S1ayeR74

@Tharsman Yeah FIFA is an EU thing and NBA a US thing. Both owned by EA if I'm right??? Correct me if not. But they are quids in.
F1 seems to do well though too across the boarders. Probably more so in the US now it has a much bigger presence there.

@EvenStephen7 Isn't it just, lots of misconceptions about the case and what the CAT can do.

@BRT15 That’s a shame. Rather watch it for myself than watch armchair lawyer you tubers.

May be worth grabbing Dead Island 2?

All that will happen is the CAT will pass it back to the CMA who will just make the same ruling again most likely.

How can you watch the events that took place yesterday?

I dare anyone to play The Bunker, in the dark, at midnight, in a house in their own, with headphones on.....
After playing SOMA I learnt my lesson....

@Kaloudz I’d be pretty certain they knew but don’t think it’s as much of an issue as being advised. Lots of people work for other companies and move on, then if you’re in the same industry deal with previous employers later on. You could argue conflict of interest but as they are one person out off I’d imagine a number of people, not sure if that would hold any weight? Plus all parties would be required to advise any conflict of interest to all parties involved prior to working on the case in hand.

@Wheatly So all they can literally do is pass it back for re-investigation, they cannot attach any criteria to that investigation of make any judgment on it to be considered in the new investigation?

@Belkan Well Games Radar states it was ‘near perfect’ and they stated before the show that nothing Microsoft shows in June including Starfield would beat it.

@Kevw2006 I find most of the Windows Central staff enjoy making click bait conspiracy stories around this topic, they get more revenue that way.

@Wheatly What is being claimed is that the CAT will order the merger to be investigated again by the CMA, but with conditions and taking into account any judgement by the CAT, so for instance if the CAT claim the CMA were wrong about the market share we find it to actually be X Y Z, then the CMA has to investigate again taking that judgement as the rule to follow.

So the question is, can the CAT make rulings that will directly impact the CMAs decision, or can they only request the CMA investigate again but cannot make any rulings to impact the decision or investigation? You don’t seem to have cleared that up.

It was bad, in regards to Sonys studios. The majority of games shown are multi platform which for Sony and its business model is a problem. It seems to have a pretty dry time ahead for several months from its own studios.

Seriously? I wish Phil would stop congratulating everyone, especially when the majority found it to be crap. It was a very bad showcase.

@Moonglow Wrong on Unreal Engine, it existed for years before Fortnite and is a mass adopted games engine across the gaming industry and now film industry, it’ll be around and developed regardless if Fortnite exists or not.
Not so sure about the rest of your comment either?

IMO the best collection of games from the showcase and all multiplayer, now I can see them properly at proper resolutions and quality, they look good. I’ll play a few of these.

Loved the originals. Wonder how this will play though?

Xbox burned PlayStation http://twitter.com/Xbox/status/1661489113814679553

Hahahaha it’s like the ultimate copium from Sony, I think they are upset the Switch is in track to out sell the PS2 and Sony know they can’t touch it, and can’t touch Microsoft’s budget for acquisitions.

Or in other words they looked at what would net them the most money. They calculated Sonys money and then predicted later cross platform sales was the best for profits.

@BAMozzy “CoD is churned out annually and available on More Hardware to make more Money - especially with loot boxes, MTX and Season Passes.
Spider-Man is a much bigger IP across ALL media, makes a LOT more money and much more likely to bring new' gamers in to Playstation.”

You cannot include Spider Man films in your argument about a game, because in terms of revenue for games COD totally dominates Spider Man, Sony themselves have officially stated this in their argument, you have this false mindset that Sony exclusives are bigger then any other game, that’s totally wrong and ignores facts, most players play COD, Fortnite, Minecraft and FIFA. They have a PlayStation because their mates got one. The sales figures of Sonys exclusives prove that.

The majority of gamers don’t even know what the game of the year awards are, you are attempting to use a small minority as the default for the mass majority, it’s a complete lie to do so and is false, you seem to be deluded by this?

Cloud gaming has tripled in the last year in the U.K. alone, it won’t be a small market for much longer, Microsoft wouldn’t be investing money into it if it wasn’t intending to grow it.

Although I've thoroughly enjoyed Dead Space and it looks awesome! It is pretty much a carbon copy of the original bar those side missions. So it's kinda had its day I think. Think Hogwarts should be number 1 as at least it's new even if the concept isn't. And people enjoy it.

