Gaikai and Onlive were both acquired by Sony / PlayStation. If they went nowhere it's because Sony squandered the technology and market for it.
Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard King for $69 Billion on 2023-10-13
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Gaikai and Onlive were both acquired by Sony / PlayStation. If they went nowhere it's because Sony squandered the technology and market for it.
Article on CMA, and the "careful what you wish for" aspect of it.
www.windowscentral.com
Why Sony could live to regret getting the Xbox Activision Blizzard deal blocked
Some regulators seem convinced Sony is in peril.
www.windowscentral.com
The message regulators could end up sending here is "do business like Sony." While telling Activision employees, "no, you don't deserve better." It also tells fans of Activision's back catalog to accept the endless cycle of Call of Duty, Call of Duty, Call of Duty, to keep the money coming. It suggests little hope for Starcraft, Guitar Hero, Prototype, or other classic franchises to return.
Perhaps most egregiously of all, the CMA seems hellbent on preventing consumers from getting a better deal with Xbox Game Pass — despite the fact that's the body's entire reason for existing. The CMA says PC and Xbox gamers should have to pay $70 for Call of Duty instead of $10. And why? Simply because the market leader opted out of competing. It amounts to a dereliction of duty at best, but that seems to be par for the course every time a government body takes even the vaguest interest in the video game industry.
But hey, if that's what regulators want, Microsoft might play its game. If Microsoft is forced to compete on Sony's terms, it could be a world Sony may find itself regretful to be in.
strike missions were locked
10 years and their streaming is behind MS. But apparently the CMA has to protect sony from its own stupid choices.
My assumption is that Ms will limit any further growth in terms of the UK. If a project can be done else where it will be ramped up else where only things that absolutely need to be done in UK will still get done. MS will also just buy up companies that don't have a footprint in the UK. Some deals may even be done with said purchased company having to close or relocate developers before the purchase is made thus avoiding UK regulation.Article on CMA, and the "careful what you wish for" aspect of it.
Why Sony could live to regret getting the Xbox Activision Blizzard deal blocked
Some regulators seem convinced Sony is in peril.
The message regulators could end up sending here is "do business like Sony." While telling Activision employees, "no, you don't deserve better." It also tells fans of Activision's back catalog to accept the endless cycle of Call of Duty, Call of Duty, Call of Duty, to keep the money coming. It suggests little hope for Starcraft, Guitar Hero, Prototype, or other classic franchises to return.Perhaps most egregiously of all, the CMA seems hellbent on preventing consumers from getting a better deal with Xbox Game Pass — despite the fact that's the body's entire reason for existing. The CMA says PC and Xbox gamers should have to pay $70 for Call of Duty instead of $10. And why? Simply because the market leader opted out of competing. It amounts to a dereliction of duty at best, but that seems to be par for the course every time a government body takes even the vaguest interest in the video game industry.But hey, if that's what regulators want, Microsoft might play its game. If Microsoft is forced to compete on Sony's terms, it could be a world Sony may find itself regretful to be in.
At the end of the day if UK is who stands in MS's way then MS will avoid doing business there in the future. MS just laid off 1k people , I doubt they care if they have to move projects out of UK. Two years ago they shuttered all Microsoft stores loosing hundreds of millions by paying off leases.
I wasn't aware there was a single player portion of destiny
And this is moving away from my point
Logically you think that the first party say sony would make a game and that game would be exclusive or if it was a multiplayer game on different platforms then the playstation version would have exclusive content or skins and stuff to get a gamer to paly it on the sony platform where sony doesn't pay 30% of each item sold to another company.
it makes less sense as a consumer that you go to buy a copy of a game that is available on all platforms from a company like say EA and then only the xbox or only the sony platform have features or content while the others ones that cost the same don't have it.
cheapchips
Veteran
Sony bought Gaikai a decade ago. PSNow is presumably it's bastard offspring. If you think XClouds gone nowhere too then I guess I 'll crawl back to my pedant hole.
Edit: Damnit, others beat me to it!
