Cloud Gaming Platform Calls Out Decision To Block Xbox's Activision Blizzard Deal

I get made fun of all the time online for saying cloud is the future of the non hardcore gamers and now it is the main reason for the block and certain people are claiming the legitimacy of cloud. I mean really? Kind burns me a bit, side rant over, cloud is huge and even without this deal MS will own a large share of it cause they have invested in the infrastructure. That should hardly be punished. The whole market share argument is lame, it’s not MS’s fault Nintendo and Sony don’t fund the tech and want to sell $70 dollar pieces of plastic with half to no data on it. At first when i read this this morning i was like maybe Xbox is just done and can’t win from losing and now after sitting on it all day, all i want to do is double down on everything they offer and make sure they know us fans are here for what they are seeking to do. No company is without its fault and greed but MS has been very very pro consumer of late and i ain’t leaving that behind and i hope all of you aren’t either.

@StrawberryWave is it Apples fault they sold more iPhones than Nokia’s? No, I ain’t arguing market share is lame to have i am arguing it’s a lame excuse as to why something can’t grow and expand cause of its current or potential marketshare. Keep up or fall 70-80-90% behind. Happened to windows phones and even Xbox console sales it ain’t Sony’s fault they have a more popular console than Xbox, Xbox shouldn’t be given special deals cause they are lagging behind. Follow the plot better?

If the deal goes through then these smaller cloud service providers even have a chance to compete in this marketplace. It was because of this deal so many games were offered on this services. UK wants to regulate cloud market but Microsoft is the only player that has the infrastructure to capitalize this market even without Activision merger. Both Amazon and Google have tried their hand and failed. Only Nvidia is standing. Instead of blocking the deal they should have provided infrastructure for upcoming cloud services to easily compete with the big corporations. Why should Microsoft be punished as they invested billions of dollars on cloud infrastructure while others sat their playing with their baby toys. This whole drama is pointless.

It mentions how its team and users "disagree" with the decision and stand behind the statement made by Microsoft

I don't mean to disrespect Boosteroid or any of its users, but unfortunately no two hoots will be given about their position by the big regulators, none, nada.
Microsoft should shift its focus back to Xbox Games Studios and their current pipeline, same with us Xbox owners. Yes it might be disappointing that the deal was blocked by the CMA, however pining hopes on the EU Regulators to approve it as point of fighting back by Microsoft will be like chasing clouds.

There is however a sliver of hope that once Sony and Nintendo accrue an unassailable lead in the Cloud Gaming business, Regulators will mostly approve any acquisitions Microsoft will pursue, and I'm not even joking 😅.
Until then, better make use of what they've got.

@Widey85
I think the CMA have shown that even if Nintendo and Sony used their exclusives to take a majority of the cloud market, the CMA would talk about the "nascent quantum computing" or "fridge-based OS game ecosystem" to block any big mergers

😅😅 Absolutely brilliantly put!
After all the drama and doom and gloom of the last few days, we all need a bit of lightening up.
And I agree with the rest of your post, it's up to Microsoft to decide if they really want Xbox to succeed or they choose the path of seeing how deep the rabbit hole goes. I hope it will be the former.

@Widey85 Sony games aren’t offered on GeForce Now. The only Sony game on the service ever was God of War, and the was pulled 3-4 months after.

So if Microsoft makes a 10 year deal to put CoD on NVidia, will this solve the issue?

I’m just shocked that cloud gaming was the reason. It’s like the entire gaming community focused on Sony and consoles which the CMA didn’t see a problem with but blocked it on something few care about.

It’s kinda like the CMA is out of touch or something…

@Widey85 The only one they ever had was God of War. Death stranding is an outlier as the PC version isn’t published by Sony, so it on Geforce Now.

Their view might be sincerely held. But they are effectively a mouthpiece for MS at this point and are regurgitating the same lines they have been fed and that everyone in MS's pocket is saying, so its simply preaching to the converted and wont make a shred of difference.
Please note, I'm not disagreeing with what they are saying necessarily, but its clear they are reading the same soundbites that all MS partners have been given.

For years “experts” and Industry “insiders” said smoking was good for you……

It’s a bit boring seeing these clearly biased views. Just as boring as seeing the same on the other side saying it’ll destroy gaming.

