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Microsoft / Activision deal prevented to protect innovation and choice in cloud gaming

A whole lot of cashflow is likely to remain on their balance sheet during what is and will remain a tough period economically, plus they announced positive earnings last night.
Folks truly do not understand just how tiny gaming is for Microsoft compared to the rest of the company. MS did absolutely great last quarter. But if you're in the Xbox HW business, yesterday was brutal.
 

Jigsaah

Gold Member
They can appeal, but they will lose. CMA appeals go to CAT to determine if the CMA "acted irrationally, illegally or with procedural impropriety". If CAT doesn't find that this occurred, the appeal is squashed. If CAT does take issue with one of these points, then the case goes back to the CMA and they re-investigate and re-submit findings.

Additionally, if one or more of four regulatory bodies (CMA, EU, FTC, or SAMR - which is China) block the acquisition, then the acquisition is dead. This is according to the SEC filing for the acquisition. It doesn't matter what the other regulatory bodies say.
Ok I see, so it does haveto be unaminous. So the only way Microsoft can revitalize the deal is if they can prove irrationality as I don't see the other criteria being very feasible.
 

DenchDeckard

Moderated wildly
I just wish this was over....and it's not going to be for a long time now. Time to put threads on ignore for me haha

I'm just going to ignore all this stuff and enjoy the awesome games that are coming out. What a great 2023 we are having so far. MS show us some awesome games at your event ina little over a month. SOny, show us some in May hopefully. Let's crack on.
 

Nydius

Member
Man, last night before I went to bed the last thing I read was a tech journal tweet (not a console warrior fanboy) saying the CMA approval was likely “strongly in favor” of Xbox.

Another thing journalists got wrong, I guess. I find it funny that the CMA’s biggest concern was never COD, which makes up a very small portion of their document, but rather cloud gaming. That means this is a bigger win for Apple, Google, and nVidia (and maybe AWS) than it is Sony, who really hasn’t even messed with cloud gaming.

But fanboys are gonna fanboy and blame Sony when this decision is clearly driven by issues of Microsoft’s position in cloud and mobile spaces.
 
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ShaiKhulud1989

Gold Member
0EXDoYZ.jpg
Well, if moneygrabbing with your 'dad's' pocket everything in the industry that's not screwed to the floor is 'cutting edge of technology' (I am not native speaker but even for me this sounds so weird)... I'd say, good riddance, Colt.
 

jroc74

Phone reception is more important to me than human rights
MS bought Bethesda, is about to have a highly anticipated game in Starfield come out later this year....that could have been on PlayStation if MS didn't acquire Bethesda.

Now it's exclusive to Xbox and PC..

MS bought Ninja Theory...will have Hell Blade 2 ... might not be as massive but will definitely be one of the best looking games this gen...that could have been on PlayStation if MS didn't acquire Ninja Theory.

Now it's exclusive to Xbox and PC..

...but MS aren't being allowed to compete...because they aren't being allowed to buy one of the biggest 3rd party publishers with a massive game and a ton of studios.

:rolleyes:
 

Jigsaah

Gold Member
Oh and Microsoft was planning on pushing the deal through without the FTC approval? Well that's not happening now. CMA did a Steph Curry-esque head fake it seems.

MSFT was counting so many eggs.
 

Del_X

Member
Actually 70b was a steal because avb lost alot of value because of ongoing legal problems. Afik it was close to 100b peak with the premium it would have been worth like 130b to buy.
Market cap is now $60BN

That haircut is likely to grow.
 
Well, if moneygrabbing with your 'dad's' pocket everything in the industry that's not screwed to the floor is 'cutting edge of technology' (I am not native speaker but even for me this sounds so weird)... I'd say, good riddance, Colt.

Day one parity for console, PC
Crossplay
Cloud streaming in the most regions
Single ecosystem
Family plans
Gamepass
ID@Xbox
ID@Azure
FPS on console with Halo CE
XBL/matchmaking with Halo 2
HDD with OG Xbox
Broadband with OG Xbox
Adaptive controller
Direct X
Kinect
Hololens

Yeah nothing cutting edge...
 
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mckmas8808

Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
Absolute awful take, just ignorant and dumb and the guy should stick to counting numbers.

Regulators are trying to prevent what happened to social media, when for example Facebook bought Instagram and WhatsApp and killed innovation for good. It had to come from China (Tik tok) because nobody in the west was willing to compete.

You have to prevent bs, not fix it.

FINALLY!!!!!!!!!! Somebody gets it!
 

Jigsaah

Gold Member
So even with all the offerings Microsoft made about COd to nintendo, Steam and Sony...and they even had some cloud deal from what I'm reading. Where is the cloud concern coming from? AWS?

Even Nvidia was cool with it. Odd.
 
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BeardGawd

Banned
Absolute awful take, just ignorant and dumb and the guy should stick to counting numbers.

Regulators are trying to prevent what happened to social media, when for example Facebook bought Instagram and WhatsApp and killed innovation for good. It had to come from China (Tik tok) because nobody in the west was willing to compete.

You have to prevent bs, not fix it.
Wait what? Facebook does not have a monopoly on social media. Snapchat, Twitter, Tik Tok, LinkedIn, Youtube, Twitch, etc... there are plenty of places other than Facebook or Insagram. And they all have their distinct niche.
 
No one's stopping that from happening. Microsoft could easily facilitate a deal to have it on gamepass day 1 and Valve could easily have it put on Steam. Microsoft buying Activision isn't the only way to make this happen.
I mean... Didn't they just try to facilitate a deal to have it on gamepass? 😆
 
No they tried to facilitate a deal to take games from another company for 70b.

It wouldn't take 70b to have it on gamepass day 1.
I'm just messing with you lol. Honestly though, it's still weird to me that it's alright to make exclusivity deals but not at wholesale. We literally watch games be taken from Xbox players all the time. It's even been aired out during these proceedings that deals are made specifically so that a dev or publisher can't work with MS if they choose to accept a certain amount of money from Sony. I just wish we would make it all fair game. Let everyone make whatever deals they want then.
 

nial

Gold Member
They don't need to buy anyone. If they can't make it work with the stable of teams and IP they have now, then more teams and IP won't help them. Microsoft leadership needs to see this as a wake up call and evaluate whether the right people are in charge across Xbox. Look at what they did to Halo, how can anyone be confident about COD or anything else under the same leadership. I say this as a person who was on board Xbox almost from day one and bailed this gen because of how lame it's gotten. They need to fix this and can't just bury it under piles of more cash, Nintendo, Sony, and even Valve are lapping them and the gap is growing not shrinking.
It's the result of Microsoft, unlike Sony and Nintendo, having an inept and almost non-existent console game development culture. They had 23 YEARS to figure this out, but they just don't care.
 
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