I’ve been wondering if the current state of the markets might see some political pressure on regulatory boards to not only approve the deal but also others by big companies. The Nasdaq is down 35% or so from late 2021 and a lot of listed companies make losses in the short term hoping to get bought out. If the markets think that goverment is being overly aggressive on blocking big purchases from cash rich companies, there could be quite a sell off adding to the woes
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No concern for this deal now that stadia is closing down ?
Seems like it could be argued that if this deal went through, there’s no chance a competitor could get into the cloud streaming market anymore
I am a market idiot.
That being said, I would think a partnership between a large group like tencent and Amazon (AWS) could very quickly fight for the marketshare of current gamepass. Yes, they would have to be strategic, but I personally feel (as a market idiot) that a few colaborations of heavy video game (Tencent) and web host (Amazon) hitters could (relatively) quickly become a contender to gamepass. As could Sony with the right partnerships.
But hey! It’s an opinion and worth the price of admission. 
So xCloud isnt allowed to grow because an equally large mega corporation completely failed in the Cloud Market? Cloud gaming is a wide open space right now and there are several companies that could compete if they wanted to.
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I’m all for the acquisition and wish it would hurry up, I’m just saying isn’t this something regulators could discuss?
With Activision blizzard, GamePass might be too big for anyone else to enter the market. The UK regulators concern was cloud right
I think it’s a fair question. One Jez brought up today in his article. I could see Sony make the statement that these acquisitions have kept competition at bay.
I’m guessing Microsoft would argue an industry without walls will allow many competitors to find creative ways to compete. What if Valve partners with Amazon? What if Amazon or Apple buys a publisher? Apple already has a top spot among gaming revenue without relying on any first-party content, a console, a PC store, or streaming yet…and they’ll continue to compete. TenCent and Embracer have enough IP and developers to create their own subscriptions.
Streaming will likely be everywhere with everyone in time. Just as it is for TV apps. Netflix doesn’t own the servers they stream content on. The competition will be with the content. Google wasn’t willing to compete there and that’s why they had no streaming business. Google built roads but barely had a working vehicle to drive on it.
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Stadia closing down is unlikely to play much of a part in the discussion. Game streaming is a nascent industry with pretty low revenue at the moment so it’s going to need a lot of investment before it starts to see any real returns. Google weren’t willing to put the money or time into it especially with their bizarre monetization model. One look at the graveyard of closed projects at Google highlights how little patience the company has
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While I think there won’t be much push back from regulator regarding Stadia shutting down(main because it was a self inflicted death) I find it funny that the official date for the service to be close down is January 18, literally the one year anniversary of MS announcing the ABK deal.
Another thing is the Google already had given a statement to the Brazilian regulators:
GOOGLE : They highlight all their different initiatives (mini games, VR, Play Pass, developing exclusive games for Stadia until 2021, etc).
Alternatives to COD could be Battlefield, Counterstrike or Rainbow Six. Alternatives to WoW would be Lost Ark, ESO Online or Guild Wars 2. And alternatives to Candy Crush would be Puzzle Quest or Bejeweled.
They also highlight other important franchises from ABK such as Overwatch, Diablo or Hearthstone, including possible alternatives (according to Google, Fallout is an alternative to Diablo).
They understand that there will be a significant number of game developers/publishers on the market after the acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft.
They probably knew months ago that they were planning on shutting down the service and decided to make public (albeit not really) comments to regulators on the matter of ABK. Kinda funny if they take back those comments and weaponize Stadia’s fate against the deal. Would be even funnier if Sony made the claims.
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Personally? No. As Netflix has already announced their intentions to enter the game streaming market, and if gaming is additive to their movies and tv shows that gives 100s of millions of accounts.
Tencent is also getting into the streaming business and with all they own and invested in and making deals with other companies. They will have a good offering to much quicker than Netflix, from there its just getting the people to sub.
While Luna isn’t the best competition right now. Amazon is at least throwing money at the problem, making deals with other companies, making their own games. The right deals and improvements to their tech can put them in the competion with no issue.
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Death of the competitor is a normal result of the competition.
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I do think thats a better argument than any that have been raised so far. However, I also think its easy to point to Google failing for other reasons like not having unique games on their platform. It could probably be alleviated as a concern too by Microsoft agreeing to bring the big Activision games to cloud competitors.
They won’t do that. It is crazy to expect from Microsoft to bring their content to other platforms. It is like asking Disney to bring Marvel to Netflix.
I am pretty sure no regulator will cry a river over Google. Imagine Google complaining that they did not have enough resources too compete with Microsoft. Death of a competitor is a competition.
The fundamental question of the deal is the fundamental question of the capitalism and a competition - if a company wants to invest into a new market that would affect the established powerhouses, is it good or bad?
It is like asking if Starlink investment hurting ISP good or bad. There should not be a limit on how companies compete.
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That deadline is pretty bang on at least for the Zenimax deal it was approved on the deadline, I think we could get the same here but obviously this is a much bigger deal so things could be different. Though I think one of the biggest differences between the EU and other places is they do a big build up of data collecting before it is lodged so this is probably why they hit the deadlines, apparently Microsoft have been giving the EU info for at least 6 months prior so they will now go over it all.
When it comes to these matters, I think EU is the only one which looks at things objectively without any other motives
I hope we don’t get drama like CMA from EU
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Interesting. Guess Sony and Google decided to join the forces. Probably that’s why Google decided to scrap Stadia? Probably they were planning to do that anyway but changed the timeline to align with EU investigation.
Hope Microsoft unleashes hell on them.
Wow. After google said no problem in brazil. Im getting a little worried about this deal for the first time.