It sounds like the only thing going on here is Ubisoft is now a third party managing the licensing of Activision streaming rights. They are required to offer them to those that Xbox previously signed deals with, and will be able to license them to others. Presumably they will also stream them themselves.
I don’t see how that impacts what games are made and platforms they develop for though. It’s not like they would be barred from making an exclusive game.
Don’t really see how this affects anyone in a negative way.
I was thinking this too but theres no way the CMA werent involved in the discussions and didnt approve behind the scenes. In fact they’ve probably been negotiating this even befire the FTC trial
Right now this just seems 100% entirely procedural
Ha! It would have to be after 15 years but it does put Xbox and Ubisoft in a much closer working relationship.
Perhaps we may even see some form of Ubisoft+ deal with GamePass (much like EA Play) in the interim.
Even if Microsoft didn’t intend to acquire Ubisoft they might now consider it in the future if they want to buy back the cloud gaming rights from Ubisoft (for the games that released within that 15 year window). In 15 years times cloud may actually be at a point where it’s latency free and mainstream so these rights would be far more valuable (making Ubisoft more valuable to them).
That’s what I was thinking but I saw nobody mentioning. This doesn’t mean ABK titles will be barred from xcloud, they will just be licenced from Ubisoft, whatever the hell that means.
I think we will only learn about the true effects of this as time goes on.
Because, in part, the CMA has extremely broad powers to fine a company that doesn’t do what it tells them to do. MS have to …
Obey the CMA;
Pay the fines - as an example, CMA are currently looking to get power to fine a company 10% of it’s GLOBAL turnover. Each year that it fails to obey. So about $20bn a year. Forever…
MS leaves the UK market (which they won’t want to do).
The CMA is not like FTC, that can be closed over. America has a system based on the presumption of allowing business to do things, with less power for the state to intervene. The UK is closer to the EU in this regard. In the UK, business can ONLY do specifically what the government says it can do.
Whilst I still think the deal can still go through, I cannot help but think this money would have been better spent hoovering up individual studios. So many opportunities missed by virtue of being tied up with ABK, with MS losing a lot of what they probably envisaged they’d get from the deal. MS could have done an Embracer by this point.
I hope that this does not mean other jurisdictions don’t feel compelled to restart their own regulatory reviews as well. Or we’ll be here for another 2 years.
So what changes? Are they simply guaranteeing that anything that comes out of ABK for the next 15 years is available wherever there is Ubisoft+? Because I don’t imagine Ms will want to keep games off of cloud.
And there is a new bill that, if goes through, will give FAR more power to them so you know…you really dont want to be on the bad side of a dictatorial regulator.
Eventually. Anyone who thinks Ubisoft plus will have ABK games day 1 is kidding themselves.
Microsoft doesn’t mind if other partners like Nvidia and Boosteroid help cloud become more defacto, when the 10 and 15 year deals expire they will have sole control of all the content.
