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 .
Status
Not open for further replies.
Activision started an AD campaign against the CMA
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IlGialloMondadori said:
Xbox marketing is crazy bad. I don't know how some of these people still have jobs.
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They would rather waste their marketing on things like this.



Perhaps it could be argued that xbox haven't had much going on the past year so their isn't much to market. But that's kinda up to the marketing team to get creative.

But quite frankly even more marketing for hifi rush is better then whatever they where trying to acheive with the above.
 
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jm89 said:
They would rather waste their marketing on things like this.



Perhaps it could be argued that xbox haven't had much going on the past year so their isn't much to market. But that's kinda up to the marketing team to get creative.

But quite frankly even more marketing for hifi rush is better then whatever they where trying to acheive with the above.
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They should have focused on concessions instead of meaningless ads. The CMA doesn't care about those ads.
 
MasterCornholio said:
Has Sony given any response to the CMAs decision?
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They were awfully quiet all the way since the deal announcement, MS did all the talking for Sony. Actually, quite too much of it (remember Phil bragging about deals with PS?). Even Ryan's statements about the CMA findings are not public PR statements but nescessary opinions reflected in the investigation documents, that where released to the public. Those words were for CMA, not for the press.

When you're dealing with goverment (any goverment, really), you should be as discreet as possible. Money loves silence. I bet Sony as a cloud provider of PS Now played their hand in CMAs descision to some degree, but because Sony is usually very careful with their public statements, we will never know. And that' for the better.

Jim Ryan or Keichiro Yoshida are not running to scream insults on BBC. To be frank, Satya should step up and turn off the mic for Brad Smith too at some point because this corporate buffoon is straight-up destructive with his every post-decision statement.
 
jm89 said:
They would rather waste their marketing on things like this.



Perhaps it could be argued that xbox haven't had much going on the past year so their isn't much to market. But that's kinda up to the marketing team to get creative.

But quite frankly even more marketing for hifi rush is better then whatever they where trying to acheive with the above.
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Xbox helping Playstation in their obligations to market COD is something not on my bingo card.

Also wouldn't the ad negatively affect the marketing deal between Playstation and Activision?
 
Bernoulli said:
Activision started an AD campaign against the CMA
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I saw that. Completely pointless but Activision ticking the box for the sweet 3bn. The only ones they need to work on is the CAT and PR won't work. If MS can't prove the CMA were irrational in reaching their decision, the deal is 1000% goosed.
 
MasterCornholio said:
Has Sony given any response to the CMAs decision?

I do remember them responding to them dropping their argument. Their silence is kind of weird but maybe Sony doesn't bother warring on social media.
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Sony has never said anything publicly about this deal except when Jim Ryan exposed the 3 years deal MS proposed to them.

Everything you have read is from documents published from regulators or leaked by other parties.
You won't get any public comment from them on this matter, of course they're happy with the CMA decision, it's what they wanted.
 
Hitchyhero said:
Cloud gaming isn't going to be as big as the CMA predict to to be. Especially with games like Cod that require almost zero input lag.

It's such an odd choice to refuse the merger on. I can understand other concerns... But not this one.

I know people are saying "yes but we are talking about future potential"..... But who here really sees cloud gaming to be the dominant way to play games in the next 10 years, 20 years ... In particular with online competitive games like Cod? I still see cloud gaming being pretty minute and low in numbers in the future compared to digital downloads etc.
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It's a little hard to believe this bullshit with MS being all in for the 'Cloud' and how much they are losing their shit about it.

Face facts, MS think this is where gaming is going regardless of how wrong gamers think it is (its not like MS know what gamers want anyway, which is why they cannot sell console anywhere near the levels of sony and ninentdo)

The CMA have got this pegged 100%. MS already have the infrastructure if this was allowed to go through they would have a monopoly on cloud gaming, all these deals would make anyone else a customer further strengthening their hold.

No one could reasonably compete with the level of outlay that would be needed to get a foot in should this have happened.
 
