Microsoft / Activision Deal Approval Watch |OT| (MS/ABK close)

Do you believe the deal will be approved?

  • Yes, will be approved without changes.

    Votes: 221 24.9%

  • Yes, will be approved but with structural changes to ABK.

    Votes: 102 11.5%

  • Yes, will be approved but only with behavioral concessions.

    Votes: 262 29.6%

  • No, will not be approved.

    Votes: 301 34.0%
  • Total voters
    886
  • Poll closed .
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Not open for further replies.
Heisenberg007 said:
Been busy and haven't been able to pop into this thread as frequently. Hope y'all are doing great.

I'm gonna leave everyone with a question here in the meantime:

Console concerns are out of the window. But Cloud concerns are still there for the CMA, and, interestingly, they haven't updated the remedies yet. Although I still believe that this deal will likely pass now, the CMA identified 4 key Cloud players:
  • Nvidia ✅
  • Amazon Luna ❌
  • Microsft xCloud
  • SIE PlayStation Plus ❌
The second category of companies that "are potential entrants or are already active in cloud gaming to some extent" is:
  • Tencent ❌
  • Shadow ❌
  • Meta ❌
  • Nintendo ✅
  • Antstream Arcade ✅
  • Others (5 companies ❌, including Boosteroid ✅)
The green ticks and red crosses indicate the companies that Microsoft has signed deals with. I think if Nvidia hadn't signed, it'd be really tough for Microsoft. But they still haven't signed with 2/3 of the main competitors.

In the secondary category, they have not signed deals with 8 out of 11 companies.

I think this is the reason why the CMA has not updated its suggested remedies because they specifically mentioned that behavioral remedies would be tough to enforce, primarily because of Cloud gaming.

mJweXwX.jpg


Do you all think that -- surprising everyone once again -- the CMA might still stick with divestment or prohibition because there are still concerns in the cloud gaming market and behavioral remedies will be tough to enforce?

After all, xCloud is the leading cloud gaming provider in the UK with a 70% market share. So the same principles that the Japanese FTC used to approve the deal (Sony's high market share in the country) would apply here for Microsoft's xCloud in the UK.

What chance do you think this scenario has or hasn't in terms of percentage?
Click to expand...

Listing "potential entrants" is pretty ridiculous here. Like what exactly would they offer to companies that haven't even entered into the space?

And FWIW their deal with Sony that Sony hasn't signed specifically calls out cloud gaming as well.

Any active player MS would obviously have no problem signing a deal with; there's no reason not to sign w/ the much smaller Shadow for instance.. so I doubt the CMA would even consider the lack of signees here, other than perhaps Luna. But again, also don't know why MS wouldn't sign w/ Luna for their 10 year commitments.

Of course the CMA may still block because of cloud, but I think it will be because 10 year deals isn't enough.
 
X-Wing said:
That only shows who their lobbyists are, not who they are lobbying.
Click to expand...
Destin talks a bit about it here; Barbara Cantwell has apparently received something like 500-600.000 dollars in support over a 30-year period. As their state representative.

Microsoft has somewhere around 100-110 lobbyists in Washington, while Sony has around 10-15 lobbyists. They are both lobbying in the Congress.

 
IntentionalPun said:
Listing "potential entrants" is pretty ridiculous here. Like what exactly would they offer to companies that haven't even entered into the space?

And FWIW their deal with Sony that Sony hasn't signed specifically calls out cloud gaming as well.

Any active player MS would obviously have no problem signing a deal with; there's no reason not to sign w/ the much smaller Shadow for instance.. so I doubt the CMA would even consider the lack of signees here, other than perhaps Luna. But again, also don't know why MS wouldn't sign w/ Luna for their 10 year commitments.

Of course the CMA may still block because of cloud, but I think it will be because 10 year deals isn't enough.
Click to expand...
Just to clarify - this list is from the CMA, not me. According to them, all these companies are at potential harm because of this deal as well as any future entrants to the UK cloud gaming market.

And I think the uncertainties involved in future potential entrants, as you pointed out, is one of the main reasons why the CMA is shying away from behavioral remedies. And if they do stick with structural remedies, this will likely be the biggest reason.
 
quest said:
The deal is for all Microsoft first party games not COD only.

www.theverge.com

How Microsoft’s Nvidia deal works for gamers — with or without Activision

Minecraft is coming — and maybe Call of Duty.
www.theverge.com www.theverge.com

"That's because this deal isn't just for Halo or Forza Motorsport, he tells me; it also covers the Bethesda games like Fallout and The Elder Scrolls. Minecraft is coming to GeForce Now, he confirms. And if the Activision Blizzard deal goes through, it won't just be Call of Duty on GeForce Now; it'll be the entire Battle.net catalog — including Overwatch and presumably StarCraft, Warcraft, and Diablo."
Click to expand...

