>The cloud allows UK gamers to avoid buying expensive gaming consoles and PCs and gives them much more flexibility and choice as to how they play.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/microsoft-activision-deal...
YET they next sentence
>Allowing Microsoft to take such a strong position in the cloud gaming market just as it begins to grow rapidly would risk undermining the innovation that is crucial to the development of these opportunities.
Which is really funny considering the closure of Google Stadia, so maybe it was a 4D chess move by Google after all
If this is there definition of cloud gaming, how do phones come into play? They seem like a far bigger market that doesn't require additional hardware purchases specifically for gaming. You can hook them up to popular video game controllers & your TV. No latency issues, which Microsoft won't be fixing in cloud streaming type games without insane investments near users.
The article in the headline doesn't actually give any good reasons & I can't find any solid reasons by any of the people cheering on any Microsoft hate.
If you want to call Microsoft a monopoly & hate on them, there are tons of great & current examples but this just doesn't seem to be one. It's equivalent to blowing the whistle & calling a penalty on some random person for no reason because five plays earlier someone else on that team got away with one.
"Subscription" =/= "cloud"
They are not basing the block on some "maybe" future, but on current reality.
> Microsoft already accounts for an estimated 60-70% of global cloud gaming services and has other important strengths in cloud gaming from owning Xbox, the leading PC operating system (Windows) and a global cloud computing infrastructure (Azure and Xbox Cloud Gaming).
Microsoft already has a majority of the market. CMA asked Microsoft to provide guarantees they wouldn't abuse their position if they also owned Activision/Blizzard, and whatever guarantees Microsoft provides weren't enough to convince CMA.
> Microsoft’s proposal contained a number of significant shortcomings connected with the growing and fast-moving nature of cloud gaming services:
> It did not sufficiently cover different cloud gaming service business models, including multigame subscription services.
> It was not sufficiently open to providers who might wish to offer versions of games on PC operating systems other than Windows.
> It would standardise the terms and conditions on which games are available, as opposed to them being determined by the dynamism and creativity of competition in the market, as would be expected in the absence of the merger.
Basically, Microsoft tried to weasel their way through the merger so they can prevent other actors from competing with them on a level playing field. Exactly the kind of shit CMA should block.
The conclusion:
> Accepting Microsoft’s remedy would inevitably require some degree of regulatory oversight by the CMA. By contrast, preventing the merger would effectively allow market forces to continue to operate and shape the development of cloud gaming without this regulatory intervention.
Paraphrased: "Either we have to keep close track of them if merger is accepted, or we can just let companies compete in the market"
This is actually incredibly funny reading because Google Stadia was 100% worse than Xbox Cloud. You had to sub + pay for the game too. And some of them were exclusives too.
Compared to that how Gamepass works in tandem with Xbox Cloud (you can play on PC, Xbox, and streaming) is day and night YET it's still a problem
Plus I don't get the publisher part
>It was not sufficiently open to providers who might wish to offer versions of games on PC operating systems other than Windows.
Most of the Xbox Cloud games are multiplatform, and I don't just mean PC (Windows) and Xbox but Playstation and sometimes Linux or Mac too
It's showing how much Google failed with Stadia, people still don't know how the service worked. You paid for the games to stream them, and optionally there was a subscription for better quality and free games. Also you could link Ubisoft+ to stream their games for "free", and there were free to play games.
And there were only time limited "exclusives", which were only indie games. Nothing to do with actual Xbox/PS only exclusives.
I thought this was a stupid understanding of graphical fidelity anyway, when render settings are probably gonna be more important than 1080p vs 4k (and we know some games were set to play at essentially medium graphics settings), and the video compression algorithms the games were being run through to stream them wrecked quality regardless of if you were playing in 4k or not.
In most cases a higher framerate or better bitrate would be a more improved experience than more pixels.
It's also incredibly irrelevant, Google is not the ones being investigated here, and Stadia has also been shut down so it's not relevant at all how much better or worse it is.