POKEYCLYDE said:
They never said that. The 150M players is Switch userbase combined with Nvidia's userbase. You can jump to conclusions on how they'd get CoD running on Switch, be it through cloud or not... but they never said they'd reach that 150M new players through their cloud tech. That's misinformation.
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How do you think they will make the next COD available (releasing in 2023) on Nintendo Switch if the acquisition is approved today?
 
POKEYCLYDE said:
Where do you think Microsoft would be if they decoupled cloud from ultimate? Made cloud streaming a separate subscription. Would they maintain their 70% marketshare or do you think most ultimate subscribers don't care about cloud streaming?
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Numbers will definitely go down -- not sure by how much until we get actual data for Cloud gaming usage by MS. But then the same can be said for PS Plus.

So if both competitors go down in cloud gaming market share, will Microsoft still remain the dominant company in the UK cloud gaming market? That's the question.
 
Heisenberg007 said:
How do you think they will make the next COD available (releasing in 2023) on Nintendo Switch if the acquisition is approved today?
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Microsoft said they can do it natively, no cloud. Make of that what you wish. In my opinion, I don't see a world where a current version could be on Switch natively
 
Varteras said:
I believe that in the event the CAT agrees with the appeal and sends it back to the CMA, new concessions could be offered up.

However, the CMA has kinda made it clear that the only real option outside of the deal being blocked is heavy divestment. Because they do not want to have to police behavioral remedies. Their stance on that did not change even after they dropped console concerns.

So, unless Microsoft is willing to part with a huge chunk of ABK, to which Call of Duty and all associated studios (pretty much all of Activision) is a minimum requirement since the provisional findings, then there will be no other choice to the CMA but total prohibition.

I could be wrong about new concessions being possible after a successful appeal to CAT. Thing is, it probably won't matter. Microsoft might not even get to a decision from the CAT before Activision pulls the plug and demands their $3 billion. Which is why Microsoft would be wise to just walk away, pay up, and get the ball rolling on something else.
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In that case, I think it will. But that stage would only come when (1) MS files an appeal, (2) the appeal gets accepted by CAT, (3) CAT things there are issues and sends it back to CMA for another review.

My point was that they can't file an appeal to CAT and submit new remedies with it for CAT to review and change the decision.
 
POKEYCLYDE said:
They never said that. The 150M players is Switch userbase combined with Nvidia's userbase. You can jump to conclusions on how they'd get CoD running on Switch, be it through cloud or not... but they never said they'd reach that 150M new players through their cloud tech. That's misinformation.
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Yup. total misinformation. It was all Jim's fault. He must have snuck into the ad room and changed the copy. Original ad called it a 150 million people LAN party at Coachella. Damn Jim must have changed it.
 
Dick Jones said:
Microsoft said they can do it natively, no cloud. Make of that what you wish. In my opinion, I don't see a world where a current version could be on Switch natively
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Microsoft did say that. But we all know that's bullshit.

Even the CMA called MS out for that -- that there is no evidence that Nintendo Switch could run modern COD natively, contrary to what MS has been claiming.

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Mozza said:
Difficult to know how strong the worldwide position is, when Microsoft do not release official sales figures for their console, but I can assume with some confidence Sony is ahead by a decent margin, not a surprise as they were ahead in the previous generation too.
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Worldwide, yes. It is 69% PlayStation and 31% Xbox. EU is 80% PlayStation and 20% Xbox. These two figures were shared by Microsoft.

Microsoft did not share UK figures or US figures - because Xbox and PS have pretty much the same market share in those 2 markets, and MS wanted to appear weak.

Chris Dring from UK however shared the data that PS has 56% and Xbox has 44% of the UK console market.
 
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Dick Jones said:
Microsoft said they can do it natively, no cloud. Make of that what you wish. In my opinion, I don't see a world where a current version could be on Switch natively
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To acquire ABK, I imagine Microsoft would build a brand new studio whose sole purpose is to down-port COD releases to Switch. The cost is nothing compared to the value of getting ABK in their stable.
 
