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[Banjo64]

This doesn't make a blind bit of sense though as you have to own the game to be able to play it on geforce now regardless of the tier you are on. It's stuff like this that makes me think that MS might have a chance of getting this back in front of the CMA.

It does make sense though because that would make GeForce Now a customer or Microsoft, not a competitor - which makes these agreements as useful to the CMA as a chocolate teapot.

 

[XesqueVara]

Btw some of you guys are really overstimating a fuck this 3B penalty, this wasn't something MS got caught with their pants off, this was pre-accorded in The merger aggrement, they literally knowed that they would pay 2-3 billion dollars with the deal failing and they were ok with it.

And talking about firing peoples over a deal failing... who got fired in Nvidia when they failed to acquire ARM?

 

[Poltz]

It does make sense though because that would make GeForce Now a customer or Microsoft, not a competitor - which makes these agreements as useful to the CMA as a chocolate teapot.

Geforce Now uses Windows too. So they are a double customer to MS.

 

[Poltz]

Btw some of you guys are really overstimating a fuck this 3B penalty, this wasn't something MS got caught with their pants off, this was pre-accorded in The merger aggrement, they literally knowed that they would pay 2-3 billion dollars with the deal failing and they were ok with it.

And talking about firing peoples over a deal failing... who got fired in Nvidia when they failed to acquire ARM?

It's easier when you are co founder of the company.

 

[Ar¢tos]

.

Btw some of you guys are really overstimating a fuck this 3B penalty, this wasn't something MS got caught with their pants off, this was pre-accorded in The merger aggrement, they literally knowed that they would pay 2-3 billion dollars with the deal failing and they were ok with it.

And talking about firing peoples over a deal failing... who got fired in Nvidia when they failed to acquire ARM?

It's not just 3bn, that's only what they have to pay Activision. What about all the money spent in lawyers, marketing the deal (only MS would think of marketing a deal...), 10 year deals, etc?
Sony got a whole massive studio for less.

 

[Poltz]

.
It's not just 3bn, that's only what they have to pay Activision. What about all the money spent in lawyers, marketing the deal (only MS would think of marketing a deal...), 10 year deals, etc?
Sony got a whole massive studio for less.

More marketing than Xbox first party games in Europe is CRAZY.

 

[Zannegan]

Btw some of you guys are really overstimating a fuck this 3B penalty, this wasn't something MS got caught with their pants off, this was pre-accorded in The merger aggrement, they literally knowed that they would pay 2-3 billion dollars with the deal failing and they were ok with it.

And talking about firing peoples over a deal failing... who got fired in Nvidia when they failed to acquire ARM?

You shouldn't be surprised. Fanfiction's pretty popular in certain circles.

And it's not like we didn't have quite a bit going the other way a week ago. Turnabout is fair play, even if the game is dumb.

 

[XesqueVara]

.
It's not just 3bn, that's only what they have to pay Activision. What about all the money spent in lawyers, marketing the deal (only MS would think of marketing a deal...), 10 year deals, etc?
Sony got a whole massive studio for less.

And they were okay with all over that dude, it's not like Big Tech companies can't afford that cost... Meta literally fighted the FTC for 3 years over a $400m deal.
We are talking about a company who have a Net Income of literally fucking 72$ Billion

 

[Zheph]

And they were okay with all over that dude, it's not like Big Tech companies can't afford that cost... Meta literally fighted the FTC for 3 years over a $400m deal.
We are talking about a company who have a Net Income of literally fucking 72$ Billion

You don't get into that position by thinking 3bn is nothing
it will have consequences

 

[XesqueVara]

You don't get into that position by thinking 3bn is nothing
it will have consequences

Then way did they tried to Acquire ABK Then? MS literally agreed with That condition in the merger contract ffs.
Btw Nvidia had to pay ARM around 1.25$B when the deal failed and nothing changed so lol.

 

[Poltz]

 

[Zheph]

Then way did they tried to Acquire ABK Then? MS literally agreed with That condition in the merger contract ffs.

I don't understand your point
First they obviously expected to close the deal
Second this kind of deal slow down a lot of things for Activision so if it doesn't go through its normal they ask for this kind of package as compensation nothing out of the ordinary
Third of course MS can pay but they won't be pleased to especially as it will be well known because they decided to market it widly

 

[ulantan]

Then way did they tried to Acquire ABK Then? MS literally agreed with That condition in the merger contract ffs.