That deal with Nvidia, yes. I haven't seen the details of this open licensing they've been talking about.

Seems like it would be a bit of a detriment to them (beyond fair business) if that's the road they take with everything, but maybe that's what they'll do just to enure that the "cloud" issue is a non factor in this and future transactions.
 
DaGwaphics said:
That deal with Nvidia, yes. I haven't seen the details of this open licensing they've been talking about.

Seems like it would be a bit of a detriment to them (beyond fair business) if that's the road they take with everything, but maybe that's what they'll do just to enure that the "cloud" issue is a non factor in this and future transactions.
Click to expand...
Why cloud gaming is 10 years away or more from being more than a niche market. By the time cloud gaming is worth while the contract will expire and can pull the games.
 
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Small update via Idas at Era

Small update from MLex:

- Microsoft's remedies to address EU competition concerns have received broadly positive feedback from the association representing videogame developers in Europe.

- The European Games Developer Federation was generally pleased with the remedy offer, but it has encouraged the commission to further investigate how they would work in the future when the cross-platform distribution of games becomes more common.

- Sony and Google have criticized the remedies proposed by MS.
Click to expand...

Google and MS don't seem like happy competitors
 
IntentionalPun said:
Listing "potential entrants" is pretty ridiculous here. Like what exactly would they offer to companies that haven't even entered into the space?

And FWIW their deal with Sony that Sony hasn't signed specifically calls out cloud gaming as well.

Any active player MS would obviously have no problem signing a deal with; there's no reason not to sign w/ the much smaller Shadow for instance.. so I doubt the CMA would even consider the lack of signees here, other than perhaps Luna. But again, also don't know why MS wouldn't sign w/ Luna for their 10 year commitments.

Of course the CMA may still block because of cloud, but I think it will be because 10 year deals isn't enough.
Click to expand...
We don't actually know if cloud had a ten year deal. They don't mention the duration, MS had them redacted in the Sony documents.
 
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DaGwaphics said:
That deal with Nvidia, yes. I haven't seen the details of this open licensing they've been talking about.

Seems like it would be a bit of a detriment to them (beyond fair business) if that's the road they take with everything, but maybe that's what they'll do just to enure that the "cloud" issue is a non factor in this and future transactions.
Click to expand...
Surely they can foreclose nvidia any day they want in the windows market - now that Intel are doing discrete GPUs - because they only need to tweak Windows a little with the opaque DirectX abstraction layer to the hardware to make nvidia performance gains negligible to Intel /AMD, with the former being able to eat the most costs, and Geforce Now would be no competition for them in the cloud gaming space IMHO so the deal would be a hollow offer to foreclose the console market and be inline for a new monopoly in the gaming cloud space in the years to follow with the ATVI acquisition.
 
PaintTinJr said:
Surely they can foreclose nvidia any day they want in the windows market - now that Intel are doing discrete GPUs - because they only need to tweak Windows a little with the opaque DirectX abstraction layer to the hardware to make nvidia performance gains negligible to Intel /AMD, with the former being able to eat the most costs, and Geforce Now would be no competition for them in the cloud gaming space IMHO so the deal would be a hollow offer to foreclose the console market and be inline for a new monopoly in the gaming cloud space in the years to follow with the ATVI acquisition.
Click to expand...

LOL. MS and Nvidia are key partners on DX in the first place, MS is doing nothing (at least nothing intentional :messenger_winking_tongue: ) to push Nvidia and gamers in general towards Linux. That isn't even logical. MS and Nvidia are like frenemies at this point, they bicker and fight about each other during these acquisitions but still need each other to maintain product positioning.
 
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MS and Nvidia currently have a decent relationship in my opinion, I suspect that MS is one of Nvidia biggest customers thanks to the LLM supercomputer project that they built.

I am not sure MS will want to compromise that. Search and LLM in general is too lucrative
 
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PaintTinJr said:
Surely they can foreclose nvidia any day they want in the windows market - now that Intel are doing discrete GPUs - because they only need to tweak Windows a little with the opaque DirectX abstraction layer to the hardware to make nvidia performance gains negligible to Intel /AMD, with the former being able to eat the most costs, and Geforce Now would be no competition for them in the cloud gaming space IMHO so the deal would be a hollow offer to foreclose the console market and be inline for a new monopoly in the gaming cloud space in the years to follow with the ATVI acquisition.
Click to expand...
I hope CMA publishes their result faster.
I can't handle these takes anymore.
 
reksveks said:
MS and Nvidia currently have a decent relationship in my opinion, I suspect that MS is one of Nvidia biggest customers thanks to the LLM supercomputer project that they built.