The CMA and Microsoft agree on one thing: the cloud gaming market is what matters

In the end, it wasn't really about Call of Duty. It wasn't even really about PlayStation, no matter how much some people want to try to spin this as a console war narrative.

The biggest setback to Microsoft's bid to buy Activision Blizzard – a setback that could quite possibly sink the deal entirely – came largely from an interpretation of Microsoft's own beliefs and logic.

Microsoft, perhaps more than any other company, believes fervently that cloud gaming is the future of this industry. The UK's Competition and Markets Authority's ruling blocking the Activision acquisition is largely based on taking Microsoft seriously on this point – making a ruling based on protecting competition and innovation in a market in its infancy that both the CMA and Microsoft believe will grow to dominate the business landscape in years to come.

This ruling is a product of a very specific timeframe: if Microsoft had tried to make an acquisition of this scale in the games sector five or ten years ago, it's likely that it would have sailed through regulatory scrutiny in every major market with only a few light-touch remedies demanded for consumer protection.

That's because five to ten years ago, the conversation would have been solely about the console market – and if we look only at the console market, the arguments for blocking the deal are very weak. Microsoft trails both Sony and Nintendo, and is severely outgunned by both of its platform holder rivals in terms of successful, high-profile exclusives.

Allowing it to buy Activision Blizzard could actually have made the console market more competitive in the medium to long term – some guarantees about not pulling key multiplatform franchises from rival systems for a negotiated window of time would have been warranted to protect consumers who had bought expensive hardware with a reasonable expectation of access to specific franchises, but there was really no good argument to be made for outright blocking that deal, no matter how loudly Sony decried the idea.

All of this remains true: there are no really good grounds for blocking this deal in the console market. As the CMA itself observed some months ago, pulling Call of Duty or other franchises from major rival platforms would be an incredibly costly move, and likely result in a pyrrhic victory at best.

Call of Duty is a very important game franchise, of course, but let's not overstate the case: given current competitive dynamics in the console industry, any eventuality where Microsoft stopped shipping CoD games on PlayStation would ultimately do far more damage to Call of Duty than it would to PlayStation.

Sony's consoles are better positioned to survive the loss of one of their myriad tentpole franchises than Call of Duty is to survive the loss of its biggest platform. The console market is mature and settled, Sony and Nintendo both have libraries of IP that provide very significant moats for their businesses, and Microsoft getting a major boost from a large acquisition can be reasonably argued to be good for competition and pro-consumer in this space.

However, it's not five years ago, nor ten, and this isn't the landscape in which this deal is being proposed. Cloud gaming is being touted as the industry's technological future, most of all by Microsoft itself – and arguably much more importantly, game subscription services like Game Pass are positioning themselves to be the industry's business model future, in line with how subscription services have become the default business model for every other form of media that has shifted to a cloud-based system.

This remains a sector in its infancy, but Microsoft is by far the dominant player in the market thus far; and the sector overall is quite divorced from the console market in which Microsoft plays third fiddle, since the whole selling point of cloud streaming is that it's device-agnostic and doesn't require dedicated gaming hardware.

This is the nascent market the CMA's ruling seeks to protect, arguing that Microsoft being able to further cement its dominance by locking up the properties belonging to one of the industry's largest publishers would not only extend its market lead to the point of being potentially unassailable, it would also give Microsoft far too much power to set the terms for any other entrants into cloud gaming.

If Microsoft had tried to make an acquisition of this scale in the games sector five or ten years ago, it's likely that it would have sailed through regulatory scrutiny
This double effect would expose consumers to higher prices (because it's very obvious that services like Game Pass will not be sustainable long-term at their current pricing level, and only some serious market competition will provide downward pressure on those prices) and rob them of potential innovation in the space, since even would-be competitors would have to dance to the market leader's tune.

