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

DSoup said:
What "constant tweeting"? A scan of @cmagov.uk's tweets as far as this acquisition goes show they tweeted once on 14 October after they published the stage one findings, then tweeted again yesterday (31 October)? Why did the CMA tweet on this yesterday? Because a) the EU provided an update yesterday and b) a lot of people were tweeting at the CMA yesterday regarding the acquisition, so they responded so that - which is the point of twitter. The rest of their twitter feed is, as I would expect, full of all of the other acquisitions under assessments. Tweets two weeks apart is "constant tweeting"? Give me a break. :rolleyes:

As for the Government using social media to engage with consumers? Yeah, that's been a thing in Europe for over a decade. It's the quickest way to reach a large number of people. As for the public's view not counting, in the UK everybody is a member of the public and the purpose assessments is to give anybody in any capacity the option to input, not just pre-determined interested parties.
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you'll have to excuse my ignorance, we have near 0 feedback from our most of our regulatory bodies here in Canada.
 
iroboto said:
you'll have to excuse my ignorance, we have near 0 feedback from our most of our regulatory bodies here in Canada.
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I genuinely mean this respectfully, but if you aware of your ignorance of the UK's processes, why are you posting that you think are irregular? What is your baseline for regular vs irregular? :runaway:

Just to put this particular investigation into perspective, but for the concerted few driving this dumb narrative that the CMA is doing this because they're PlayStation fanboys or some bollocks logic that makes no sense at all, this is a relatively short two-stage investigation. The CMA's investigation into Apple App store began in March 2021 and is ongoing. I suppose the CMA are also Google fanboys? But then they're also investigated Google so much.
 
DSoup said:
I genuinely mean this respectfully, but if you aware of your ignorance of the UK's processes, why are you posting that you think are irregular? What is your baseline for regular vs irregular? :runaway:

Just to put this particular investigation into perspective, but for the concerted few driving this dumb narrative that the CMA is doing this because they're PlayStation fanboys or some bollocks logic that makes no sense at all, this is a relatively short two-stage investigation. The CMA's investigation into Apple App store began in March 2021 and is ongoing. I suppose the CMA are also Google fanboys? But then they're also investigated Google so much.
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I guess thats because they are American companies and the CMA hate US & A
 
DSoup said:
I genuinely mean this respectfully, but if you aware of your ignorance of the UK's processes, why are you posting that you think are irregular? What is your baseline for regular vs irregular? :runaway:

Just to put this particular investigation into perspective, but for the concerted few driving this dumb narrative that the CMA is doing this because they're PlayStation fanboys or some bollocks logic that makes no sense at all, this is a relatively short two-stage investigation. The CMA's investigation into Apple App store began in March 2021 and is ongoing. I suppose the CMA are also Google fanboys? But then they're also investigated Google so much.
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you're right.. nothing more to say on the subject.
 
fehu said:
Why other acquisitions didn't take so long? Some were almost like buying in a grocery store.
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There was Nvidia-ARM and don't overlook the UK CMA's investigation into the Apple Store - bear in mind this is not a merger, just Apple being greedy bastards - began in March 2021 and is still going on.

What takes the most time in any kind of investigation is talking to witnesses and gathering and categorising evidence. Remember that the CMA sought evidence from Microsoft's direct competitors, the key ones were Amazon, Apple, EA, Epic, Facebook, Google Netflix, Nintendo, Nvidia, Sony, Twitch, Ubisoft, Utomik and Valve and (quoting CMA's report) "Most competitors raised concerns regarding (i) Microsoft making ABK games exclusive to its own platform; and/or (ii) degrading the quality of ABK games on other platforms; and/or potential self-preferencing behaviour by Microsoft.".

This is why it's taking a while in the UK, EU, US and now New Zealand. It's time consuming to interview witnesses, gather evidence, and filter out any element of corporate antagonism trying to sabotage a competitor's deal.
 
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SmooTh said:
ec.europa.eu

Mergers: Commission opens in-depth investigation into the proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft

The European Commission has opened an in-depth investigation to assess the proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft under the EU Merger Regulation.
ec.europa.eu ec.europa.eu
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Saw the following writeup about this over on XboxEra, so rather than copying everything, here's a link :

forum.xboxera.com

Microsoft-Activision-Blizzard Discussion Thread

The European Commission has opened an in-depth investigation to assess the proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft under the EU Merger Regulation. The Commission is concerned that the proposed acquisition may reduce competition in the markets for the distribution of console and...
forum.xboxera.com forum.xboxera.com
 
"Finally, at this stage of the investigation, the Commission has concerns that the proposed acquisition may reduce competition on the market for PC operating systems. In particular, the Commission is concerned that Microsoft may reduce the ability of rival providers of PC operating systems to compete with Microsoft's operating system Windows, by combining Activision Blizzard's games and Microsoft's distribution of games via cloud game streaming to Windows. This would discourage users to buy non-Windows PCs."

how many abk games are on non windows systems? Is new COD on linux? So basicly if the deal go thru nothing will change ....

"Microsoft's distribution of games via cloud game streaming to Windows."

wait what? This doesnt make sense
 
mr magoo said:
how many abk games are on non windows systems? Is new COD on linux? So basicly if the deal go thru nothing will change ....
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Activision? Some.. Blizzard? Many.. maybe even most?

I feel like a broken record here, but the concerns are not just about Call of Duty not being on PlayStation. That is Microsoft's narrative, this is what Microsoft want people to think this is what it's all about - this and only this. Because small Xbox versus big PlayStation plays into the "we're not a threat" scenario.

If everything that is now coming to light, about stores, streaming services and operating systems is new to you then Microsoft's PR gotchya. :runaway:

BRiT said:
And it's Apple that's preventing xCloud from being on their iOS devices!
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I thought you could stream xCloud to iOS? Phil Spencer claimed you could at his interview with the WSJ a couple of weeks back. Open web standards are that good and have been a while.
 
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DSoup said:
Activision? Some.. Blizzard? Many.. maybe even most?

I feel like a broken record here, but the concerns are not just about Call of Duty not being on PlayStation. That is Microsoft's narrative, this is what Microsoft want people to think this is what it's all about - this and only this. Because small Xbox versus big PlayStation plays into the "we're not a threat" scenario.

If everything that is now coming to light, about stores, streaming services and operating systems is new to you then Microsoft's PR gotchya. :runaway:



I thought you could stream xCloud to iOS? Phil Spencer claimed you could at his interview with the WSJ a couple of weeks back. Open web standards are that good and have been a while.
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"In particular, the Commission is concerned that, by acquiring Activision Blizzard, Microsoft may foreclose access to Activision Blizzard's console and PC video games, especially to high-profile and highly successful games (so-called ‘AAA' games) such as ‘Call of Duty'."

Well...
Most of the blizzard games? Like what WOW, SC2, warcraft? Hearthstone is on everything sure but rest? I think those game are primarly on windows, not only ABK games most games, this dosent sound right. People come to peace with Windows being gamers choice, GOG, steam, epic store overwhelming majority of games is on windows. And its nothing new.

You can stream xCloud to anything that runs chrome afaik. I play on my iphone without issues.
 
DSoup said:
I thought you could stream xCloud to iOS? Phil Spencer claimed you could at his interview with the WSJ a couple of weeks back. Open web standards are that good and have been a while.
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You can, but if the regulators were to have concerns about it not being a native application it's entirely on Apple and their restrictive policies.
 
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