Microsoft offered 'several iterations' of its cloud remedy to the CMA

Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) CEO Sarah Cardell says that Microsoft offered multiple versions of its Cloud Remedy to UK antitrust officials.

[gold_drake]

and it still didnt work out.

[dcbronco]

The fact that Microsoft negotiated several options and none were "acceptable " to the CMA shows the CMA never had any intention of giving Microsoft a fair chance. As I've pointed out before, if the CMA doesn't feel Sony's many exclusivity deals that block Microsoft from titles aren't anticompetitive given Sony's better than 70% of the market then the CMA doesn't actually consider anything anticompetitive. By saying Sony can't leverage their current advantages into the ability to build their own cloud service in the next ten years says Sony's management is incompetent and the CMA is willing to guard their position for the foreseeable future. What the CMA did was criminal and hopefully Microsoft will push on in every other region and let Brexit claim another victim. Microsoft has already shown they have no intention of denying gamers games as they have shown with other franchises they've purchased that remain on competing platforms. As Microsoft moves on with the process certain members of the CMA won't and a proper decision from honest members will solve the issue for the UK. Until then UK gamers will have to get to know the import market.

[gold_drake]

it most likely shows, that the many options just didnt convince the CMA. its that simple.

regarding your "well sony is incompetent and in building cloud game servers".
you need to understand that Microsoft is a Tech-only company. they have know-how, the resources to build a massive thing. no one but Microsoft wants to push games into the cloud as desperately as they want, because they're failing in the console world of things.

also, your posts would be much easier to read with commas.

and dont drag Brexit into it if you have no proper understanding of it.

also also, i can guarantee you, that no one follows your posts religiously.
so, "as ive stated before" is not a proper argument to make.

[ArmrdChaos]

It's going to get real interesting when they have to go over the details of the communications between them and the FTC. So much so they chose to have that meeting in private as opposed to answering the question at the public hearing. heh

[Notellin]

It's just like anything in the business ethics world. The organizations protect those that pay them under the table.

The CMA doesn't exist to protect consumers it exists to protect the interests of the businesses that pay them to stifle competition. It's always been this way.

[Redemption-64]

You guys live in some made up bubble. Microsoft has a history of also paying for exclusive deals for games that don't come to Playstation. But I love it, when you and your ilk ignore MS doing it and only calls out Sony

[OptimusDK]

curtain_swoosh - IT IS ACTUALLY QUITE SIMPLE
the CMA is not able to count active cloud users as the EU pointet out. They counted all game pass users as cloud gamers witch we all here know is pure stupid. JUST BECAUSE YOU HAVE ACESS TO SOMETHING DOES NOT MAKE YOU A USER. It is more likely below 5% that use the service which means the whole premiss of the CMA IS UTTERLY FLAWED.

[rlow1]

@curtain_swoosh
So because you didn’t like their comment or viewpoint on the subject. You go ahead and insult the person, “ also, your posts would be much easier to read with commas” or “ also also, i can guarantee you, that no one follows your posts religiously.”

By your standards using the word, “also” twice as you did, isn’t proper as well. Last I checked, on N4G nobody’s winning a grammar award for their posts.

As for the comment about Brexit, why can’t they comment on it? Does a person have to be from Britain or an expert to be able to comment on a subject? That’s called censorship and your comment comes off as a mild threat. Wether intended or not.

I disagree on your premise that MS is just a tech company. At their heart they are a software company. A distinguished difference. As for Sony building networks, @dcbronco was trying to convey the absurd notion of the CMA claim, that Sony wouldn’t have the capability of building a network, which is very inaccurate. Sony owns and operates their own networks already. What they should have said, Sony would have to play alot of catch-up to scale it to the size of MS network. Which translates, to alot of money and time, which they could do but won’t. Unless they were forced to compete, but the CMA took care of that for them.

