But access to ABK licenses is not open and not free and not competitive. You have to call Yves and pay him. An EU company controls the UK cloud market now. I’m pretty sure half the British people considers this extremely unfree. And to make sure he doesnt fuck around, the CMA has to monitor Ubisoft (a French company, in the EU, lol) for the next 15 years.
Market access will also be more expensive than under the MS or Activision because Ubisoft have to recoup their money. So by definition this is less open and less free and less competitive. I would not be shocked if cloud companies complain about this in the next weeks because they will have to pay more money. What if (more like a when) Ubisoft comes in more dire straits with their financials? They will squeeze the cloud market. How is that good for competition in the cloud market or consumers?
The CMA just had to accept the EU deal and be done with it. Would be better for the cloud market, consumers and competition. But no, that was to good and rational. Now instead to an Amercian company, UK customers and cloud providers pay fees to EU. Brexit always delivers.
I mean I don’t know what U.K. you live in but is it the one where regulators have been granted more power, like the CMA, OFS, OFWAT etc and indeed are getting even more powers etc, where the state has intervened to curtail protest, where the state has stripped unions of powers, where the state has spent 13 years in control of its own client media, where it has intervened in devolved matters, dictated to businesses…I can go on…
In the last 13 years the government have borrowed more money than the entire history of U.K. borrowing before that…
I’m struggling, really struggling to see any argument that we have a ‘small state’ by any definition. Other than they’ve absolutely decimated public services as they always do…
Well, I still think Microsoft should ditch Xcloud and sign contracts with other companies to stream their games. They will always be able to relaunch the service when the technology will have more importance on the market, but for the moment it is more a handicap than anything else.
I don’t think you understand what the CMA mean by free and open. They don’t mean free for everyone and anyone. They simply mean that the market is competitively open. If you want the games in your service you go to Ubisoft and negotiate a free market rate. That’s what the CMA want. Everyone can do that. In their view if MS owned the rights to cloud stream their games the market could in the future not be free and open, since MS would have incentive and opportunity to decide who could have what and on what terms.
Ubisoft have an incentive to recoup their money but not to preclude any particular market operators or entrants and their ability to do so would be limited by the deal itself anyway.
It isn’t better for anyone other than the CMA who wanted a structural remedy that could not be broken. This is it. It fits their remit and concern that MS could at any point decide to foreclose its competitors of situations or circumstances changed. Now for the next 15 years they would be guaranteed to be unable to do that. It’s the guarantee the CMA wanted.
Is it better? No. But that’s their own mess to deal with.
The CMA wanted a guaranteed ‘open market’ for a long period. They have achieved that.
They invested too much money at this point to back down right now, but I get your point that it feels like a weakness sometimes. Especially right now when they are forced to nurture their own competition against them just so people have the illusion of choice.
In 15 years from now I expect them to have not only solved the latency issue in cloud gaming but be playable in 4K/120 and for it to have become mainstream.
Wait, I’m not very familiar with Ubisoft’s cloud service. Is it a service where you have to buy your games before you can play them like Nvidia, or is it a subscription service where you have access to the cloud gaming library like Xcloud? If it’s a subscription, they will necessarily have to pay a substantial amount of money for games like COD. Is not it ? We will probably have more details in the days to come. The relationship between Xbox and Ubisoft seems to be getting stronger, hopefully that will lead to more announcements.
I’ve really cooled on this acquisition as time has gone on. Whilst it makes tons of sense from a bottom line point of view, you can see with Starfield the positive impact that an actual exclusive brings to your platform.
In that sense, Starfield will be far more important to MS than COD will ever be.
Yes, COD might generate cash to help make more Starfields. I get that. But there’s no denying the prestige and impact a big, upcoming exclusive will have. COD will never give that to Xbox.
They’re both necessary in today’s world. This isn’t a zero-sum game, they can both be integral to Xbox (and are) for different reasons: exclusives and the draw they bring to your platform matter, as does the sheer revenue CoD will bring to Microsoft Gaming as a whole.
But that’s again assuming buying another publisher is even going to be possible after the regulatory pressure MS was already under with this ABK deal. And I’m honestly not a fan of any one company owning four publishing houses under one roof.
And I can see some benefits of going after studios over more publishers. They have more freedom to the choices, they won’t be under so much regulatory scrutiny, it would be easier to make all titles from those studios exclusive where any future publisher acquisitions would likely be forced to stay multi-platform like ABK, and most of all, we won’t have to go through a year+ period of tired conversations all over the internet about what MS will or won’t be able to do with said publisher or if the deal will even go through. I know the management can walk and chew gum, but this ABK deal still seems to have taken a lot of attention from the people at Xbox and maybe that attention can be better served elsewhere within the department.
But Microsoft resurrected the purchase earlier this summer, deploying what amounted to a bluff that pitted US and UK regulators against each another. And on Tuesday the UK agreed to open a fresh probe of the transaction, following an offer from Microsoft to sell the cloud rights of current and future Activision games released over the next 15 years to Ubisoft Entertainment SA.
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During the first week of June, reports of an audacious move by Microsoft surfaced: bypass the UK veto order, press ahead with the transaction and withdraw Activision from the UK market altogether — in other words, to close in every country except the UK.
Playinf with the FTC
reports spread that Microsoft had been toying with a work-around to complete the transaction, the FTC asked the company for a written pledge not to close without the UK, people familiar with the negotiations said. But the company’s litigators declined to offer such reassurance.
Microsoft had forced the FTC’s hand. On June 12, the agency sued in San Francisco federal court, citing the risk that Microsoft and Activision would close the transaction despite the UK veto.
MS never intented to close over UK for those still insisting that was an option and that MS is stupid to negotiate with rhe CMA
fact, Microsoft and Activision never intended to close the deal without the UK’s sign off, people familiar with the talks said — it had all been a ruse. But Microsoft’s headfake had given it the chance to argue its case in public.
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Microsoft’s lawyers sent Corley’s decision to the CMA, highlighting sections spelling out her view that the deal would foster competition. Microsoft had already been intalks with UK regulators over a possible remedy to ease their concerns, but officials would consider this possibility only if the company paused its appeal. With Corley’s ruling now in hand, Microsoft consented to a pause in the UK litigation, per the CMA’s request.