They in no way thought they would actually lose

 

[XesqueVara]

I don't understand your point
First they obviously expected to close the deal
Second this kind of deal slow down a lot of things for Activision so if it doesn't go through its normal they ask for this kind of package as compensation nothing out of the ordinary
Third of course MS can pay but they won't be pleased to especially as it will be well known because they decided to market it widly

They in no way thought they would actually lose

Yeah they thought they could close the deal, but yet they still agreed with paying ABK 2-3Billion in case of failing...agreements like that are absolutely normal in mergers, and MS was absolutely fine with it.

 

[Rac3r]

Why? Phil wasn't the one who gave the go ahead for this deal to happen, it was Nadella.

Who do you think the fall guy would be for this blunder? Microsoft has been doing fantastic since Nadella took over as CEO. Brad Smith essentially reversed Microsoft's antitrust reputation over the last 20+ years. Then there's Phil Spencer, the head of Xbox, who sold the upper management on this deal, has trouble managing his existing studios and can't seem to sell consoles that Microsoft is manufacturing at a loss...

 

[noise36]

Microsoft were very clever to paint Sony as the bad guy throughout the whole deal. Their biggest hurdle was the cloud stuff where they hold ownership of Windows as a platform for all cloud gaming services to pay them licensing fees. Brad Smith, Lulu and Phil always were talking about Sony but never about the monopoly windows has. Interesting stuff.

Nothing MS has done has been clever in this endeavor.

Cloud gaming is a niche loss making industry that no one cares about, its beyond farcical CMA turned it into something that matters. Smoke and mirrors, Sony laughing all the way to the bank.

Deluded CMA are literally blocking cheaper and more ubiquitous entry to the ABK catalog. In doing so have built a bigger moat around Sony's buy our proprietary hardware pay RRP for games strategy.

 

[Banjo64]

 

[Poltz]

Nothing MS has done has been clever in this endeavor.

Cloud gaming is a niche loss making industry that no one cares about, its beyond farcical CMA turned it into something that matters. Smoke and mirrors, Sony laughing all the way to the bank.

Deluded CMA are literally blocking cheaper and more ubiquitous entry to the ABK catalog. In doing so have built a bigger moat around Sony's buy our proprietary hardware pay RRP for games strategy.

“When you talk about Nintendo and Sony, we have a ton of respect for them, but we see Amazon and Google as the main competitors going forward,” says Spencer. “That’s not to disrespect Nintendo and Sony, but the traditional gaming companies are somewhat out of position. I guess they could try to re-create Azure, but we’ve invested tens of billions of dollars in cloud over the years.”

https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/5/2...itors-phil-spencer-cloud-gaming-amazon-google

 

[Zheph]

So short sighted because it could have save a bit on money on a couple of games...

 

[Daneel Elijah]

Btw some of you guys are really overstimating a fuck this 3B penalty, this wasn't something MS got caught with their pants off, this was pre-accorded in The merger aggrement, they literally knowed that they would pay 2-3 billion dollars with the deal failing and they were ok with it.

And talking about firing peoples over a deal failing... who got fired in Nvidia when they failed to acquire ARM?

It is just 3 billions of dollars. No big deal. Remember when they fired people a few months ago? No big deal either I suppose? Of course they knew that this was a possibility. But I refuse to believe that they are not unhappy with their failure to merge with ABK. The 3 billions are just a reminder that this is the worst that happened to Xbox. Worse than the 360 rrod and the Xbox one launch in losses. Unless for you they lost more in those 2 occasions? Not that big in the long term, yes. But still a setback.

 

[Duchess]

NEWS: The CMA Just blocked the Xbox Activision deal for the next 10 years. This means Microsoft cannot try to acquire Activision again for another 10 years.

I can't find any other news outlets reporting this 10 year block. Exaggerated?

That said, Microsoft needs to also seriously consider whether or not it even sticks around in that market because this block if it stands won't be the last Microsoft is treated unfairly. Exit the UK.

"I'm taking my ball and going home."
"Cool, whatever. We've got lots of others in that bag over there ..."

EDIT: it's on Reddit. Not a concrete story

 

[noise36]

“When you talk about Nintendo and Sony, we have a ton of respect for them, but we see Amazon and Google as the main competitors going forward,” says Spencer. “That’s not to disrespect Nintendo and Sony, but the traditional gaming companies are somewhat out of position. I guess they could try to re-create Azure, but we’ve invested tens of billions of dollars in cloud over the years.”

Someday maybe corporate PR speak from MS is the basis for government regulatory decisions now is it?

Cloud does not equal cloud gaming. One is a highly profitable growth industry the other is a niche nothing industry no one is willing to pay for on its own.

Sony can just leverage AWS, or another cloud provider, no need to build anything like MS with Azure.