As for MS wanting games in the cloud. Why wouldn’t they push for that and leverage their network? Yes we can see their motivations from a mile away. But there are other big networks out there. The biggest being Amazons “AWS” center, Netflix and Apple are no slouch either. Whom all have games already and are pursuing games to add to their network. As for streaming, it’s nowhere close to being a replacement for hardware. Speeds aren’t fast enough and it takes a company with deep pockets to be able to invest in the type of infrastructure, to even get close to localized gaming. Plus, the CMA approved huge streaming mergers for Hollywood, which they seemed to have no problem with.

Everyone is entitled to their viewpoint on the subject. Some are out there, or just plain antagonistic. But for those trying to put their two cents in as they understand it. They shouldn’t be mocked, or nitpicked on grammar, to diminish what they’ve said. Valid arguments or viewpoints, like you displayed at the beginning and midsection of your comment. Are the type of responses we should all (including myself) display. Anything else, just diminishes your counterpoints. Peace

[gold_drake]

no, that was more a suggestion than anything else, cause i somewat struggled following the reply.

i didnt insult anyone, or mocked anyone. there was no disrespect at all. and i never said anything about grammar either. i was simply repsonding to his repsonse to what i had said. last time i checked, this is what people do on here.

dont create a false narrative when there was none.

[XiNatsuDragnel]

That's why you split Blizzard and Activision and take one.

[gold_drake]

im rly surprised that they didnt go JUST after CoD.

would have been cheaper too id imagine.

[Rude-ro]

Not what they want.
The media has focused on the one game…
The fight is over the far reaching ramifications of patents, ips, licenses, etc…
The cma was proactive off of the monopoly of one specific aspect.

[343_Guilty_Spark]

38 other countries and territories have approved.

The CMA was never intent on approving the deal regardless of what behavioral remedy Microsoft offered.

[SullysCigar]

Do you have any evidence to support such claims or are we expected to just take your word for it?

[derek]

Nobody cares that Cambodia approved the purchase, lol.

[Bathyj]

It's really sad that you guys obviously see this as the only path for Xbox to be a viable platform. Doesn't even occur to you they should make their own games not buy everyone else's.

But I guess if they could they would. Did you know Hitler was a painter? Only he wasn't very good. During World war 2 he stockpiled huge amounts of art and kept it from the world only under his control.

It's not going to make them better. It's only going to make abk and gaming in general worse.

[__SteakDeck__]

@WOREGED Delusional just like that girl that keeps rejecting you. “If I keep trying, one day she’ll go out with me” Lol

[__SteakDeck__]

@WOREGED You’re lame. You really made a new account to say all of this. Lol

[RedDevils]

China love approving anything to do with monopoly.

[shinoff2183]

343

You work there, secretary maybe?

[gerbintosh]

@WOREGED

Actually doesn't make a difference if China approved it. China blatantly steals IP all the time and they don't allow most games into their country anyway. I think China could give two shits about this

[sparky77]

It's funny that they say it will stump competition yet all the competitors want it.

[SullysCigar]

Hilarious..

Looks like Microsoft will need to devise an additional, more palatable solution to satisfy the CMA, should their appeal for reassessment be successful next year. They can present it to them from their bended knee, as they beg them to reconsider their ruling.

[Workshyskiver]

You ok there mate?

[SullysCigar]

^ I'm good thanks bro, how you doin'?

[RauLeCreuset]

That's flat out false. Not all competitors want it. Let's get that out of the way before looking at what was said.

"What the group is considering there is [whether or not] a remedy will give the group confidence that this market will be able to continue with the competitive dynamics in the absence of the merger.

"This is a market which is in early gestation, where we want competition to flourish. We want all parties big and small to be able to access that market. There was a real concern on the part of the group that if you accept the proposal that was tabled by Microsoft, it would constrain the way the market would evolve going forward.

"It would not replicate the conditions of full and free competition that we would see in the absence of the merger."

Not only is it false that all competitors want it, but the CMA is not just looking at the market as it exists today and considering the effects of a merger for only the current competitors in the market. They are also thinking beyond 10 years and considering the market for future competitors trying to break into it.

[343_Guilty_Spark]

Major players have largely abandoned cloud gaming….leaving only MSFT NVDA AMZN and a few smaller players in the market. How can they dictate something for which may or may not happen in the future.

