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

Do you believe the deal will be approved?


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Ah I see. So they could still accept the "Small Divestiture"?

I wonder what this could be.

I mean it has to have something to do with cloud right?

Maybe, Microsoft has to offer games to Luna? That might not be considered small though.

Yeah I mean MS basically indicated to CMA they are willing to re-submit which starts things over.

CMA wouldn't have that submission yet.

MS told CNBC they have a divestiture plan they are confident in, CNBC mis-reported that was somehow "Accepted" already.
 
Deal will most likely get closed now. Devs/executives will be happy for the nice bonuses coming along with the deal, I can see devs eventually leaving once they get the nice payout.

In terms of future shareholder value though....i'm bearish. MSFT has proven to be not good managers for their acquisitions save for Minecraft. Wont surprise me if COD within 10 years goes the way of Halo with MSFT as managers which will lead to eventual write downs of the asset they're purchasing. MSFT is a great company overall and maybe other divisions will offset losses, but really no confidence to increase value for gaming division. I honestly think Netflix or even Steam (valve) will be better stewards of the eventual gamepass/cloud style gaming. Sony may end up doing a partnership with Netflix to counter this...

Majority of Activision value comes from COD and you have to believe that Microsoft will continue to make COD a valuable brand for the next 30 years for this deal to workout for all parties...I don't see it.
 
Appeal and then getting trashed again?
They don't have a case on the US bro, it's just waste of taxpayer money at this point.
Kevin Hart GIF by PeacockTV

yeah its time for her to stop wasting tax payers money and resources. She had her shot and missed. Time to move on. Even the CMA has returned to the table. Which shocked me.
Incoming tax dollar wasting, ego-driven, vanity appeals battle.
The FTC needs to stop wasting American tax dollars protecting a foreign company on this b.s. They should really be focused on the Albertsons/Winn Dixie merger. 8 dollars for a dozen eggs is ridiculous.
I'm not a US citizen, so it's not costing me a cent.
If the government fucks up and costs a corporation, or a person Money in a frivolous court case then they have to pay the price. Yes, the tax payers pay the bill, and if they don't like it they can vote that same government out at the next election.
Tax money going to good use!
You do realize you are saying you should pay the cost right? The FTC gets it's money from tax payers.
 
Ah I see. So they could still accept the "Small Divestiture"?

I wonder what this could be.

I mean it has to have something to do with cloud right?

Maybe, Microsoft has to offer games to Luna? That might not be considered small though.
The two I have seen suggested so far are firstly, removing the cloud component from Gamepass, so it would be a simple static console gaming service and secondly, spinning off ABK UK as a *preemptive* measure, so that if the CMA required divestment, the UK entity is already in place to be sold off.

The first would, presumably, completely remove the Cloud concerns, although MS might not be too happy about it. The second seems unlikely.
 
Like I said, this is not the normal course of action from the CMA in fact its unprecedented but you go quoting their PR machine if it makes you cope better.
As apposed to you quoting your brand's PR machine from yesterday to today?

Ironic.

I think you're the one in need of some coping in the past 3-4 hours from yesterday.
 
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if you don't mind absolutely awful controls I guess...
"Killzone 2, for people who like bad controls". they should have used that for their cover art PR speech... maybe it would have sold more than a million copies through honest marketing lol

You are believing that every game has to be COD clone. Killzone 2 is another type of game, it is not meant to be played like Doom or COD!

I hate that people can't separate different types of games! It's like saying that all platformers need to play like Super Mario!
 
EA would be a good buy next for MS to make a move on Europe. I expect EA's football game to continue to do well without the FIFA name or at least it's very possible to do so. If EA should see a drop someone like MS could buy EA and reunite the FIFA brand.

More likely MS buy the FIFA brand and use a new studio to make it.
 

Why did you quote all of those messages? Lina Khan's strategy of taking tech companies to court and losing is being critiqued as wasteful and pointless in many circles. Especially since the FTC has ignored more impactful consolidations in sectors like agriculture. The FTC allowed farm equipment manufacturers to consolidate which has reduced options and increased costs for farmers while it tilts at tech. Do you think that an appeal is an intelligent use of public funds after the FTC's abysmal showing in court?
 