 

[demigod]

So nadella it is, Phil simply wasn't responsible for a 70B deal its way higher than his league, and the messaging about this deal was pratically handled by brad smith, most of the PR at this point is made by him.
"ABK is a Microsoft Failure" dude you are overstimating the impact over this deal to Microsoft.

Brad and Nadella were trying to save Phil’s hide because he kept doing interviews and lying until Jim Ryan called his ass out. They told Phil’s ass to shut up. Nadella is not going to get the blame for this, he is making ms too much money.

 

[Heisenberg007]

Then way did they tried to Acquire ABK Then? MS literally agreed with That condition in the merger contract ffs.
Btw Nvidia had to pay ARM around 1.25$B when the deal failed and nothing changed so lol.

Because they literally thought that this will be passed easily -- with 0 concessions nonetheless.

https://www.neowin.net/news/microso...cquisition-to-go-through-without-concessions/

So in their minds, they were not gonna pay the $3 billion penalty.

 

[demigod]

Btw some of you guys are really overstimating a fuck this 3B penalty, this wasn't something MS got caught with their pants off, this was pre-accorded in The merger aggrement, they literally knowed that they would pay 2-3 billion dollars with the deal failing and they were ok with it.

And talking about firing peoples over a deal failing... who got fired in Nvidia when they failed to acquire ARM?

Nvidia can’t be touched right now in the GPU market, you think they going to fire Jen? Lmfao ok.

 

[Poltz]

I can't find any other news outlets reporting this 10 year block. Exaggerated?


"I'm taking my ball and going home."
"Cool, whatever. We've got lots of others in that bag over there ..."

EDIT: it's on Reddit. Not a concrete story

It’s true it’s in the CMA 418 page report.

 

[Bernoulli]

Say what you want about Idas, but his posts are genuinely value-additive even when you don't think he's unbiased. from the same post (LINK), this caught my interest:


I can't look at this part and not think the Xbox console business is not on borrowed time..

MS told the CMA that prohibiting the acquisition would have "huge collateral effects on the way in which Microsoft is able to carry on its business as it wishes to outside the realm of cloud gaming' (page 406)

In its response to our Remedies Working Paper, Microsoft told us that the CMA had 'substantially understated the costs of prohibition', and that other than the RCBs, prohibition would have 'huge collateral effects on the way in which Microsoft is able to carry on its business as it wishes to outside the realm of cloud gaming'.

It added that prohibition would limit Microsoft as to how it would be able to operate in all non-cloud gaming activities where it would be able to use Activision content to pursue its strategic goals. It told us that as the Addendum to the Provisional Findings recognised, there was no basis for competition concerns in relation to these activities and yet Microsoft would be precluded from pursuing legitimate business opportunities. It therefore told us that the proportionality concern could not simply be seen through the prism of provable RCBs: the impact on Microsoft's business freedom was 'very extensive and not justifiable'.

this is big, microsoft put everything in this deal

 

[Dick Jones]

 

[FunkMiller]

“Xbox is treated unfairly”.

Jesus Christ. It’s a global company that’s been denied a monopolistic merger (something that happens all the time). It’s not your cousin Timmy being passed over for promotion because of his monkey tattoo.

Why do so many of these fucking people create these bizarre personal relationships with gigantic, monolithic companies?

 

[Bojanglez]

Geforce Now uses Windows too. So they are a double customer to MS.

This is one of the main points of the whole cloud angle. In one way or another all these cloud deals (to my knowledge) are with Microsoft partners not competitors. All of them have to license Windows in order to get any of these deals. Some probably already use Azure or could be incentivised to do so with aggressive bundling from MS.

The question that people should be asking is, if the deal goes through, how can a true competitor, let's say an ambitious UK startup, enter the cloud gaming market without being in some way beholden to Microsoft? This is what the CMA are looking out for.

 

[jm89]

The look on Colt's face. LOL.

This ps rewards challenge is perfect.

 

[3liteDragon]

I can't find any other news outlets reporting this 10 year block. Exaggerated?


"I'm taking my ball and going home."
"Cool, whatever. We've got lots of others in that bag over there ..."

EDIT: it's on Reddit. Not a concrete story

My highlights from the highlights post from Idas at Era. All from the CMA's final findings on ABK-MS.

10-year deals raising more questions due to concerning clauses in the contracts from MS.

Pretty sure they're talking about Xbox consoles here.

Full post from Idas.

 

[Bernoulli]

Pretty sure they're talking about Xbox consoles here.