The question is not which platform is better or worse, but if Microsoft could potentially abuse their position if the merger goes through.
I recommend you to either read the final report (https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/644939aa529ed...) or the summary of the final report (https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6448f377814c6...). Probably the summary is a bit easier to digest, as it's 20 pages rather than 418 pages, but it has all the information you need to understand the case, as most news sources don't go into much depth.
You didn't. You just had to sub to get access to the "free" games + play at resolutions higher than 4K + other stuff. After you bought the game, you could just stream it at 1080p.
You didn't address the point of parent comment, which is, it's not really a market. It's trying to become a market, but so far is just a small niche where companies lose money.
One major difference between how the US and Europe views monopolies is that most of Europe tries to prevent even the formation of them (exceptions apply), while the US tries to prevent "dangerous" monopolies, while allowing monopolies themselves.
It could be useful to shift the perspective if you're used to the US one, when looking at decisions made by European agencies like the CMA.
Sure. On the other hand, it could be useful to listen to Microsoft's perspective on being obstructive to business rather than accusing them of "whining" given that Europe lags behind in technological innovation despite being similarly well educated.
True in some sense, like cool innovations like Ubers for X and social media. False in some sense that there been innovation coming from Europe as well, small things like the web, GSM, CRISPR, LHC, renewables and other almost irrelevant things.
I think technological innovations comes from all continents and I don't think you can surely say that one lags behind another when considering innovation with big impact, everyone is contributing in their way and some in some fields while lagging in others.
But since I already shared that with you, here are some companies doing interesting "disruptive" stuff, which seems more interesting to you:
- Vertical farming -> Infarm (Germany), Agricool (France)
- Electric mobility -> Northvolt (Sweden)
- Quantum computing -> IQM (Finland), Pasqal (France)
- Biotechnology and synthetic biology -> Oxford Nanopore Technologies (UK), Synthace (UK)
- Renewable energy -> Vestas (Denmark), Oxford PV (UK)
While writing all of this out, I'm starting to think that maybe you're just trolling, as obviously there is technological innovation coming from all continents and someone can't be so thick to think it all comes from the US, right?
As you mentioned, Europe has biotech and the US has biotech. So why did Moderna come from the US rather than the Europe? Same for EVs and social media. Rather than use home grown messenger apps like KaoKaoTalk and Line, they use Whatsapp, which isn't even widely used in the US. Could it be that Microsoft is correct that businesses are burdened by regulation? I honestly can't say, but it's definitely worth analyzing rather than dismissing this criticism as "whining". That's the trolling that you should be concerned about rather than comments on the Internet.
It does not.
It says that Microsoft plans on using extremely popular content to boost their cloud platform. Not even Microsoft is denying that:
> Microsoft submitted that, given the five-year period captured by the LTV, any incremental growth of Game Pass is being captured in the LTV calculation.
And they admit that they will be doing it, so they will capture more cloud gaming market and eventually increase profits:
> On the other hand, CoD’s addition to Game Pass may cannibalise some of the B2P sales of CoD. In its valuation model, Microsoft estimated this cannibalisation to be []%, [].617 The fact that Microsoft is nonetheless adopting this strategy suggests that it expects it to be profitable in the long run. This would also apply to overall revenue from customers switching from PlayStation to Xbox.
If you have Game Pass, would you use its cloud gaming service, or would you go out of your way and play in Luna, which by the way, does not have as many games?
Also, Amazon does not have the software platform, nor the hardware, to compete with Microsoft (Windows, Xbox).
Microsoft could and does bundle a Xbox app in Windows, which also features their cloud platform very prominently [0].
Essentially, every single Windows user is being introduced to Microsoft's very own cloud platform. It's not that Microsoft is "treated differently", they are indeed different.
I have both prime and game pass ultimate and use neither bc honestly cloud gaming sucks, even with google fiber.
But you have. Inadvertently, but you did.
I think you don't understand Microsoft's idea of vertically integrating your gaming experience, and it isn't even a new concept for them, as they have been doing it with pretty much every single market they have got into, e.g. Office, Internet Explorer.
