Now I might be wrong but the CMA mentioned that MS is already the biggest player in cloud gaming and aquiring ABK would just make this worse.
So to offer remedies MS will now offer Cloud Gaming to Nintendo (which will only increase their Cloud gaming business) and partnering with Nvidia to allow their games on the "competing" cloud gaming plattform. Which isn't really the same but I digress.
And they probably offered Somy something similar like Nintendo.
This would make them the defacto cloud gaming provider. How does this help their case regarding the CMA?
Sure these deals with Nintendo, Sony and Nvidia are legal and regulators can't do much about that. But this strategy is contrary to CMAs objections?
Am I wrong on this? Am I the stupid one?
No, you have a good point. At least, Microsoft would be the leading cloud content provider with ways working out this way, having COD, ABK games, XGS and Zenimax games all available from them to various cloud platforms.
I think the issue regulators have with that scenario is that MS bought their way into it; they didn't "earn" their way to that spot, instead they just would have purchased other massive content providers (some of whom did not make their stuff regularly available on cloud) and then provided that same content via the cloud. Whether it's through xCloud, or PS+ cloud, or Nintendo's cloud or GeForce NOW, the content provider in this case is still a company who purchased their way into the position as the majority of what's being offered are not games they helped create themselves (or created themselves).
In a sense, these deals don't actually address the CMA's concerns when it comes to the cloud. It's also interesting that they're only offered to companies Microsoft have not publicly mentioned as direct competitors. No such offers were made to Google before Stadia closed down. No such offers have been made to Amazon Luna. Probably because in both cases their cloud streaming is also tied to a subscription service model that Microsoft are actively competing with via Game Pass.
Yep. It's an agreement that in no way goes against what Microsoft always wanted. Microsoft keeping its games off Geforce Now was always strategic. They don't care to JUST have Xbox titles streamed on Xbox specific platforms or services. They want Xbox games played everywhere with Xbox destinations just being one of many popular destinations.
I'll tell you this much. It looks very bad when Nintendo accepts a 10 year deal and Nvidia accepts a 10 year deal, but Sony keeps saying no. Sony is being effectively isolated and made to look like what's really going on is they don't want to share a piece of the COD pie that is so advantageous to Playstation, according to Sony's own words. The most competitive and consumer friendly decision then is that everybody should get Call of Duty.
Microsoft only offered these deals to Nintendo & Nvidia because they don't consider them direct competitors to their combined Xbox/Game Pass/xCloud business models. You do notice they've made no such offers to Amazon, right? Or Google, when they could have done so prior to Stadia's closing (which happened during this acquisition process)?
Them offering a 10-year deal to Sony would obviously be rejected because that probably comes with Sony losing marketing rights (and I'm not saying they deserve marketing rights in that scenario; just showing why they would reject the offer). But MS offering PS+ availability does nothing and kind of defies a lot of Sony's own concerns about Day 1 games in a subscription service (also 3P publishers have shared similar concerns), because they rely on direct sales revenue for their gaming businesses.
Day 1 for an alternative model that basically acts as a competing model in conflict with their main means of generating gaming revenue, isnt' something a company like Sony is going to take. Nintendo might not even, though if they did, it'd only be because they have little revenue from COD to begin with, so what's it matter if they put COD in NSO or NSO+ Day 1? They know the COD audience isn't on their platform and would likely not gravitate to their platform even if such were done, if MS did the same with COD Day 1 in Game Pass.
imo