Full post from Idas.

so spencer lied again

Xbox's Future Isn't Reliant On Activision Blizzard Deal, Reassures Phil Spencer

"It’s not some linchpin to the long term"

www.purexbox.com

 

[DonJimbo]

MS its time to invest more in your firstparty offerings than buy other Publishers

 

[Three]

I can't find any other news outlets reporting this 10 year block. Exaggerated?


"I'm taking my ball and going home."
"Cool, whatever. We've got lots of others in that bag over there ..."

EDIT: it's on Reddit. Not a concrete story

It's really not news. It's a rule in all UK mergers that if it's rejected it can't be retried for 10 years.

 

[Heisenberg007]

This ps rewards challenge is perfect.

Jim Ryan, while personally designing these Rewards campaigns:

 

[Banjo64]

It's really not news. It's a rule in all UK mergers that if it's rejected it can't be retried for 10 years.

Pretty funny considering all of the 10 year deals flying around

 

[Bernoulli]

Pretty funny considering all of the 10 year deals flying around

did you get yours?

 

[Edmund]

“Xbox is treated unfairly”.

Jesus Christ. It’s a global company that’s been denied a monopolistic merger (something that happens all the time). It’s not your cousin Timmy being passed over for promotion because of his monkey tattoo.

Why do so many of these fucking people create these bizarre personal relationships with gigantic, monolithic companies?

I wonder what would happen if someone
sneaks into SenjutsuSage 's house at night while he's sleeping and replace his series X console with a PS5.

 

[MasterCornholio]

I wonder what would happen if someone
sneaks into SenjutsuSage 's house at night while he's sleeping and replace his series X console with a PS5.

 

[PaintTinJr]

Say what you want about Idas, but his posts are genuinely value-additive even when you don't think he's unbiased. from the same post (LINK), this caught my interest:


I can't look at this part and not think the Xbox console business is not on borrowed time..

The maths makes no sense to keep Xbox running, but the second they cancel it, Windows' DirectX API is on borrowed time along with their alliance with Nvidia, and as shown in the provisional CMA reports, the API is what blocks competing OSes to take some of their +90% share of the PC gaming OS market, and weakens Linux offerings in the Cloud gaming space.

The revenue from Windows makes the - my guestimate - $1b-$2b loss per year loss from Xbox/xbox marketing in Bing search a rounding error for those running Microsoft, even if to the shareholders it would look like something to cut adrift. It isn't like Microsoft would even be able to explain that situation to shareholders as it would put on record the very actions they deny the FTC accusing them of in anti-trust litigation.

IMHO Xbox will remain while the threat of a PlayStation displacing all desktop/laptop Windows PC functionality for the average Joe - in their house with an under the TV box - remains.

 

[nikolino840]

 

[MasterCornholio]

Was that in the 400 page CMA article?

Seems like people are focusing on the wrong thing if it isn't.

 

[Bernardougf]

Nothing MS has done has been clever in this endeavor.

Cloud gaming is a niche loss making industry that no one cares about, its beyond farcical CMA turned it into something that matters. Smoke and mirrors, Sony laughing all the way to the bank.

Deluded CMA are literally blocking cheaper and more ubiquitous entry to the ABK catalog. In doing so have built a bigger moat around Sony's buy our proprietary hardware pay RRP for games strategy.

Canot wait for gamepass to die ... this cheap/free gaming delusional beggar crowd can go to the next genius promising free shit at the cost of their freedom of choice.. people never learn, is amazingly stupid.

 

[Moridianae]

This whole concept of folks going off the rails and saying to exit the UK market over this deal getting torpedoed(and probably also by the EC this month) is insanity.

They've never been able to secure a foothold in the Japanese market, so now you want them to just pack up and go in the UK because it's sour grapes because you were told no?

Wow.

 

[GHG]

Why should they consider all subscribers of PS Plus to be part of a multi-game subscription service? Does he not understand how the different tiers work?

Do xbox consider their Xbox Live only subscribers to be MGS subscribers as well?

 

[FeastYoEyes]

Microsoft bought the creators of some of my favorite IP with Bethesda. I am hoping they see all of the trouble they got with ABK, turn around and invest in their existing platform than gobble up more of the existing industry.

 

[Pelta88]

I genuinely feel really bad for dude.

 

[POKEYCLYDE]

Canot wait for gamepass to die ... this cheap/free gaming delusional beggar crowd can go to the next genius promising free shit at the cost of their freedom of choice.. people never learn, is amazingly stupid.

What does Gamepass dying give you?

 

[PaintTinJr]

It’s true it’s in the CMA 418 page report.

I wonder what the limitations of the "acquiring any material influence over them" would be?

I'm guessing all those dreams of dropping obscene cash on ATVI to secure their library exclusively for the next 10years will be off the table also.