Miasma Chronicles is a must!

@101Force Yes, no one's heard of them yet they own a significant proportion of the global market. And are probably state funded. Still if no one enjoyed their games they wouldn't be so big.
Not really shocked if China approved. I think Australia will be an interesting one?

@BAMozzy Your not using that argument are you? PS has more games to entice people onto cloud? Even after Sony proved that COD makes them more money then all their exclusives combined practically. COD is several times larger then Sonys IP is.

No matter my thoughts on this, I'm just pretty concerned how it will affect me personally, as an Xbox user in the UK who likes COD, bottom line is I want to know if this ends up with COD being removed from Xbox in the UK, or if I end up paying more for Game Pass but have less games on it like other regions get, if the service gets a price increase.
So long as COD remains available in some form or another that's fine. Oh and Diablo too.

@themightyant Good information there. I didn't know that cloud gaming was growing so fast.

@themightyant Exactly, plus the CMA stated Microsoft are still dictating the terms of these 10 year contracts, so they are in full control of what games are released and when. The EU stated the merger will damage cloud gaming competition, thus forcing Microsoft to give free licensing, that wasn't Microsoft's idea.
You have to buy games on the Nvidia streaming service as you say, they offer the odd free game but they are generally very old titles.
All MS are doing is meeting their terms of the contract and trying to woo regulators. But they haven't changed anything that the CMA has issues with.

Legitimate question… WHY? I mean devs are so utterly lazy they haven’t bothered to use the full power or even feature set of the current consoles, and what are they going to charge for these more powerful machines? £550? £600? Who is going to pay that? Considering RTX 4090 can’t even run some of these games at a decent frame rate, due to incredibly poor optimisations, I think this rumour is BS or just stupid.

Been playing this quite happily on my Series X, got it through CD Keys for 45 quid I think it was.

I’m not sure if they will pull out of the UK, if they do they will literally lose the majority of Xbox console users to PlayStation IF it meant no more COD other than on PlayStation. I wouldn’t think twice about changing if it meant it was the only way to play COD and many others would feel the same I’m sure.

@FenIsMightier @BobCoffee Hence why I said ‘IF’ lol, so they were not true, makes sense, I wouldn’t have been surprised if they were giving the prices for MS licenses though haha..

Still rather listen to Nadella as he’s a level chap, doesn’t seem to publicly go off on one like others at Microsoft have. He thinks about what he says. Phil just seemed beaten and battered over it all.

@Kaloudz I played Diablo 3 quite a bit, I even had it on Switch and it had a tiny little space ship from StarCraft 2 follow you around! So cool lol. I’ve played a fair bit of Diablo Immortal too on my iPad, just because really, not spent any money on it yet though thankfully.
If Diablo 4 is on Xbox Game Pass I’ll give it a bash for sure.

I know China and a few others are left, I think I heard Australia is left too? Quite a few countries it seems are involved. But we’ve only heard the UK EU and US are the major ones.

What a shame, watched a few videos of this and they’ve all said the same thing, Windows is a mess on it, menus are tiny and the handheld experience is not very good, it doesn’t suspend properly either so the battery goes flat, looks like the Steam Deck is still the best as a handheld experience, until Microsoft release a handheld Windows which they are apparently working on.

@Kaloudz Best thing to do, I’ve seen lots of American legal experts and influencers on You Tube commenting on this and contradicting each other, so I don’t trust what any if them say at present. Best to see what happens and follow the actual process as much we can. I mean it’s going to take months now as it is… and that’s not including the FTC battle.

We will have to wait a bit longer to see if we get Diablo and COD on Game Pass my friend.

@FenIsMightier I read somewhere that the UK market is worth more than the 69 billion the deal is costing annually. Now I’m not sure if that’s in games or everything Microsoft sells and does, either way IF true they’ll have a hard time with share holders accepting them leaving that money out of their profits that’s for sure. If they pull out of one of the major premiere gaming markets on the planet, which the UK is, then share holders will be accepting giving up and handing that market over to your competitors. Would they do that? Not so sure they would.
CMA has certainly thrown a spanner in the works.

Of course he has to say this, he would be fired otherwise, share holders won’t keep any CEO who oversees a failed merger of 69 billion dollars! And it’s up to the share holders vote how this proceeds. They will need to ask them to vote on a new deal if the appeal fails in the UK or US.
I’m just glad he’s a hell of a lot more level headed in his words and speech then Lulu from Activision and Microsoft’s Brad Smith, those two have acted like spoilt entitled American tech giants throwing their toys out the pram they didn’t get their own way!