I am not sure MS will want to compromise that. Search and LLM in general is too lucrative
Click to expand...
Yeah, MS is one of the biggest Clients Nvidia Has in DC, thousands of A100s, H100s etc.
 
If the deal goes through, could the Sony board members vote Jim Ryan out for not stopping the deal?
 
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DaGwaphics said:
LOL. MS and Nvidia are key partners on DX in the first place, MS is doing nothing (at least nothing intentional :messenger_winking_tongue: ) to push Nvidia and gamers in general towards Linux. That isn't even logical. MS and Nvidia are like frenemies at this point, they bicker and fight about each other during these acquisitions but still need each other to maintain product positioning.
Click to expand...
I didn't mention anything about linux directly, or intended to indirectly.

And I'm not saying they will, all I was suggesting is that with Microsoft's old lockstep partner Intel (Wintel) now in the discrete GPU business, if Nvidia getting a deal for ATVI content for Geforce Now started to eat into Microsoft's cloud gaming plans/expansion - or outstrip their growth - Microsoft can dethrone Nvidia in preference to Intel or AMD in the Windows Desktop GPU space anytime they want through the HAL and indirectly compete with a successful Geforce Now, by having the capability to easily damage one of Nvidia's lucrative main core business functions. Just like Microsoft would do with any business partner.

If this is a controversial take, then I wonder how people think Microsoft became the behemoth they are today.
 
PaintTinJr said:
I didn't mention anything about linux directly, or intended to indirectly.

And I'm not saying they will, all I was suggesting is that with Microsoft's old lockstep partner Intel (Wintel) now in the discrete GPU business, if Nvidia getting a deal for ATVI content for Geforce Now started to eat into Microsoft's cloud gaming plans/expansion - or outstrip their growth - Microsoft can dethrone Nvidia in preference to Intel or AMD in the Windows Desktop GPU space anytime they want through the HAL and indirectly compete with a successful Geforce Now, by having the capability to easily damage one of Nvidia's lucrative main core business functions. Just like Microsoft would do with any business partner.

If this is a controversial take, then I wonder how people think Microsoft became the behemoth they are today.
Click to expand...
The issue with this take is that MS has a big partnership with nvidia. They wont risk harming nvidia because of that. They need nvidia for their azura.
https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-microsoft-accelerate-cloud-enterprise-ai

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/roundup-of-ai-breakthroughs-by-microsoft-and-nvidia/

Also the model of the 2 companies are complete different.

Xcloud uses gamepass model, while geforce now uses B2P model.
MS would gain more users who will buy their products. Plus they have the advantage of subscription mode.

MS would have to fuck up royally in order for geforce now to overtake them.
 
feynoob said:
The issue with this take is that MS has a big partnership with nvidia. They wont risk harming nvidia because of that. They need nvidia for their azura.
https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-microsoft-accelerate-cloud-enterprise-ai

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/roundup-of-ai-breakthroughs-by-microsoft-and-nvidia/

Also the model of the 2 companies are complete different.

Xcloud uses gamepass model, while geforce now uses B2P model.
MS would gain more users who will buy their products. Plus they have the advantage of subscription mode.

MS would have to fuck up royally in order for geforce now to overtake them.
Click to expand...
AFAIK the first point is moot because the hardware changes regularly because running costs are just as important as hardware costs, and multiple providers can provide what nvidia provide one way or another, and the second issue either confirms that the deal to Nvidia doesn't impact the CMA SLC at all, in fact it makes the situation worse if Microsoft gain more market share by the nvidia deal.
 
PaintTinJr said:
I didn't mention anything about linux directly, or intended to indirectly.
Click to expand...

That would be the direct outcome of intentionally using Windows to hurt Nvidia (pushing developers to support Linux and alternative APIs over DX in order to keep games running well on the GPUs 90% of the market is using). Plus, this is an option, as absurd as it is, that MS could move forward with regardless of whether or not they own CoD/ABK which is beside the point of this probe (this is about what new leverage ABK could give MS).
 
ToadMan said:
The Meta/Within judgement set a precedent that nascent markets had to be treated the same as mature markets because neither the FTC or Meta could satisfy the court with a legally strong definition of nascent vs mature market. The court concluded the same standards applied to both.

So in effect, it doesn't matter that cloud is today a small market. It has companies investing in it, services provided and consumers, so going by the precedent set by Meta/Within, it is entitled to the same level of regulatory oversight and intervention as a mature market.
Click to expand...
Markets have different demographics. The same games that are popular on portables are often not the same games popular on consoles or PC or mobile. Cloud will be the same way. Latency from the Cloud will not bode well for a competitive game like COD. So for them to stop a purchase because of that would be beyond stupid.
 
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