That's the core argument – though I think it's fair to say that everything around it has been muddied and confused quite badly, in part due to a somewhat injudicious use of words by the CMA, which seems to use the term "cloud gaming" to encompass both the actual technology of delivering games over cloud streaming, and the rising importance of subscription business models as a consequence of cloud gaming's adoption.

I understand the reason for grouping these concepts together – business models are path dependent on the underlying technology to a large extent, and subscription services are a much neater fit for cloud streaming than any effort to shoehorn a buy-to-own model into a technology paradigm where ownership doesn't intrinsically mean anything. Still, conflating subscription and cloud issues as if cloud streaming is the actual problem, and not merely the technological underpinning for the subscription business models that will define this nascent market, has created a lot of confusion.

Microsoft was arguably quite smart to try to capitalise on that confusion by proposing remedies that address the cloud streaming aspect, while pointedly ignoring the subscription aspect. I do say arguably; there's another perspective which argues that wilfully misunderstanding the points the CMA is making, and making a public song and dance about remedies which deliberately ignored the CMA's concerns, may have simply fuelled the regulator's distrust of the company.

Microsoft went off and struck deals with companies like Nvidia to put Activision titles on cloud streaming platforms like GeForce Now, then made a butter-wouldn't-melt claim that this was a reasonable remedy to concerns about the cloud gaming market – when of course, all of those services simply let people play games they've purchased on a virtual PC, and do not include any subscription model.

They embrace the new technology while remaining firmly stuck in the old business model – this is quite explicitly not the market the CMA is concerned about. It's quite telling that one of the reasons for ruling to block the deal seems to be that the CMA is deeply unhappy about the idea of ongoing regulatory oversight of any remedies that would satisfy its concerns. Microsoft signing deals and making announcements that look for all the world like PR stunts intended to muddy the waters without actually engaging with the substance of the CMA's issues has probably not helped with the perception that it's a slippery customer for any regulator to have to deal with.

Is it reasonable, though, to argue that letting this deal go through would have distorted the emerging cloud gaming/subscription gaming markets so badly that competition and innovation would have been damaged? After all, Sony's strength in the console market should give it an advantage in the streaming and subscription world too – why shouldn't the same logic apply to both markets?

The sheer financial scale of this deal is precisely why it's being scrutinised so carefully, and it creates arguments of its own
There are good arguments in both directions (and any appeal may hinge on pretty much that question), but once again, it feels like Microsoft's own statements and actions created a catch-22 here. If anyone believes that Activision Blizzard's portfolio is sufficiently important to create a significant distorting effect in this market, it's the company offering to pay the GDP of a small European nation to buy it.

The sheer financial scale of this deal is precisely why it's being scrutinised so carefully, and it creates arguments of its own: this is the largest proposed deal in Microsoft's history, the largest proposed deal in the history of the games industry, and would have been one of the biggest corporate acquisitions in history.

Microsoft was proposing to pay a sum for Activision Blizzard that's significantly larger than most estimates of the overall annual value of the console games industry. It was not doing this in order to try to sell more Xbox consoles than PlayStations, a corner of its business that's barely a rounding error on its financial results. Microsoft believes that the Activision Blizzard portfolio would give it an outsized competitive advantage in a market that's going to be incredibly important in the coming years; the CMA agreed.

To be blunt, I remain a cloud streaming skeptic – at least in the short to medium term – and from that perspective, I think this deal should probably have been approved. Microsoft being more robust competition to Sony's market dominance would be a good thing for consumers, and relatively light-touch remedies would have made the Activision Blizzard perfectly palatable for the console market.

But Microsoft would never have offered to pay this much money just to be more effective at competing in the console market; it believes that cloud streaming and subscription services are the future. Consequently, the CMA looked at Game Pass and PlayStation Plus, it looked at the way that every other media market is being carved up by a handful of giant subscription services (Apple and Spotify for music; Netflix, Disney, Amazon, and some also-rans in video; Amazon effectively as a monopoly in books), and it ruled on the basis that this is the market that actually matters.