It is a case of wait and see, he will need to try and get this deal done one way or another as they committed to it. If it fails he most likely will be gone.

@Pusher2021 We know a few things now. This deal is delayed for months that’s a fact, MS have to battle the FTC as well as the CMA. And you never know the FTC may manage to kill it anyway yet although I don’t think they will.
MS are appealing the CMA and FTC.
And they I think will need the share holders to vote on a new deal, now this I think is interesting, they will want to try appeals first, but they only have till July I think with the current deal before it lapses. So how they word a new deal for the share holders will be mighty interesting, will they really want to ignore the UK market. I’ve seen lots of proposals made in posts on here people have heard, but most seem to be from Americans and some contradict others, I’m not sure they can be trusted really as US law can be quite different to UK law.
I hope MS has smarter and more grounded people then Activision Lulu and Microsoft’s Brad Smith handle the appeal!

@Moonglow That's what I said? You didn't read all I typed, I clearly stated Microsoft will re-negotiate a new deal with ease to not require the UK approval. "CURRENTLY" the deal IS blocked because it's in black and white on the terms that ALL regulators must approve for the deal to go through.

@Jenkinss The only thing that would upset the CMA is the lack of taxes American giants pay, but then MPs keep those tax loopholes in place as they use them themselves. They really couldn't care less about Biden I suspect.

@pip_muzz It won't be a 'national scandal' because they provided a definitive answer to that question, which came across as pretty believable, also as they said they could not speak to other regulators about certain parts of in depth as the parties involved, Microsoft Activision etc, would not allow it. Watch the interview the Microsoft questioning is only about 15 minutes long.

Lol, the reaction to this is hilarious. I believe it's just part of their process, they are always going to these reviews it's part of the trade regulations and laws in the UK. They didn't really ask many questions and didn't really give much in the way of answer. But if you listen to all the meeting it's quite interesting what they do do, and the conclusions they reach, like an app for UK residents to find out in real time the cheapest petroleum prices in any area they are. And how they have found one supermarket to be price gouging their customers, to which one MP basically said so what, and their reply was well if no one else in the market is doing it it's not fair in the consumers.
But they have blocked the deal, they didn't provide any real evidence as to what they found, and as it stands the deal needs all regulators to agree for it to pass, that's what the share holders voted on, so it will need work around a or re-negotiations if the CMA doesn't change its mind. Which I don't think they will but we shall see.
Kudos to Pusher2021 for providing the link to the meeting in the other thread:

https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/625b836d-971f-47ee-b4b5-e537eca5d70f

As to what happens next. It entirely depends on how the appeal goes. Rishi can't overturn it as he has to be independent, and cannot be seen at least to be in the pockets of foreign global giant corporations. But as I said as it stands the deal is blocked, globally. MS will no doubt change that easily enough, but they obviously want the approval hence the appeal process being followed.

@Pusher2021 Very interesting. Shame they didn't really give much evidence, only the structure and how the decision was met. And that the concessions MS were offering weren't enough, it comes across as though they are not a big department and sound very excited to be employing 200 new staff, and using a more and more AI to help with the workload.

I think if it is passed back to them they will give it a proper look again but don't know if they would change their decision.

@Pusher2021 Thanks I will have a watch of that. But I can see the point the CMA has, that MS can dictate the terms of the license it was proposing. However surely that's why the EU forced them to licence all ActiBliz games for free on cloud services for 10 years?

One thing I don’t get is why the CMA felt the need t9 issue a response? Did they want to remind everyone don’t celebrate doesn’t matter because WE have blocked the deal anyway? Very odd and a tad arrogant. They must have had a flood of responses from Xbox fans and a mountainous tsunami from PS fans when they asked for responses….

@RadioHedgeFund No Microsoft bought them all for King Mobile, plain and simple they want to get a major foothold in the mobile games market, using the Xbox brand and King is their doorway into that. The mobile games market dwarfs any PC or console market, it’s worth billions and billions and is a growth market too. The rest of it all is a nice bonus for us all 😀 I certainly am not going to complain about getting COD on Game Pass every year!

Looking forward to this one, it's on PSN Plus at the moment, so I wonder if it'll be on Game Pass?

@Sol4ris Why are you dragging down the entire British race when some things are down to government and politicians and civil servants? Over a games company merger?