Microsoft bundled cloud gaming inside their subscription, because that's how they target users who want to play games. Same goes to the fact that they very prominently provide access to their cloud gaming service from their two gaming platforms, Xbox and Windows.
It is fair to say that people with a cloud gaming subscription from Microsoft are, in fact, gamers.
In comparison, Amazon bundles several services in Prime. I didn't even know I had free access to some Luna games. The other day I found out that I could stream some free music as well. I don't agree with their model either, but I bet that the vast majority of Prime members aren't paying Amazon just to have free access to Luna.
Their point is that cloud gaming is likely way less than 1%, maybe even 0.01% of any gaming activity. The cloud gaming experience still isn't 100% there in terms of latency, so it only makes sense to play single player games, and then most people who have an xbox just use their existing hardware rather than pay Microsoft to play it remotely.
What Microsoft is dominating is the market for game subscription services and they, as part of the industry, are not clearly articulating what it is, partly to ride along with the bullshit (When VR and AR got replaced with XR I'm sure that Dilbert's boss was asking "What's our XR strategy?")
It's not streaming gaming.
I have access to xCloud. The lag is unreal. I don't see how they will get the lag down to an acceptable level for the kinds of games that Activision makes.
Cloud gaming makes sense for party games, turn-based games, anything that doesn't require reflexes. This leaves out everything Activision makes.
There is no evidence that the lag issues with cloud gaming are solvable.
The experience is terrible.
MS only has that position because it is thrown in as part of Xbox Game Pass. No one is buying it on their own.
I have it as part of Game Pass. It's terrible. I never use it, outside of once or twice a year to verify it still sucks.
I am not convinced that cloud gaming is anywhere near being a thing. We could be talking several decades away before they figure out a way to get lag under control.
That is an implementation issue. I was on Stadia (r.i.p.) and the experience was superior to consoles: pure plug and play with no slow software updates getting in the way of gaming.
But I have gigabit internet (and before I got that, had 300 Mb/s) and played with a wired connection, so that’s likely a contributor to my positive experience.
No amount of delivery tech is going to make up for the infrastructure being unfit for purpose in so many areas.
And, as you say, a lot of people don't have access to high-quality internet, and there is no reason to believe they will any time soon.
And anyway, who elected Microsoft?
citizen: I want to paint my house blue
mayor: I unilaterally forbid you from doing that, on the grounds that blue houses look unsightly
citizen: that's undemocratic!
mayor: who elected you to decide painting your house blue?
I'm not claiming that microsoft should be allowed to do the merger on the basis that individuals can choose to paint their house blue, only pointing out that "microsoft isn't elected either" isn't a valid rebuttal to the objection that unilateral decisions by unelected bureaucrats are undemocratic.
The thing is that the CMA is appointed by the government, which is elected.
It’s like complaining about a speeding ticket because the cop wasn’t elected.
Those rules are not the same as those for individuals.
That is precisely what it means to say that one person, with a certain amount of resources, can do things that a group of people, with the same amount of pooled resources, is forbidden from doing.
Lord Templeman, law lord, in Hazell v Hammersmith and Fulham summarized the law thusly:
> That report[Case of Sutton's Hospital], although largely incomprehensible in 1990, has been accepted as "express authority" that at common law it is an incident to a corporation to use its common seal for the purpose of binding itself to anything which a natural person could bind himself and to deal with its property as a natural person might deal with his own
Microsoft is complaining that the mayor, in their example, was not elected.
It's a market. Google bungling Stadia doesn't make it any less of a market, or we wouldn't be seeing Microsoft, Nvidia and Amazon (to a much lesser extent) pouring money into it.
Regardless of your bubble, lots of people use cloud gaming services. There is no way to have concrete numbers, but the Stadia subreddit still has 110k subscribers months after the service shut down. That's not "almost nobody" on the dead service.