For all Microsoft's angry bluster in response, it's hard to deny that on this core issue, it's in perfect agreement with the CMA.
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feynoob said:
The issue is MS vision, not the management. While management is shit, it's MS vision that ruined Xbox one with their entertainment vision.

You can have the best management in the world manage Xbox, and MS would find a way to ruin them.

Isn't that right adamsapple adamsapple ?
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It's a double edged sword. On one hand the current management is directly responsible for the brand not being shut down in 2014 in the first place.

On the other hand they're a liittle TOO lax. I can't imagine projects like Fable, Avowed, Hellblade etc getting THIS much extra time under a publisher like EA.

EA would have probably over-worked the shit out of their studios to get them out in a timely manner, for better or worse.
 
adamsapple said:
It's a double edged sword. On one hand the current management is directly responsible for the brand not being shut down in 2014 in the first place.

On the other hand they're a liittle TOO lax. I can't imagine projects like Fable, Avowed, Hellblade etc getting THIS much extra time under a publisher like EA.

EA would have probably over-worked the shit out of their studios to get them out in a timely manner, for better or worse.
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Also what happened with ABK. They should have done more.
 
adamsapple said:
It's a double edged sword. On one hand the current management is directly responsible for the brand not being shut down in 2014 in the first place.

On the other hand they're a liittle TOO lax. I can't imagine projects like Fable, Avowed, Hellblade etc getting THIS much extra time under a publisher like EA.

EA would have probably over-worked the shit out of their studios to get them out in a timely manner, for better or worse.
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Agree. I don't advocate overworking anyone, but Xbox first party output just doesn't measure up with the rest of the industry. Studio management has been an issue, imo.
 
So now the next big milestones are the EU decision by May 22nd, China's decision, the end of the current acquisition proposal contract in July and potentially the FTC case starting in August.

What do you think it's gonna happen?
EU has probably the same identical ideas and concerns of the CMA but they were afraid to block and were considering an extensive behavioural solution.
But now that both CMA and FTC want to block isn't it easier to score big antitrust points by just blocking and killing everything definetly?
Microsoft can't go ahead appealing half world for years. It makes much less sense than before to look weak to try to find a super complicated behavioural solution.

About China....well it's no secret that you won't get a democratic and independent decision from them...in this sense I wonder how Microsoft and Activision positioning this deal as a way for the western world to try to keep at bay the Chinese onslaught on gaming will ring on them. And we have potentially a chinese company like Netease lobbying against them.

Then in July the acquisition proposal must be renewed by the parts but the conditions around the deal have totally changed in 1 year and half. Now it means being stucked with business strategies locked for an other year, with a low chance of success anyway. It's hard to justify that for companies whose existence does not depend on this deal.

I think that the most rational way of proceeding is to wait for EU to decide, keep the option to appeal to CMA and then decide by July if an exit strategy is the most logical thing.
 
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jm89 said:
They would rather waste their marketing on things like this.



Perhaps it could be argued that xbox haven't had much going on the past year so their isn't much to market. But that's kinda up to the marketing team to get creative.

But quite frankly even more marketing for hifi rush is better then whatever they where trying to acheive with the above.
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I wonder if part of that advertising deal included some pro MS articles that came out after the decision 🤔

UK tech scene raises alarm over block to Microsoft-Activision deal
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https://www.ft.com/content/b4aa87d0-9a56-4f4a-a823-b0e168c1d83b
 
ZehDon said:
To acquire ABK, I imagine Microsoft would build a brand new studio whose sole purpose is to down-port COD releases to Switch. The cost is nothing compared to the value of getting ABK in their stable.
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lmao

So they would build a studio from scratch(speculation), port down with content parity and crossplay (speculation), an yet that's not the type of assurances they are giving is it?

Because the question goes back to, why doesn't Activision do that already if it's so simple? Kotick doesn't like money? Because it's very convenient to talk about the Switch userbase in full terms.

It's just MS being deceitful, again.
 