For millions of casual players COD and FIFA is a deciding factor in choosing a console. Just owning marketing rights is seriously a big deal. Owning the IP, that's huge.

Will it be the same now that Microsoft owns it? You might think that nothing should change, but who knows?

FIFA is also no more, will EA Soccer (whatever is called) be enough for consumers without the FIFA brand? it's going to be interesting how these two games do in the future.
 
Why did you quote all of those messages? Lina Khan's strategy of taking tech companies to court and losing is being critiqued as wasteful and pointless in many circles. Especially since the FTC has ignored more impactful consolidations in sectors like agriculture. The FTC allowed farm equipment manufacturers to consolidate which has reduced options and increased costs for farmers while it tilts at tech. Do you think that an appeal is an intelligent use of public funds after the FTC's abysmal showing in court?
You can say how much wasteful you want to say. I don't have any love for the lady or her politics, but building case law is a thing.

I will quote everyone who uses the newest RSS feed narrative™

As if any mofos care about taxes as they support one of the largest tax evading companies out there.
 
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I prefer a healthy company who is not in need of a rescue, to remain their healthy third party selves. I don't like industry consolidation of the largest third party players and IPs no matter who's doing it. Especially by platform holders.

I'm an heathen, I know.
Absolutely respect your opinion, I'm selfish in that I have gamepass and would love all Activision titles on there. Honestly though I can't believe the CMA are in talks with Microsoft again I thought it was dead given what power the CMA has (although I don't agree with their reasons to block).
 
You are believing that every game has to be COD clone. Killzone 2 is another type of game, it is not meant to be played like Doom or COD!

I hate that people can't separate different types of games! It's like saying that all platformers need to play like Super Mario!

"it's not meant to be played like..."

what the fuck are you talking about? what do you do in a shooter 90% of the time? move the camera and aim at shit.

what feels like pure garbage in Killzone 2? moving the camera and aiming at shit.

why does it feel like pure garbage? because it has more than 160ms of engine lag, add on to that at a minimum another 10ms on the best modern TVs, and if you're on a Sony TV more like 20ms... if you're on an older TV it's in the 30+ms range of additional screen latency on top.

a shooter with more than 100ms of engine latency will feel like ass, simple as that.

also Killzone is just slowed down CoD... so double that "what the fuck are you talking about?"... if you are meant to play any shooter out there like CoD, it is Killzone 🤣
 
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Absolutely respect your opinion, I'm selfish in that I have gamepass and would love all Activision titles on there. Honestly though I can't believe the CMA are in talks with Microsoft again I thought it was dead given what power the CMA has (although I don't agree with their reasons to block).

Absolutely. Just the fact that CMA have agreed to reopen the discussion is an unheard of thing. They didn't offer this for the Giphy case to my knowledge.

Irrespective of the FTC lawsuit going in MS's favor, the deal is a lot closer to closing today than it was before the weekend.
 
Absolutely. Just the fact that CMA have agreed to reopen the discussion is an unheard of thing. They didn't offer this for the Giphy case to my knowledge.

Irrespective of the FTC lawsuit going in MS's favor, the deal is a lot closer to closing today than it was before the weekend.
but it doesn't sound like that's what's actually going on? based on their statement today CMA is inviting Microsoft/ABK to submit a new proposal to them, negotiations are not being re-opened on the existing deal
 
You can say how much wasteful you want to say.. I don't have any love for the lady or her politics, but building case law is a thing.

I will quote everyone who uses the newest RSS feed narrative™

As if any mofos care about taxes as they support one of the largest tax evading companies out there.


Which RSS feed do you get your conspiracy theory about everybody who disagrees with your view being a shill or posting from a script? Your narrative is way more embarrassing than anything else in the thread. The reality is that only a handful of people in this thread have any meaningful understanding of the deal. Almost everybody is pulling from the same handful of articles so it's logical that both sides are going to repeat talking points over a thread as long as this.
 
