Here's some industry news for you: the UK's Competition and Markets Authority has announced today they've blocked Microsoft's takeover of Activision.
Interestingly, the main concern of the UK CMA here seems to be around Cloud Gaming specifically. As they said in their statement "Microsoft has a strong position in cloud gaming services and the evidence available to the CMA showed that Microsoft would find it commercially beneficial to make Activision’s games exclusive to its own cloud gaming service." and that "The deal would reinforce Microsoft’s advantage in the market by giving it control over important gaming content such as Call of Duty, Overwatch, and World of Warcraft. The evidence available to the CMA indicates that, absent the merger, Activision would start providing games via cloud platforms in the foreseeable future.".
Quite a big blow to the $68.7 billion deal!
We saw Microsoft attempt to get around these concerns, with various Cloud Gaming deals being announced over the last year but it seems that just hasn't been enough. An interesting part of the CMA announcement was on a proposal submitted by Microsoft, to address some of their concerns, this proposal was to set out "requirements governing what games must be offered by Microsoft to what platforms and on what conditions over a ten-year period" but one of the shortcomings noted was "It was not sufficiently open to providers who might wish to offer versions of games on PC operating systems other than Windows.". Nice to see.
The UK certainly isn't the only country to be concerned by the power this deal would hand to Microsoft with the US FTC also trying to block it and according to Reuters earlier this year there were no substantive settlement talks on it. So now with the UK blocking it, that will likely boost the FTC's argument to block it too. On top of that, there's also the EU regulators decision coming up next month.
Microsoft, naturally, will be attempting to appeal the decision.
What are your thoughts?
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Quoting: massatt212i dont think microsoft cant be worst that Activision
Activision doesn't have it's own quasi-monopoly on the desktop that it could abuse to cripple competitors though ;)
StoneColdSpider Apr 26, 2023
The last thing we need is getting a huge walled forest and locking every game behind the M$ Store and Xbox console.....
Thank Lord Gaben for emulation....... It might be all I play in the future if this is going to be the future........
QuoteThat surely must be referring to Linux and macOS, as there aren't exactly many other PC OSes that are relevant in terms of marketshare.
- It was not sufficiently open to providers who might wish to offer versions of games on PC operating systems other than Windows.
Quoting: rea987IDK, there are so many abandonware titles related with Activision due to licensing issues, I would prefer Activision to be absorbed by Microsoft which might lessen the issue a bit.
Damn, there goes my hope for The Lost Vikings 3.
Quoting: win8linuxThis particular shortcoming listed by the CMA is rather interesting:Wow, this really does demonstrate a big improvement over their past dealings with the games industry!
QuoteThat surely must be referring to Linux and macOS, as there aren't exactly many other PC OSes that are relevant in terms of marketshare.
- It was not sufficiently open to providers who might wish to offer versions of games on PC operating systems other than Windows.
Quoting: ModestasMicrosoft should be allowed to buy activision if not when sony should stop buying gaming studios and making exclusive deals behind closed doors. So fuck them both
I mean I agree with what to do with them both, but just because Sony has gotten away with things doesn't mean MS gets a free pass.
And the people opposed to this deal are not even into cloud gaming, all their other arguments failed, it's not even a popular choice for gamers, but yet they made a ruling on something that is not very marketable or harmful to anyone. This is plain simple grasping at straws.
That's the future, 2012 game still costing $60.00, Activision is a dying company, maybe microsoft should just target Blizzard and try make a FPS thats better than COD.
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