Bojanglez said:
I wonder if part of that advertising deal included some pro MS articles that came out after the decision 🤔

[h3][/h3]
https://www.ft.com/content/b4aa87d0-9a56-4f4a-a823-b0e168c1d83b
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They do seem to be putting out some pro/positive leaning articles for the acquistion.

I'm pretty sure the FT also posted an article a few days before the CMA decision date, saying something along the lines of the CMA is expected to support it.

I always thought the deal was getting blocked on the cloud SLC, but those articles a few days before the decision hinting at it going microsofts way had me reconsidering. They lost a bit a credibility.
 
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Dick Jones said:
I'm only using the figures that Xbox provided. If you are claiming Microsoft are misleading, maybe you should contact them.
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They are not misleading as long as you don't confuse their division MAU with Xbox console, which was at ~50 million according to documents.
 
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Thirty7ven said:
lmao

So they would build a studio from scratch(speculation), port down with content parity and crossplay (speculation), an yet that's not the type of assurances they are giving is it?

Because the question goes back to, why doesn't Activision do that already if it's so simple? Kotick doesn't like money? Because it's very convenient to talk about the Switch userbase in full terms.

It's just MS being deceitful, again.
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This is the thing, Kotick has proven he knows how to run a gaming business far better than anyone currently at Microsoft - he's not forcing his studios to port COD to the switch and he is unwilling to put the COD franchise anywhere near gamepass. I wonder why.

It's not like they don't already have a version of COD out there for people who like "free" games (better yet, that version of COD is actually free) in addition to a native mobile version of the game who want/need portability.
 
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MasterCornholio said:
They should have focused on concessions instead of meaningless ads. The CMA doesn't care about those ads.
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The CMA doesn't care about concessions. They had a a mission just like Khan of the FTC are is trying to flex power. Any concession needed had already be made. If you read the CMA report the entire thing is full of inaccuracies,flat out lies and BS. It shows how incompetent government agencies are and how they need to modernize or hire people who actually know different Industries
 
Foilz said:
The CMA doesn't care about concessions. They had a a mission just like Khan of the FTC are is trying to flex power. Any concession needed had already be made. If you read the CMA report the entire thing is full of inaccuracies,flat out lies and BS. It shows how incompetent government agencies are and how they need to modernize or hire people who actually know different Industries
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Violin Player GIF
 
Foilz said:
The CMA doesn't care about concessions. They had a a mission just like Khan of the FTC are is trying to flex power. Any concession needed had already be made. If you read the CMA report the entire thing is full of inaccuracies,flat out lies and BS. It shows how incompetent government agencies are and how they need to modernize or hire people who actually know different Industries
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The people at the CMA know far more about the industry than you and the vast majority of people here do.

Microsoft didn't agree to any concessions and ignored their requests/concerns so here we are.
 
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jm89 said:
They would rather waste their marketing on things like this.



Perhaps it could be argued that xbox haven't had much going on the past year so their isn't much to market. But that's kinda up to the marketing team to get creative.

But quite frankly even more marketing for hifi rush is better then whatever they where trying to acheive with the above.
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I can turn on my tv to watch some programs and chances are I'll see a PS5 advert at least twice in a half hour block. I can't recall the last time I've seen an Xbox commercial on tv. Maybe for Halo like a year and a half ago?

The Xbox One had more advertisement than the Series consoles do.
 
Dick Jones said:
Did MS differentiate this when informing their shareholders in quarterly reports?
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It was in the CMA documents I believe. Not like it's rocket science, the console has the userbase it has. Obviously across their games in multiple devices, that now include Bethesda and Minecraft... they will have a big number.
 
Phil Spencer's time at Microsoft is up. His endless PR is a significant part of why this deal fails. No. He's not out tomorrow or next month but being part of a 2.5 Billion loss is the reason he'll be shown the door.

I'm sure someone will tell me I'm wrong because reasons, but outside of that bubble where Phil is a deity, this is a major blow for XBOX not just in terms of reputation but to the tune of billions.
 
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