Microsoft now says the CMA was ‘tough and fair’ over Activision Blizzard deal

[Puff]

Microsoft now says the CMA was “tough and fair” over Activision Blizzard deal

Microsoft eventually got its Activision Blizzard deal over the line in the UK.

www.theverge.com

Microsoft president Brad Smith wasn’t happy with the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) last year, after the regulator blocked Microsoft’s giant Activision Blizzard deal. Now that Microsoft has restructured its deal and won approval in the UK, Smith has kinder words for the CMA, describing the regulator as “tough and fair” in an interview with the BBC’s Radio 4 Today program.

Smith originally criticized the CMA and said confidence in the UK had been “severely shaken” after the regulator moved to block Microsoft’s $68.7 billion deal in April last year. He called it the “darkest day” for Microsoft in its four decades of working in Britain, and went a step further, saying “the European Union is a more attractive place to start a business” than the UK.

“I certainly learned a lot personally,” admitted Smith on Radio 4 yesterday. “I wouldn’t step back necessarily from all of the concerns I raised when I talked way back in April, but I might choose slightly different words to make my point.”

The CMA forced Microsoft to restructure its Activision Blizzard deal, giving up key cloud gaming rights in the UK and many other markets worldwide. “The CMA held to a tough standard and I respect that. In my view it was tough and fair,” added Smith. “It pushed Microsoft to change the acquisition that we had proposed for Activision Blizzard, to spin out certain rights that the CMA was concerned about with respect to cloud gaming.”

 

[Nhomnhom]

So much talk about that and in the end it won't matter at all. Xbox is being murdered, Blizzard and Activation are both at an all time low and the odds of MS turning it around are close to zero, not to mention that PlayStation will more likely than not still get all these games.

Bethesda is a good example of this, they announced the acquisition before the start of this gen, the most relevant game released so far was Starfield an absolute stinker that did worse than all previous Bethesda Game Studio games. India Jones and Blade outside of PlayStation are guaranteed to flop as well.

 

[Entropi]

Praising the CMA now? then it is certain that more acquisitions are on the horizon.

 

[GrayWolf323]

Praising the CMA now? then it is certain that more acquisitions are on the horizon.

pretty much, it’s a shame the CMA caved on ABK like they did because what grounds will they have to block anything going forward? Xbox’s position in the market if anything has actually gotten worse after all but regulators have already signaled that it’s perfectly fine for Microsoft to try to buy up the market that they failed to compete in naturally

 

[Evilnemesis8]

ZzZ, gotta love PR talk by execs, this is just saying things for the sake of saying things.
Yeah, sure, the legal team learned through the process of arguing with the governing bodies as to how to better navigate the legal waters, good for them, I guess.

 

[Zzero]

ZzZ, gotta love PR talk by execs, this is just saying things for the sake of saying things.
Yeah, sure, the legal team learned through the process of arguing with the governing bodies as to how to better navigate the legal waters, good for them, I guess.

Correct, people whining about this are fools. The deal is through, best to play nice with them and move on.

 

[AshHunter216]

Gearing up to take more games away from non-Xbox gamers I'm sure, though maybe I shouldn't say that as it would only encourage more obnoxious doom and gloom on here.

 

[Jim Ryan]

Has anyone said the thing about "turntables" yet?

 

[Dabaus]

Its going to be interesting to see how MS, despite slowly losing relevance every passing day (if market share is the measuring stick) will try to stay in the news cycle. In 2020 & 2021 it seemed almost daily there would be a new puff piece about cloud gaming or some vacuous Phil spencer (Almost typed Failed instead of Phil subconsciously!) interview. Im sure we will hear alot about mobile being important, probably cycle through Booty, Bond, and Phil interviews about the changing landscape and shifting goals. "Weve never been in a better position."

 

[anonpuffs]

Hilarious. Wonder if they'll make all their xitter shills walk back the threats and hateful bile they spewed towards the regulators. I have strong doubts.

 

[ToTTenTranz]

So much talk about that and in the end it won't matter at all. Xbox is being murdered, Blizzard and Activation are both at an all time low and the odds of MS turning it around are close to zero, not to mention that PlayStation will more likely than not still get all these games.

Bethesda is a good example of this, they announced the acquisition before the start of this gen, the most relevant game released so far was Starfield an absolute stinker that did worse than all previous Bethesda Game Studio games. India Jones and Blade outside of PlayStation are guaranteed to flop as well.

Starfield's amount of loading screens likely comes from the fact that it was optimized for the relatively low RAM amount on the Series S. Small RAM pool = smaller area of environment that fits within the render pool = everything needs to be compartmentalized with loading screens in-between.

Microsoft demands feature and gameplay parity between their consoles, so they couldn't make it better on the Series X either. Microsoft also demanded that the game's development was prioritized on the Xbox consoles as we saw from e-mails leaked during the ABK court procedures, so Bethesda didn't make it any better for the PC.
On the PC the game isn't taking more than 8GB VRAM even on GPUs like the 4090 or the 7900XTX with 24GB VRAM, even on 4K with everything maxed out.


Bethesda probably started its development creating assets that would fit the PS5's available ~14GB of RAM. Then Phil "When Everybody Plays We All Win" Spencer told Bethesda they're halting the (preferred) PS5 version and devs must focus on the Series consoles. Bethesda doesn't have the time to remake all the assets, so they must cut all the gameplay into little boxes to fit the Series S' 8GB of available RAM.



So yes, Microsoft's purchase of the studio probably did screw up the game. I mean not the purchase per se, but Microsoft's ridiculous amount of terrible decisions around game development.

 

[Would_you_kindly]

After that ridiculous temper tantrum fucking man baby

 

[Plextorage]

First the threats to UK country, now they were fair. Sure MS, even the judge was completely flabbergasted about why CMA wanted to stop the merge before turnaround.