Listening to comments here most people do not like cloud gaming. They prefer a dedicated hardware experience. So even if there is growth it’s unlikely cloud streaming will ever take the place of dedicated experiences. So it will remain a niche market.

[RauLeCreuset]

@343_Guilty_Spark

That's really irrelevant to the point of my post that sparky is incorrect on the false claim that all competitors want the remedy and overlooking that the CMA does not just look at a snapshot of the market as it exists today. I don't know how many times they have to say it.

The problem is some of you just don't want to hear it and think your assumptions based on your observations of N4G comment sections should change that reality.

I don't know why you're trying to downplay a market Xbox has stated time and again that they're shifting to instead of trying to compete on hardware.

[shinoff2183]

343

The difference being ms is one of the richest companies in the world. They will continue to push and push cloud gaming until there's no choice. Why you think they've been extremely pro digital. Even as far as having high print runs for games.

[343_Guilty_Spark]

Every competitor except Sony.

[Eonjay]

Your hate for Sony will always prevent you from seeing the truth so you are wasting your time with this topic at all. You aren't ever gonna let yourself understand anything beyond 'hate Sony'.

If you were ever serious, you would be Actually addressing what the CMA said. They already ruled against needing to protect the console space so any reference to Sony is invalid. If you were serious but simply misguided you would have mentioned Google, a much larger company with much heavier influence than Sony.

If you were serious you would point out that the CMA is protecting British companies that might not a actually exist yet.

But you don't care about this deal. You don't really care. You only 'hate Sony' and that is not a solution here.

[343_Guilty_Spark]

I've owned all PS consoles except the PSP. So to say I hate Sony is a stretch.

Playstation has consistently had the best hardcore console exclusives. It has consistently delivered on great hardware and ease of development (aside from PS3).

This is beyond Playstation.

"If you were serious you would point out that the CMA is protecting British companies that might not a actually exist yet."

Have you considered the amount of expenses required to server backend a cloud gaming company that it is probably prohibitively expensive even for a large megacap corp to create a cloud gaming service. Not to mention the dependency on low latency mobile networks and high-speed wireless communication services in order to deliver effective cloud game streaming.

Its also a niche market.

The incentive for investing in cloud gaming isn't there unless you are already a player.

[Outside_ofthe_Box]

"So to say I hate Sony is a stretch."

Not a stretch, the truth. Literally your comment history is proof.

[Notellin]

You just have to love seeing commenters like Eonjay pretend to be the unbiased ones. It's like listening to two toddlers explain who hit the other one first.

[Hofstaderman]

Who cares at this point? It’s not even a console war. For that there has to be shots (games) from both sides of the trenches. It’s a one sided massacre. Let’s just watch the showcase, plan what we want to buy, play it and move on now.

[Eonjay]

I'm not really sure what they can offer. British authorities if their desires in the cloud space are fundamentally divergent. It's not that either side is wrong. It's simply that they want different things.

[purple101]

They offered 15 different envelopes of cash. Sadly.. None were big enough for CMA cronies to bite. Muahaha

[DivineHand125]

The fact that none of the remedies Microsoft proposed to the CMA worked so far means the reason they gave for the deal being blocked isn't the actual reason the deal was blocked. They had no intention of approving the deal and all of this is just BS. Microsoft should move with the assumption that the decision will not change and put resources into the plan B.

[jznrpg]

Or it means the remedies they offered don’t make a difference enough on their potential monopoly of the cloud in UK? That’s clearly how they feel about it

[DivineHand125]

Microsoft offered to allow their own games appear on other cloud streaming services and we have started to see them pop up on GeForce now which has a wider reach than xcloud. Idk what else Microsoft can do as that move can only serve to grow cloud gaming.

[RauLeCreuset]

It means they prefer structural remedies over behavioral ones, like the ones these 10 year deals represent, as they said months before their final determination when they made their provisional determination and laid out the same reasons for their concerns about the cloud market that they gave when denying the deal.

https://assets.publishing.s...