It’s clearly not a great deal for gamers as it’ll mean less games. However it’ll mean no Bobby at Activision.

The deal has pros and cons it’s complex: it was never gonna be as smooth as the gaming media made out but let’s be fair gaming journalists are never gonna be nuanced business experts.

Xbox are not a charity and they are doing this deal for the good of gamers. That narrative is ridiculous.

I’m more in favour of the deal than I was but I still think 3rd IPs should be left 3rd party.

And all the pathetic CMA wanted to block this from the start. It’s a conspiracy against it is pathetic. Microsoft and its “hardcore” fans are sounding like trump and his supporters.

It’s a turn off.

The deal will still go through things like this are never smooth. Although I said Sainsbury’s and Asda would still go through and it didn’t.

@Widey85 are you saying the CMA allowed a personal grievance to guide their decision?

I’m assuming Microsoft can make this thing go through in multiple ways. One might be a decision to hinder/reduce their current cloud plans in order to sure up their console market.

I’m assuming cloud right now, while corporately hyped to be the best thing ever, isn’t actually working in the real world. I mean, look at Stadia.

"Company mucrosoft gave lots of money to and favourable terms agrees with its stance"

The CMA’s own ruling says cloud based gaming will offer more choice to people without buying expensive consoles. The statement made it clear cloud gaming is pro consumer and then they went on to block the deal. I find that bizarre. I feel Xbox are being punished here for actually offering a good service in a free market where others have failed or have shown little to no interest in being involved with.

I'd like this deal to go through because it means we'd actually see more diverse games from Activision. I mean look how they treated the team behind the Crash and Spyro remakes, they proved their worth so now they are making CoD content because they know that sells, we've seen before how game pass enables devs to make stuff that wouldn't have been greenlit before.

But at the same time it seems like Microsoft is putting on a fake limp "Oh look we have barely any games" "We're so far behind everyone" but the thing about fake limps is after a while they cause real damage and it feels like we're starting to see that happen, I don't think Xbox can survive another X1 generation.

@Titntin
they are effectively a mouthpiece for MS at this point and are regurgitating the same lines they have been fed and that everyone in MS's pocket is saying

That's a very poor choice of words old timer and not really necessary, but hey opinions and all that...😏. Almost as poor as calling CMA and other regulators as being Sony mouthpieces and in their pockets.

@Fenbops The CMA's statement makes more sense when you realise its about them not MS. It basically says they don't want to personally regulate the cloud market. That Xbox owning Activision Blizzard means it's deals with the other cloud companies means the CMA would have to constantly be regulating them but if the deal doesn't go through "market forces" will self-regulate the cloud market in their absence.

The TLDR is the MS/AB deal would mean more work for them.

@Stocksy

For years “experts” and Industry “insiders” said smoking was good for you……

And it is - in moderation but only If we smoke cannabis 😉. You seemed a bit too serious, so there 😁.

@Sol4ris Sorry dude, I don't want to be objectionable.
Its quite clear that when MS wish to sway influence they co-ordinate those that are prepared to speak on their behalf so that their is a consistent message being presented from several sources. Its quite clear to me that this happens, and I'm sure you will have seen signs of it yourself, all those coordinated press releases for disparate parties at exactly the right times.

This is actually clever use of your assets to support your goals and shows that a mega corp like MS have good strategies in place for helping to control the narrative - they are infinitely better at this than a corp like Sony who come across as tone deaf as a result. I'm NOT suggesting its shady, its good and clever message manipulation and all companies should do it if they have the insight to do so.

The problem is, its getting to be a little too obvious that these people are delivering a central message on this particular scenario, so I think its getting less effective in this case. I'm simply sharing that as honest opinion over their communication strategy and genuinely don't wish to offend.

You could say that the CMA are Sony mouthpieces, except that they rejected Sony's arguments quite publicly, and blocked the deal for reasons not to do with Sony. A poorly controlled mouthpiece if they were

I'm as shocked as anyone that the deal was not green lighted.

