UK CMA Says Microsoft-Activision Deal Will 'Not Result in a Substantial Lessening of Competition'

ksdixon

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22 Jun 2022
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I dunno, I wont be buying any Activision Blizzard games anyway anymore, even if they are on PS.

If the regulators are not gonna act, gamers have to take a hardline, even if it's just 10-20% of us.
You say this now...

At the level of monetary scale allowing IP gobble-up now, it'll be interesting next gen if MS were to release, say, GH classic revival as XB exclusive, no? Casual type zeitgeist games etc
 
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Swift_Star

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Well it didn’t last long. He’s back to being an insufferable, miserable, depressing, jaded, crybaby. Complaining about everything in gaming and Sony.

That dudes post are annoying to read. Don’t know how he’s not banned for complaining so much.

He needs to seek help. Badly.
He’s not banned because he’s one of the oldest poster on that site, since GAF. But pretty much everyone hates him 🤷🏻‍♂️
 

Swift_Star

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Ue
And I'm saying they can't.
Yes, they can. They have credit. You don’t need money upfront to buy a company when you’re a company. How much do you think they have available at banks to make a purchase lmao? They’re lucrative and making records after records revenue and profit. This idea they can’t afford it is not only fake, it’s stupid and uninformed.
 

On Demand

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He’s not banned because he’s one of the oldest poster on that site, since GAF. But pretty much everyone hates him 🤷🏻‍♂️

At least ban him from the thread like they did last time.

I’ve never seen him excited for anything.


Ue

Yes, they can. They have credit. You don’t need money upfront to buy a company when you’re a company. How much do you think they have available at banks to make a purchase lmao? They’re lucrative and making records after records revenue and profit. This idea they can’t afford it is not only fake, it’s stupid and uninformed.

Exactly. Sony can borrow money or even use stocks. There’s so many way to make a business purchase. Everything isn’t always a cash buy.

People are so misinformed.

What it is too is that green rats don’t want Sony to buy studios and publishers. They only want MS to be able to buy and take away games from PlayStation.
 
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If the deal goes through, all it buys Xbox is two more years of "just wait until what we have to show you at the ABK conference".

Microsoft bought Zenimax, but where's the output? Obsidian games have made 1 game in five years. 343 1 game in 5 years. Coalition, Bethesda, Ninja Theory, InXile...Blizzard have released OW2 and are about to launch Diablo 4. When do we expect their next games? 2030?

Microsoft are right for once, nothing will change.
 
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Fenton

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Well it didn’t last long. He’s back to being an insufferable, miserable, depressing, jaded, crybaby. Complaining about everything in gaming and Sony.

That dudes post are annoying to read. Don’t know how he’s not banned for complaining so much.

He needs to seek help. Badly.
He wants Sony to acquire publishers
 

Dabaus

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Guys Sony can get the money if they want, that’s the least of their problems now. Microsoft is now using a U.S. senator that chairs the US international committee to investigate Japanese market share and since Sony and the ftc said Nintendo isn’t a competitor, sony appears to have a monopoly in the high end console market there. Her job is to make sure US comp have a fair shake in foreign markets. She’s not just on the committee, she CHAIRS it. Not only that but you also have the ftc now investigating third party exclusives and if they are anticompetitive and those are the documents sony had to hand over.

So not only that but the deal is seemingly going through. If that arbitrary definition of high console market stands, sony may not even be ALLOWED to make a retaliatory acquisition in Japan. I get it all of this was unforeseen but whose ever strategy of blocking the deal so stubbornly even after the 10 year offer instead of taking advantage to acquire they’re own key partners should be fired in the most humiliating way possible. This week has been a disaster for Sony.
 

Satoru

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No. TT ain't selling for what Sony could/would offer them. Now sit down.

👶 🍭

You do realise that Sony, with a market cap of around 100B and stable finances, could acquire a company of 50B or maybe even more, depending on how the deal is structured?

Sony is worth close to 6 times what T2 is, for example, therefore even at a premium of 50% they have the means to fulfil such acquisition if they really want to.

Will they? More than likely they won't. Can they? Absolutely.

Now sit down and let the adults talk.
 

Johnic

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You do realise that Sony, with a market cap of around 100B and stable finances, could acquire a company of 50B or maybe even more, depending on how the deal is structured?

Sony is worth close to 6 times what T2 is, for example, therefore even at a premium of 50% they have the means to fulfil such acquisition if they really want to.

Will they? More than likely they won't. Can they? Absolutely.

Now sit down and let the adults talk.

It's exactly this pseudo intellectual crap I can't stand when it comes to these discussions. People parroting what their favorite youtuber told them, without fact checking or really understanding much about it.

But Sony poor. Except when they get to pay off regulators, amirite?
 

Papacheeks

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The Nvidia Arm block was before MS buying Activision. Nore was it as large and expensive. Anything is fair game now.

You really believe M$ won’t get the CMA to look pass their cloud concerns? They already don’t care about the console market after originally wanting MS sell COD if they wanted to buy Activision.


Please stop spouting the narrative that MS is not big in gaming compare to Sony. They can become big, and bigger than Sony, buy buying everything. Which is the point.

Sorry it took so long to apply I literally was being tattooed most of the day.

