Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard King for $69 Billion on 2023-10-13

If the EU doesn't block, I still think this is happening in spite of the CMA's bullshit.
Every interview Patcher has done he's basically said all they have to do is either spin off Activision's UK business, or spin off Gamepass/Xcloud in the UK and deal with that later if every other jurisdiction allows it. Which I do believe is a workaround if that happens. Even if he doesn't seam to understand how DLC revenue works.
 
I don't see how this goes ahead. MS isn't going to drop the UK market, and I don't even know if it is possible for them to spin off xCloud/Gamepass in just the UK for this deal.
 
Can't they just say: No ABK titles on xCloud in the UK? Pretty simple.
I think it depends on how Activision and Microsoft's businesses are organized and in what jurisdictions. Historically, though, you can see examples of things like how Sega won Brazil by not releasing Sega consoles in Brazil, but licensing them to Tectoy, who I believe are still selling Sega consoles in Brazil. Perhaps something like that would work if Xbox/Activision pull out of the UK market.
 
Not that this will happen.

But it'd be amusing if ABK ceased all operations in the UK, at which point there would be no problem WRT the UK for the acquisition.

Regards,
SB
 
I think it would be no xcloud in UK period. I don’t think it would be enough to segment out just the ABK titles.
This doesn't address the actual concern:

UK CMA said:
We have concluded that the merger would result in the most powerful operator in the fast-developing market for cloud gaming, with a current market share of 60-70%, acquiring a portfolio of world-leading games with the incentive to withhold those games from competitors and substantially weaken competition in this important growing market.

Carving out the operations of cloud in the UK will makes no difference if Microsoft dominate everywhere else. It's economies of scale at work, similar to when big store chains move into towns populated by local/independent stores. The cost savings of operating big make competition for anybody not as big very difficult.
 
This doesn't address the actual concern:



Carving out the operations of cloud in the UK will makes no difference if Microsoft dominate everywhere else. It's economies of scale at work, similar to when big store chains move into towns populated by local/independent stores. The cost savings of operating big make competition for anybody not as big very difficult.
Interesting. So they would have to remove ABK content from cloud streaming then
 
This doesn't address the actual concern:



Carving out the operations of cloud in the UK will makes no difference if Microsoft dominate everywhere else. It's economies of scale at work, similar to when big store chains move into towns populated by local/independent stores. The cost savings of operating big make competition for anybody not as big very difficult.

And just like that over night with amazon entering the market those numbers are no longer valid.
 
18 million Amazon users aren't 18 million Luna subscribers. By that same token, MS has how many millions of Windows they can supply game-streaming to...something like a billion? So what are the actual cloud subscriber rates for the different services? What market share does Amazon have vs MS and Sony? Or if we're going to go with freebies, how many Windows PCs are there in the UK that MS can roll out freebie cloud streaming to?
 
18 million Amazon users aren't 18 million Luna subscribers. By that same token, MS has how many millions of Windows they can supply game-streaming to...something like a billion? So what are the actual cloud subscriber rates for the different services? What market share does Amazon have vs MS and Sony? Or if we're going to go with freebies, how many Windows PCs are there in the UK that MS can roll out freebie cloud streaming to?
My understanding here is the following:
Under CMA statements:

18 million prime users are 18 million Luna users.

This is no different than saying 18 million GPU users are 18 million xcloud users.

There is no direct method to pay only for cloud for either of them.
 
My understanding here is the following:
Under CMA statements:

18 million prime users are 18 million Luna users.

This is no different than saying 18 million GPU users are 18 million xcloud users.

There is no direct method to pay only for cloud for either of them.

Amazon Prime is separared from Luna.

Md8ZpPA.png
 
Back
Top