Google can truly make this market into a viable option for consumers, with this decision what incentives do Sony and Nintendo even have to take cloud gaming seriously? It’s a decision that only helps the status quo that already massively benefits Sony.
It’s just confusing to me, my only conclusion is that they are just like Khan and want to start killing all big purchases by big tech companies.
