thicc_girls_are_teh_best
Member
From reading that it's the CMA who seem to not agree with Google's claim, but that maybe the EC agreed with Google.
Honestly it doesn't matter much if the EC has a change of opinion on this particular aspect; the CMA still have their stance on the acquisition and are favoring structural remedies despite believing MS would probably not leverage ABK IP to limit rival PC gaming competitors by tying Windows & xCloud distribution tightly (although there are historical precedents to validate the worry; MS did exactly this with Internet Explorer in the Wintel days).
And that is specifically towards PC operating systems, not OSes in general (which could theoretically be used as a segue to mean other competing gaming devices that just happen to run their own OSes). That Twitter account is inferring a lot from very little. And I don't think either regulatory body would be concerned about Windows because PC gaming is utterly dominated by Steam anyway. Unless Microsoft decided to withhold API access and technical support from Valve for maintaining Steam (thereby causing Steam to perform worst on Windows PCs for reasons outside of Valve's control), whatever they would want to do with ABK's IP for Windows gaming would probably fall under fair game. Plus, MS have financial incentives to keep the content available on other PC storefronts anyway, and Valve have been doing a lot of work to get better Windows compatibility in Linux.
All that said, PC is a very different market business-wise than console; MS can say they have no financial incentive to withhold ABK content from Sony or Nintendo, but they actually do. They don't "need" gaming revenue & profits the same way Sony & Nintendo do, and they have already argued hypothetical situations where COD is not on Sony platforms but Sony would still be "just fine". They know what a marketing and mindshare win they could have by tying COD to Game Pass for Day 1 releases; even if they offer the opportunity for Sony to put them in PS+ Day 1, Sony loses because of all the revenue left on the table, and the pressure created to then add even more 3P and 1P AAA games Day 1 to the service or else lose in a sub service battle they'd have been dragged into, therein also handing control of messaging and optics to Microsoft in the process. Which would help Microsoft gain mindshare, then market share, and potentially make way more in revenue while being able to sustain forfeited direct sales revenue with the strategy because of all the money the other parts of their business make.
Conclusions the CMA and potentially the EC have WRT MS's use of ABK assets with Windows & xCloud have little to no bearing on concerns relating to devices outside of that scope.
Lol the ol "persecution complex" fallback... It doesn't really work like everyone that pulls it out thinks that it does.
Anyway, this is derailing the thread.
A lot of people should be happy with the CMAs conclusions. They are going to kill this merger.
But I do wonder who the CMA would allow to buy acti should Microsoft do agree to spin them off?
Dunno. Does Microsoft have to sell it to another company so should they divest Activision? I don't see why they can't just have Activision act as its own company, or would there need to be additional steps done to enable that?
The issue I think comes up if MS sells Activision & COD to another company is that, said other company is now consolidating a rather notable slice of a publishing arm, and one of the biggest IP in the industry. And, that publisher would still have every incentive to enable the same bidding for exclusive access & content through marketing deals that seemingly spurred on (at least partially) this entire mess of an acquisition attempt in the first place.
I think there's a way for all sides to be satisfied in case of a divestiture. Let MS retain partial ownership of the divested portion, have the divested portion operate as its own corporation. Let MS, Sony & Nintendo purchase publishing licenses of Activision games for their own platforms; these also help enable funding of versions of the games for their platforms. That way, MS, Sony & Nintendo can do marketing with the games as they see fit, for their platforms only though. The divested company handles publishing on PC & mobile; MS gets a portion of that revenue through having partial ownership of the company.
The divested company can still obtain additional funding through other means, but Microsoft has a vested interest to fund PC & mobile development alongside Xbox versions of games. MS, Sony & Nintendo can option to fund development of certain other games, they can't block the others out of buying publishing rights (and funding versions) for their own consoles, though. And for all such, Activision still develop PC & mobile versions that they publish themselves. Impose content stipulations for anyone buying Day 1 rights into a sub service, such as inability to buy MTX & DLC content for live-service games or only getting Trails for single-player games (the rest of the game gets unlocked in timed intervals, as long as the user stays subbed to the service). Still gotta create a favorable environment for direct sales revenue after all, as an independent corporation.
How much of this can Microsoft actually argue in favor of, how much can they convince shareholders to OK it, and how much can they convince regulators to accept it as part of a structural remedy process is up in the air. And that's considering they care enough by this point to want the deal to go through, versus just walking away from it altogether.
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