[DivineHand125]

I want to see them keep this same consistency with all acquisition that appears on their desk.

[shinoff2183]

Divine from what I've read. They kinda do already. It's easy to look up

[RauLeCreuset]

@DivineHand125

In other words, you have no counterargument to the evidence that contradicts your original argument and, instead of dealing with the evidence that challenges your position, you would rather find some other reason to complain that it's unfair.

[RauLeCreuset]

"I want to see them keep this same consistency with all acquisition that appears on their desk."

I don't know why I bother presenting evidence that's just going to be ignored or glossed over, but...

From the CMA's Merger Remedies publication, dated 13 December 2018 (years before MS announced intent to acquire Activision):

"Restoring this process of rivalry through structural remedies, such as divestitures, which re-establish the structure of the market expected in the absence of the merger, should be expected to address the adverse effects at source. Such remedies are normally preferable to measures that seek to regulate the ongoing behaviour of the
merger parties (so-called behavioural remedies, such as price caps, supply commitments or restrictions on use of long term contracts). Behavioural remedies are unlikely to deal with an SLC and its adverse
effects as comprehensively as structural remedies and may result in distortions when compared with a competitive market outcome."

https://assets.publishing.s... (Same source from above.)

A case before the Activision acquisition in which the CMA forced Meta to divest Giphy:

"Meta originally acquired Giphy in May 2020 for approximately US$315 million. This was a small transaction for Meta, which intended to bring the GIF platform into the Meta portfolio which already includes WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook. Since Giphy had no revenues in the United Kingdom, Meta decided to close the acquisition without voluntarily notifying it to the CMA for review."

"Meta appealed the CMA’s 2021 divestment order to the UK’s competition court, the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT), on the ground that, amongst others, the CMA had effectively fabricated a potential market in which it found that Meta and Giphy competed (or would compete). Meta contended that the CMA cannot be allowed to postulate future markets without current market activity to rely upon, in order to halt a merger in the present.

"However, the CAT largely agreed with the CMA, and only found against the CMA on one of Meta’s six grounds of appeal – a procedural ground relating to sharing third-party confidential information. In light of this, the CMA reconsidered its decision but reached the same outcome, which was released on 18 October 2022.4 The CMA’s reissued decision has ordered Meta to unwind the transaction - an outcome that Meta has accepted."

https://www.klgates.com/CMA...

[DivineHand125]

@everyone who replied. The CMA remedy for this acquisition disincentives anyone from acquiring any developer, publisher or service that offers games or services to Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft or anyone who competes in that space if their intension is to make anything exclusive. The acquired company must operate in the same capacity as it did prior to the acquisition or merger. This means no Square Enix, Capcom, Sega, Ubisoft, EA etc. can be acquired unless the intention is for that company to remain 100% multiplatform. Especially of they provide a cloud gaming service in some capacity even if the acquired company has no intension of being on cloud gaming.

This stance can have both positive and negative outcomes on the industry. Of course, we know the positive is that everything will remain the same with very little disruption.

In my opinion, the negative is that small segments like cloud gaming will never reach its fullest potential as long as developers and publishers block their games from being played on cloud platforms like what they did when GeForce Now launched. One way around this is to acquire them and grow a strong storefront with a large number of high-profile games while offering them on a subscription-based service rather than a buy to own model as OnLive and Stadia has proven those models don't work for cloud.

Microsoft has a very low chance of appealing the decision even though many of the stakeholders have found flaws in the CMA's interpretation of the size and relevance of cloud gaming.

There are many examples of acquisitions that were rightfully blocked by regulators, protected the consumer from abuse, however, I don't believe the CMA got this one right. If nearly the entire world approves the deal and even some cloud providers disagree with the CMA's stance, then something must be going on with the outlier.

This is why I said every acquisition that is proposed going forward must come under the same scrutiny by the CMA. This way we will know not to waste time.

I am open for discussion.

[RauLeCreuset]

"I am open for discussion."

Why would I want to discuss?

