Well it's finally over.
In the end I think the deal was adequately regulated.
The truly anticompetitive parts were the possibility of removing COD from competitors overnight and them becoming the only company with both the technical infrastructure and contents to establish a domination in the gaming cloud market in its infancy.
Those things now cannot happen thanks to regulation so what is left is a Gamepass boost with some games but at the price of 70 billions + wasting two years in a legal battle that exposed strategies, secrets and has tied their hands essentially conceding an other generation to their competitors.
Well they seem to have glossed over all the other tools MS has to manipulate that market. Has anyone ever had it in writing what MS would charge to ensure their ActiBliz games can appear on non-windows platforms? Has (or will there be) any regulation into Windows license cost manipulation for cloud 'competitors'?
To be honest I think maybe that the importance of ActiBliz content was maybe over played, but it is the general market manipulation that needs to be watched. I don't see how this deal with Ubisoft for cloud and the promises they've made, won't require ongoing management and oversight from the likes of the CMA, so in that case they have gone back on their initial beliefs and bent over for MS.
Will be interesting to see how the deal in general alters behaviour of console rivals and cloud giants in the future.
I think Gamepass will get an overhaul, maybe in time introducing a 3rd tier and first part exclusives will only be available day 1 in the highest tier which will be priced quite a bit higher. That way they can still say they are available on Gamepass day 1. The other tiers would maybe get them 6-12 months later. We will see.