Sony also bought up on live patents too. They basicly ate 80% of the streaming market a decade ago so they themselves could enter it and then do nothing.Sony bought Gaikai a decade ago. PSNow is presumably it's bastard offspring. If you think XClouds gone nowhere too then I guess I 'll crawl back to my pedant hole.
Edit: Damnit, others beat me to it!
D
Deleted member 11852
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That would be for Microsoft to answer. Being able to offer something the competition cannot will boost appeal, I don't see anything about this process that calls that into question.
If you cannot see why half a dozen regulators around the world need assess this acquisition, I don't know what to tell you. It is accepted accepted globally by all post-industrialised economies, that too much industry consolidation is a bad for competition and the counter to that is regulating acquisitions.
Your list of perceived failures show really only show that the world is not ready to embrace streaming to any large extent, probably due to a combination of technical and social reasons. You say Geforce Now has not taken off although as of August it had 20m users, which is double the last number we had from Microsoft in May.
Google's Stadia effort was half-hearted and Amazon and Netflix really haven't got going yet. All of these companies are mentioned in the CMA report but you keep coming back to Sony, Sony, Sony.. Both you and Microsoft only every refer to Sony in regards to the CMA report, what is the Sony obsession? I don't get it.
I think we should draw a line under this. We cannot discuss this objectively if you can't see why these regulators are involved, it's absolutely fundamental to any discussion.
noted: It should be clear that Geforce now has a free option allowing you to play up to 1 hour at a time. That's a very different model than the one that MS has proposed.
I agree that a merger of this size should be investigated regardless, and I'm in agreement it does.
But the reasons they put forward for it are the wrong ones imo. I agree that too much industry consolidation is bad for competition, which in turn is bad for the consumers, this much is completely agreeable. But we're in a situation where the reasons put forward is to regulate an industry that does not exist (cloud and multi-game subscription) and stifle the inherent benefits to everyone to ensure that Sony and others still have a space to get in there (in which some are likely to never decide to)
And MS' response is NOT half hearted, thus going all in to ensure that they don't fail. It doesn't make any sense because none of it is established, in another view, halting the merger could very well _halt_ the progress of streaming and multi-game subscriptions, both of which are beneficial to the customers. The success is not guaranteed.
I don't have an obsession with Sony, the main reason CMA cited phase 2 was because of COD, which Sony propped as being the most critical IP ever in gaming so much so that they would fail to operate without it. The majority of the counter points centre around whether COD is that important and Sony was the only company to bring this up as being important. And CMA ran with COD being owned by MS would result in Sony's foreclosure and foreclosure of cloud streaming and multi-game subscriptions of potential entrants.
The heart of the debate for me is not that CMA is not doing it's job. It's parroted that COD is the most important IP ever. There in lies the problem I have with the CMA. COD is simply _not_ as important as Sony or CMA thinks it is. The entire argument stems from convincing people COD is the most important IP there is in gaming today and in the future. If you don't agree with this statement, then there is no platform for CMA or Sony to continue.
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For those not wanting to read the Microsoft CMA filing directly and would like some commentary on here, read this Twitter Thread linked below --
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As far as "competing on Sony's terms" goes, the most AAA game publishers would ever offer is timed exclusive content and most would either never flat out offer permanent exclusivity or it would be exorbitantly expensive to maintain for long periods time ...Article on CMA, and the "careful what you wish for" aspect of it.
Why Sony could live to regret getting the Xbox Activision Blizzard deal blocked
Some regulators seem convinced Sony is in peril.
The message regulators could end up sending here is "do business like Sony." While telling Activision employees, "no, you don't deserve better." It also tells fans of Activision's back catalog to accept the endless cycle of Call of Duty, Call of Duty, Call of Duty, to keep the money coming. It suggests little hope for Starcraft, Guitar Hero, Prototype, or other classic franchises to return.Perhaps most egregiously of all, the CMA seems hellbent on preventing consumers from getting a better deal with Xbox Game Pass — despite the fact that's the body's entire reason for existing. The CMA says PC and Xbox gamers should have to pay $70 for Call of Duty instead of $10. And why? Simply because the market leader opted out of competing. It amounts to a dereliction of duty at best, but that seems to be par for the course every time a government body takes even the vaguest interest in the video game industry.But hey, if that's what regulators want, Microsoft might play its game. If Microsoft is forced to compete on Sony's terms, it could be a world Sony may find itself regretful to be in.