Absolutely respect your opinion, I'm selfish in that I have gamepass and would love all Activision titles on there. Honestly though I can't believe the CMA are in talks with Microsoft again I thought it was dead given what power the CMA has (although I don't agree with their reasons to block).
The CMA could also be licking their chops at the new information made public now, that was revealed and collated in this thread here:

They know a restructure would kick it back to all regulatory bodies. This isn't a sign of weakness (that even myself thought at the newswire manipulation yesterday) than some think it is. This actually lines up with the CMAs date later this year.

but it doesn't sound like that's what's actually going on? based on their statement today CMA is inviting Microsoft/ABK to submit a new proposal to them, negotiations are not being re-opened on the existing deal
Exactly. New proposal. Now with more FTC revealed flavors.
 
Absolutely. Just the fact that CMA have agreed to reopen the discussion is an unheard of thing. They didn't offer this for the Giphy case to my knowledge.

Irrespective of the FTC lawsuit going in MS's favor, the deal is a lot closer to closing today than it was before the weekend.

Why is this 'unheard of' when they say it is Microsoft's right to present a restructured deal? This is part of the process.
 
Which RSS feed do you get your conspiracy theory about everybody who disagrees with your view being a shill or posting from a script? Your narrative is way more embarrassing than anything else in the thread. The reality is that only a handful of people in this thread have any meaningful understanding of the deal. Almost everybody is pulling from the same handful of articles so it's logical that both sides are going to repeat talking points over a thread as long as this.
Ok.

Why is this 'unheard of' when they say it is Microsoft's right to present a restructured deal? This is part of the process.
Agencylife Bingo GIF by MX Player
 
Why is this 'unheard of' when they say it is Microsoft's right to present a restructured deal? This is part of the process.

I can't find any instance of where they said it's MC's 'right' to present a restructured case, but again if they didn't invite it, they could have just let it go to the CAT appeal instead of pausing litigation with mutual agreements with Microsoft.

With Giphy, they just let it go to CAT and the CAT agreed with most of their evaluation. This is already very different than that case in terms of how CMA proceeded.
 
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The CMA could also be licking their chops at the new information made public now, that was revealed and collated in this thread here:

They know a restructure would kick it back to all regulatory bodies. This isn't a sign of weakness (that even myself thought at the newswire manipulation yesterday) than some think it is. This actually lines up with the CMAs date later this year.


Exactly. New proposal. Now with more FTC revealed flavors.

Yeah dude. The regulator which already blocked the deal and is based in a jurisdiction where it's decision can only be reversed if an independent tribunal finds a procedural flaw in it's decision making is "licking it's chops" to block the merger a second time because gaffer "Heisenberg007" collated a list of gotchas from redacted documents which they likely had copies of during the original review.

Absolutely logical. Everybody else are reading off scripts from the official Xbox discord.
 
Yeah dude. The regulator which already blocked the deal and is based in a jurisdiction where it's decision can only be reversed if an independent tribunal finds a procedural flaw in it's decision making is "licking it's chops" to block the merger a second time because gaffer "Heisenberg007" collated a list of gotchas from redacted documents which they likely had copies of during the original review.

Absolutely logical. Everybody else are reading off scripts from the official Xbox discord.
You said it.
 
After listening to the ex-CMA head, I was thinking of one more possibility:

Microsoft suggested restructuring the deal is within their legal rights. If the CMA did not say, "we're open to having that discussion," Microsoft/CAT could accuse the CMA that they acted unreasonably.

Perhaps that was the reason of yesterday's statement by the CMA.

(not huge chances of this but still technically a possibility).
Oh they tried to bait the cma into "unreasonbility"and the cma called their bluff?
 
it's amazing how the narrative has reached the point that they're actually arguing that Microsoft should be allowed to do whatever they want because it's too expensive for tax payers to fight it… yeah that definitely won't result in a corpocratic dystopian future e.g. Jennifer Government
I'm sure average american Joe is thrilled his hard work earned money payed to the government, is well spend on the video game industry.
 
You can say how much wasteful you want to say. I don't have any love for the lady or her politics, but building case law is a thing.

I will quote everyone who uses the newest RSS feed narrative™

As if any mofos care about taxes as they support one of the largest tax evading companies out there.
I'm sure average american Joe is thrilled his hard work earned money payed to the government, is well spend on the video game industry.
got another one for you DeepEnigma DeepEnigma seems they've worked on the phrasing a bit though, as if the government doesn't waste money on a lot dumber stuff than trying to rein in big tech :rolleyes:
 
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