Respectfully, you are moving the goalposts and have done so twice here when confronted with evidence that challenges your previous claims. I have answered your prior unsubstantiated claims and implications with sourced evidence that challenges them. Let's deal with that before asking us to discuss paragraphs of new claims.

[potatoseal]

Oh is that what it means? Wow, glad you know what is really means. You have no idea what it means, do you?

[jznrpg]

We get 100% of profit forever. We get 100% profit for 10 years than make a new deal for 100% profit for another 10 years. Did we mention we get all of the profit?

[rlow1]

We’re still on this? Must be a slow news day.

[Monkeycan8]

CLOUD GAMING SUCKS

[rlow1]

After reading the article on the CMAs view. It’s even more clear how in my view they were wrong.
Why? Because they have approved big streaming mergers already for Big Hollywood studios. Interesting that Hollywood does a lot of filming in the uk because of tax breaks. Where was that logic when Disney was buying up everything?
Plus streaming isn’t exclusive to MS or gaming. There are plenty of big players, Netflix being the biggest, is developing games.
No, I personally believe their is a deeper motive and it’s political. Streaming for games isn’t going to replace downloading and nor physical media anytime soon. The tech, especially consistent high speeds are far from primetime.

[Ryuk_2007]

CMA said that M$ will have a monopoly on the 2% cloud gaming market.. that's why they blocked it lol

[__SteakDeck__]

@Ryuk_2007 It’s 2% now, but what will it be in 20 years?

[giovonni]

It may be higher, or MS might be completely swept out of the industry due to competition. The thing is like the FTC and CMA it’s all speculative, we don’t know. Case in point 30 years ago AOL dominated the Instamessage market. Where are they now? 20 years ago AT&T dominated the telephone market… where are they now? 20 years ago NBA live dominated the the basketball gaming market where is it now? So to use speculative rhetoric as the basis for proving a point to block is disingenuous, and shows a lack of understanding the industry.

[Binarycode]

Starfield will be DOA as well.

Xbox is bleeding. Get to the chopper.

[GrmpyolGamer]

If Cloud game is the hang up for the CMA (It's not. It's just the excuse they are using because the FDA asked them to) then MS should just pull xcloud from the UK and be done

[giovonni]

I believe that’s what they would do until the UK realizes the mistake they’ve made as they miss out on deals.

[giovonni]

That’s because the CMA’s intentions were never to pass it. There is something going on between the FTC and CMA that needs to be viewed and discussed. The fact that they Khan and Cardell can’t answer and continually dance around simple questions raises eyebrows. When Sarah was asked about her interactions with the FTC she dance around it to the point where she had to be forced to either give more detail in public or private. Next, it has been discovered that the CMA exaggerated Microsoft’s shares in the cloud market which tells us, the CMA doesn’t understand the market they are supposedly analyzing. Now, it’s true the CMA can block things based upon an uncertain future but, when they dance around simple questions, exaggerate numbers, and appear to be influenced by an outside source, that they admitted they’ve talked to but won’t give honest specifics of what was talked about, and denied multiple concessions tells us this is more of a political, or an attempt to change business merger practices. With FTC’s Khan’s agenda aimed at tec businesses it seems the FTC and CMA would rather be sorry than to be wrong

[neomahi]

And then they can run ads like mobile games do they've been talking about doing. It's Microsoft still not learning from past mistakes. Last time this happened they were talking about increasing Xbox Live to $120/yr and everyone became furious over the matter and then Microsoft found how angry everyone was so testing the water was the bad idea and they did what they usually do. Came out and apologized for it and then as usual, Microsoft fans said: Hey, it's okay, you learned from it, let's just keep going now. The problem with that is, them Microsoft comes along with something later to try and screw everyone over in some other way again.

So, congrats Xbox fans. You'll get to stream your Activision-Blizzard games over Xbox Cloud and have ads inserted in your games. Then you know what comes next, right? You have to pay even more on top of that to get rid of the ads so, it's the (super) rich man having no regard for the poor struggling man trying to get by and straining his pocket more to make the rich man richer.