Purchasing timed exclusive content might not even be a big enough advantage in gains to offset the costs and Microsoft will then have to answer to their shareholder's why their dividends are being cut while enriching the coffers of other corporations that aren't benefitting their business nearly as much as they want ...
That’s understandable. Latency is important in cloud gaming so it makes sense that the hardware is segregated to a great degree.
For those not wanting to read the Microsoft CMA filing directly and would like some commentary on here, read this Twitter Thread linked below --
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Wow's thats obviously a bit of a1 sided account, but WOW, they do make some very strong points.
it does appear that MS have pretty strong counter arguments for all the points raised by the CMA.
I think another thing being left out of the discussion here is the current state of ABK,
getting bought by MS gets ABK and some of the execs involved off the hook, for a lot of the cases going on levelled at ABK management and ABK itself.
Not saying they magically go away, but, if acquired by MS the public focus is a hell of a lot less.
I guess it is strongly in their own best interests (and shareholders'.. ) to be acquired by MS, rather than deal with multiple lawsuits, and unionization movements.
Which i suspect will only increase if the deal does not go through.
D
Deleted member 11852
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Microsoft raise valid points in their repose where early CMA conclusions are flawed (hence stage 2) but annoyingly much of this is bluster and detached from the regulatory position that the CMA, EU and FTC are in.
For example, Microsoft set the tone here:
Microsoft said:
I presume what Microsoft are saying here is is the CMA cannot evidence what Microsoft intend to do that, because they have not done it. How can the regulator evidence something that has not happened. As Microsoft actually do know, the greater part of merger assessments and decision-making is looking at possible effects of acquisitions. No regulator knows exactly what the consequence will be, you can for example look at the console gaming space, the number of competitors, the number of titles produced by third party publishers like Activision-Blizzard and make a probable determination of what Microsoft will do with those properties based on what has happened following previous acquisitions.
The summary of the stage 1 investigation was - in a few words - if this acquisition is approved, Microsoft would be so huge in console gaming, PC gaming (incl. operating systems), stores, services and cloud infrastructure, that competition across many sectors would be increasingly difficult for everybody, including services like Steam and the Epic Games Store.
It's a nonsense PR response to win the hearts and minds of console gamers. Microsoft absolutely want to make this abut Sony and Call of Duty, but it's not going to sway regulators. On one hand Microsoft say they want to bring gaming to all mobile devices - a billion-strong market - but Microsoft fall back to Xbox being smaller than PlayStation's 150m install base. How do you even reconcile this dissonance?
Going into this, I genuinely though Microsoft would come out of this with an approved acquisition with some regulator-imposed mitigations. That would have been a great outcome, because Activision is a cluster-fuck and Blizzard is a mess and it would have been good for Blizzard as I said on page 1. But this dissonance between comms and reality can surely only harm Microsoft's case. They can't purely believe their own PR, can they?
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We know they don't. Because MS needs to make the acquisition happen at any cost, regardless what their future plans are. So they will say whatever they need to convince.They can't purely believe their own PR, can they?
This is why we have these contradictions. Their wording makes as much sense as politics. None. But they make you feel "good".
i.e MS wanting to own fully the digital entertainment industry can be spinned to "we want to offer groundbreaking innovation and digital entertainment to a wider range of consumers".
It means nothing by itself. At the end regulators know what every company want, increase profits and market share, they know they are competitive and want to eat each other out and they don't believe in PR or that corporations act out of virtue.
Regulators research whether a company can or can't harm the market. If they can, then it should be a no.
It is like politicians saying what people want to hear to get elected. After they get elected then they do as they please with the given conditions regardless what they promised to those that voted for them. They don't care.
This actually happened with Street Fighter X Tekken, where the PS3/Vita version of the game had a bunch of exclusive DLC. Not just skins, either. There were 5 extra fighters.
That would be difficult because they own 2 studios there (Ninja Theory and Rare).
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