So let's say 250k cloud gaming, meanwhile "gaming" as a whole is like bilions of users
Thus this Cloud gaming is basically non-existent.
Only Xbox Cloud Gaming reportedly had 10+ million users in 2022; meanwhile GeForce Now reportedly had 20+ million in 2022.
I do not get the hate/dismissiveness coming out of a position of total lack of even the faintest idea about cloud gaming.
> 110k subscribers months after the service shut down. That's not "almost nobody" on the dead service
It is approximately close to zero. Especially considering that subscribers != active users (not even close).
How many of those 110k reddit users are/were actual Stadia subscribers though?
Just because someone subscribes to a subreddit, doesn't mean they are now, or were ever subscribed to the actual product.
Normally we have to let lies and bullshit from corporations wash over us, all we can do is complain on forums and still have to argue with Kool Aid drinkers.
If bullshit over cloud gaming meant Microsoft couldn't get what they wanted then it is payback... Sometimes you gotta learn that actions have consequences.
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Also there is a huge amount of confusion about what "cloud" means. For instance most of Adobe Creative "Cloud" is a set of desktop applications with limited cloud integration. What is has in common with with real cloud products (Salesforce.com, Figma) is that you pay for it with a monthly subscription.
Microsoft would love to just get your money month after month so you can play Assassin's Creed Episode 4215 and Call of Duty: Battle of Bakhmut and they don't care if you as a consumer know what kind of hardware it is running on but you'd better be sure the bean counters are aware that they could sell a "gaming PC" equivalent cloud instance to somebody in Azure for a dollar an hour so the economics can't possibly add up. Yet the cloud gaming bullshit still keeps rolling, at the last keynote NVIDIA's CEO was saying kids might game from the back seat of a car but what phone company is going to invest the last 800% of costs to get cell phone coverage in the last 20% of places?
Steam is still pretty much undisputed leader in today's games marketplace and it's a very comfortable position worth billions of dollars. And that's just on one platform.
NVIDIA likes it because it could justify higher prices for graphics cards. Suppose somebody plays 2 hours a game a day and they can justify an $1800 graphics card for that. (Over 3 years it's about $1 an hour, I'd compare that to about $0.45 an hour for the cheapest Azure instance with a less capable GPU)
22 hours a day the card is doing nothing, if other people were gaming on it and it were training neural network models the rest of the time the card could be worth $21,600. It's a throwback to IBM mainframes at the worst but NVIDIA could easily conclude it can't afford to sell 40-series cards to gamers.
I'd rather either bring a Switch while traveling or just play a game on my phone or iPad.
I can't believe the deal might fall apart because Microsoft has a "dominant" position in basically a non-existent market that there is no evidence will ever become a market. There are cloud games that work well. If the deal falls apart over this, and not the actual concerns about MS owning huge IP, this regulation is truly broken.
These are not the kinds of games that people buy PlayStations and Xboxes for. Jackbox party games? Sure. Awesome in the cloud. A turn-based strategy or RPG? Why not. Anything that requires reflexes? Not happening.
Microsoft believes in cloud gaming, and regulators have been caught with their pants down by thinking they knew better than industry. Repeatedly.
Is there a country where the organization ruling about competition cases is elected directly?
Is it really "trash talk" if it's 100% true?
> The idea of blocking a deal because maybe this technology will become much more popular one day and maybe Microsoft will be the success is IMO dumb. It's just a dumb argument.
You have to realize that these unelected bureaucrats have to justify their pension funds and headcounts. They NEED to block something so they can brag they "protected" the UK against some "monopolistic evil foreing tech giant".
If you can't innovate... Regulate!
IMO the reason why this decision is really dumb is because the reason given was cloud gaming.
I think that people are missing this.
This isn't a market. Almost nobody plays on cloud gaming platforms, like Stadia which recently closed down, or similar.
The idea of blocking a deal because maybe this technology will become much more popular one day and maybe Microsoft will be the success is IMO dumb. It's just a dumb argument.
Concerns about CoD and PlayStation at least make sense, but not given here.