Doesn't matter what some cloud gaming service has to say. Fact is this deal isn't going through. Its blocked in the US, its now blocked in UK and in a few days it'll be blocked in the EU. There's no way Microsoft will be battling all 3 in court.

The sensible thing to do now, is to invest in their existing portfolio of studios. Let's not forget that they have 23 studios which is the most any console manufacturer has had in history. Yet the output has been poor, they launched a console with no new first party games and then had problems with Halo a year later. Last year they didn't have anything except that side scroller low budget game made by Obsidian. They've delayed Starfield twice and still haven't given Motorsport a release date despite promising it would be out by June 2023.

Maybe fix the internal studios first and then think about acquisitions. As for this deal, it's definitely dead.

@Widey85 it’s not just your experience Asda is now more expensive than Sainsbury’s and Tesco. In all reality the store should be empty. They are surviving on the fact people still believe Asda is cheap.

Yeah agreed. I’ve wanted them to focus on what they have for years. They don’t need to buy this IMHO they could use the money to really rocket launch what they already have.

So many brilliant “only on Xbox” games historically. They could be going hard like the used to.

I’d take a new Buffy game for a start. Back then a Buffy game being “only on Xbox” was big news.

I think buying this is all a bit dull and predictable. Also I want 3rd party left alone. More choice is good.

Xbox (Unlike Asda) don’t need activision to catch Sony. Not that they are in the same race really.

I think there is room for Nintendo, Xbox, Sony and now the steam deck.

@Sol4ris haha. I agree 100% with that.

@Titntin

"I'm simply sharing that as honest opinion over their communication strategy and genuinely don't wish to offend"

None taken Sir, and thank you for the elaborate reply 🙂.
Have a good day.

@abe_hikura
Which games have been made for gamepass?

@Sam_TSM join an English group then, i am not here to take a college course on writing, I’m an accountant. My skills are in Math. Try harder at trying to be funny or better yet debate what i said or carry on.

@Sam_TSM thing is I’m not miserable, i quite enjoy this hobby, little upset at the ABK decision largely cause it’s wrong and i wasn’t aware I hit the sites limit cap on that post. Feel free to scroll past my “long” post tho I wouldn’t want to offend you or take your time from reading less informed posts. I want everyone to enjoy the forum in their own ways. Would you like to debate marketshare or how i said cloud is more important than the average hardcore fan wanted to pretend it wasn’t? I’m giving you a chance at saying something useful.

@Green-Bandit Their view was screwed from the beginning and they won't let go of it. The CMA has been latched on to CoD from the start. Now they saw MS has little monetary impetus to make CoD exclusive. It should not matter either way; CoD is not electricity or the nation's water supply.

After letting go of the console complaints, the CMA slapped the same CoD nonsense onto cloud. Each (UK) cloud will die if MS does not allow them to have CoD. They even argue that the Nvidia, Ubitus, and Boosteroid deals don't allow them to sell CoD. WTF? Do they not understand these are BYOL services?

The CMA wants to leverage the deal into far greater access to CoD than ABK would ever provide. They don't care about existing anti-competitive or potential monopolies in the console market now. They want to hold MS cloud back in some false hope ABK will give everyone cloud CoD rights.

MS has been pushing cloud gaming for over a decade. That is the major reason there is any "nascent cloud gaming industry" to hypothesis and pontificate about. Nvidia is committed. The UK should have woken up earlier and contributed. MS wouldn't have "60-70% of the market" if the market was bigger.

These are not expensive consoles, but separate low-cost monthly subscriptions.

This really shouldn't stress me out. But being 36. Growing up playing Nintendo a d loving ff2 and 3 until 7 came out. Never cared for sony and Sony existence made it hard to be a Nintendo fan. All games just went to Playstation and Nintendo stayed on cartridges. So I lived a lifetime of Sony getting there way even now with xbox. Literally there is no way this is all happening coincidentally. Ps went from saying gp is unsustainable to making a cheap yet more expensive version of it all while dealing companies out of putting things on xbox and gamepass. Honestly I wish ms would just fund a entire remake of breath of fire series. Just so we don't get left out of it.

@theduckofdeath I agree, nicely said. This is a huge miss by the CMA and i hope the deal still finds a way over the finish line cause it is good for both the industry and the players in my view.