Microsoft is just so out of touch with gamers but, it's not my problem, I'm a PlayStation gamer, right? Microsoft wants to be in the mobile sphere, they want cloud gaming to compete with mobile gaming, and now they want to bring mobile gaming ads to console games....... Microsoft is trying to turn console gaming into the mobile business experience. What a shitty company here it is in black and white:

https://comicbook-com.cdn.a...

[ApocalypseShadow]

Without knowing that she was interviewed, I knew Microsoft's next step was to consider adding ads into games. As I've said before to these individuals that want to ignore what Microsoft's intentions are, it's still DRM 2013 all over again just in a new form: Game pass and Xbox cloud.

Microsoft has always wanted to ditch physical as they were against Blu-ray but had no choice but to add it in their console temporarily. But they still want to get into the lucrative business of advertising as others have like Facebook. DRM 2013 saw that games were always online, you couldn't lend, trade or sell your games, check ins to make sure they locked you in from doing anything with your purchase, you don't own the games you purchased, no modding of games and there was a camera specifically added for advertising and seeing how many was in the room with you to charge more.

Game pass and Xbox cloud is an always online service that requires you to pay to play games, you don't own them or can lend them, trade them or sell them, Microsoft's servers check to make sure you're paid up to play those games or your services are terminated. If the servers go down, you can't play just like Xbox one DRM attempt in that if the servers went down, they couldn't check you and you couldn't play games. The same "play anywhere" that Google and Stadia was trying to accomplish is the same thing Microsoft will offer with the play anywhere, any screen. Only difference is that Google sold games that was on a server. Microsoft seems to want to dodge that mistake by just renting games. But there's still no ownership. Eventually, they will ditch the physical hardware. They only still make it because enough core gamers would drop Xbox and then they would be screwed. As casuals are perfectly fine getting games on their cellphones that they don't need Microsoft. The same casuals that dropped Microsoft's Kinect and Nintendo's Wii for cellphones.

My guess is that their model will be like Netflix. A cheaper game pass Xbox cloud with ads and then there will be a more expensive game pass that allows no ads. But eventually, that will get ads too.

These fans on the other side just don't know that Microsoft's intentions are profits only. They don't care about games. If they did, they would be trying harder to make them like Sony and Nintendo does. They only care about the end goal of money. And they like that mobile model of incomplete games that sell you pieces later for high profits and the ads that come with it. These fans are dragging the rest of us down a black hole. They think games are cheap for them now. But it's going to cost them and the rest of us later if they get their way.

[giovonni]

Lol, Sony plans on running ads in console gaming too, and they don’t have plan on accessing the mobile space… which I can tell you they are. So where is the shitty sentiment for Sony?

[ApocalypseShadow]

I would bet you Sony's implementation would be different and better than Microsoft's.

Sony's console is better by design, their games and game engines are better, their controller is better, they offer VR when Daddy Warbucks couldn't but claimed they would offer high fidelity VR.

Microsoft, when they offered Xbox Live on the OG Xbox, gave back nothing in return for over a decade on through the 360 generation. Sony added pay for online with PS4 and gave back more in games every month that pushed Microsoft to change their greedy strategy of giving nothing.

When Sony had PS Now as a separate entity, they didn't require you to pay for Plus. Microsoft not only required gamers to pay for XBL to play game pass games, they forced gamers to pay for XBL to play Free to Play Games until they got caught upping the price of XBL to force gamers over to game pass.

Sony, during the pandemic, gave away games to their platform because we were all stuck at home trying not to get COVID. What did Microsoft give? They didn't give shit.

If Sony added ads, it will be different just as Sony's strategy of adding their games to PC after they sold for awhile instead of day one that kills sales of consoles as we all know it cannibalizes game sales from Microsoft's own mouth.

Think again buddy. One company will do it better if it comes. Microsoft just screws gamers over like with the lack of games created or trying to buy up third party publishers. There's a clear difference in how both do things. It's why Microsoft had gotten their ass whooped again and again that they are pulling out the checkbook to screw the industry over.