Nvidia Arm deal was 40 Billion. FAIRLY large. And the reason it was blocked was because of the position of both ARM and NVIDIA in chip market. Nvidia had no competitor in gpu's, even with Radeon and now Intel making GPU's marketshare wise they still have most of the market of considerable amount.

Same went for ARM. Which is why market wise CMA blocked it, there was no other competitor as big as Nvidia to make a fair market compete wise, it would have been a lop sided adventure.
You really didn't read what i said. I said concern wise CMA changed position on console, but not their concerns when looking at cloud gaming. CMA looks at numbers, FTC to that extent does the same.
FTC is being harder because of Microsoft's past in USA in other markets where they basically are a monopoly in business software.
In gaming market even with their 360 years Marketshare wise Playstation outside of US/UK laid the smack down on them and thats even more so today.

My original response was to the people on twitter, in this thread, and the ABK thread who are too emotionally invested.
I'm not saying I like consolidation, and actually im more worried what this signifies to Tenecent and others who are looking at this deal as a CHeckered flag to go all out on a buying spree.
But in terms of business, looking at numbers. Xbox is not doing well even though MS make it look like it is. Thats more of them trying to fluff up numbers to appease stock owners.
This wont kill sony, it will hurt their revenue for sure after a couple years, but its not like people who are buying PS5's suddenly throw it in the trash and buy a xbox.

Like 2023 Playstation is going to have an amazing year. And if Insomniac can hold their development pipeline, we may get another large 2024 from Sony with partnered titles like FF7R part 2, Wolverine and what ever else they have.
 
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Remij

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You do realise that Sony, with a market cap of around 100B and stable finances, could acquire a company of 50B or maybe even more, depending on how the deal is structured?

Sony is worth close to 6 times what T2 is, for example, therefore even at a premium of 50% they have the means to fulfil such acquisition if they really want to.

Will they? More than likely they won't. Can they? Absolutely.

Now sit down and let the adults talk.
I do realize that Sony can't, and won't, buy Take Two.

Now once YOU realize that.. and give up the fantasies... we can get back to the topic of this thread. :)
 
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Yobo

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Guys Sony can get the money if they want, that’s the least of their problems now. Microsoft is now using a U.S. senator that chairs the US international committee to investigate Japanese market share and since Sony and the ftc said Nintendo isn’t a competitor, sony appears to have a monopoly in the high end console market there. Her job is to make sure US comp have a fair shake in foreign markets. She’s not just on the committee, she CHAIRS it. Not only that but you also have the ftc now investigating third party exclusives and if they are anticompetitive and those are the documents sony had to hand over.

So not only that but the deal is seemingly going through. If that arbitrary definition of high console market stands, sony may not even be ALLOWED to make a retaliatory acquisition in Japan. I get it all of this was unforeseen but whose ever strategy of blocking the deal so stubbornly even after the 10 year offer instead of taking advantage to acquire they’re own key partners should be fired in the most humiliating way possible. This week has been a disaster for Sony.
Why do you keep spamming this?

MS marketshare in Japan has nothing to do with Sony. MS have always done a poor job in that market.

Sony have a small share of the overall gaming market in Japan and it is easy to represent how they have lost market share over the past decade to Nintendo

Regulators when approving or disapproving an acquisition do not look at how it affects a single market that is not their own. Only Japan itself would look at the composition of the Japanese market and they will take holistic look at the whole market
 
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Killer_Sakoman

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Guys Sony can get the money if they want, that’s the least of their problems now. Microsoft is now using a U.S. senator that chairs the US international committee to investigate Japanese market share and since Sony and the ftc said Nintendo isn’t a competitor, sony appears to have a monopoly in the high end console market there. Her job is to make sure US comp have a fair shake in foreign markets. She’s not just on the committee, she CHAIRS it. Not only that but you also have the ftc now investigating third party exclusives and if they are anticompetitive and those are the documents sony had to hand over.

So not only that but the deal is seemingly going through. If that arbitrary definition of high console market stands, sony may not even be ALLOWED to make a retaliatory acquisition in Japan. I get it all of this was unforeseen but whose ever strategy of blocking the deal so stubbornly even after the 10 year offer instead of taking advantage to acquire they’re own key partners should be fired in the most humiliating way possible. This week has been a disaster for Sony.
I don't think Microsoft has a market share that they can gain or lose in Japan. It really doesn't make sense for any regulator. They need to look at the impact of the aquisition on global scale.
 

anonpuffs

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I don't think Microsoft has a market share that they can gain or lose in Japan. It really doesn't make sense for any regulator. They need to look at the impact of the aquisition on global scale.
The funny thing about monopoly is that US law doesn't forbid monopolies, just using anticompetitive behavior to stop competitors. Now, the FF16 exclusivity deal could possibly be viewed as anticompetitive, but it's only timed and Microsoft has made plenty of its own exclusivity deals. You don't get penalized by antitrust law for simply being extremely good at what you do.
 
24 Jun 2022
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Guys Sony can get the money if they want, that’s the least of their problems now. Microsoft is now using a U.S. senator that chairs the US international committee to investigate Japanese market share and since Sony and the ftc said Nintendo isn’t a competitor, sony appears to have a monopoly in the high end console market there. Her job is to make sure US comp have a fair shake in foreign markets. She’s not just on the committee, she CHAIRS it. Not only that but you also have the ftc now investigating third party exclusives and if they are anticompetitive and those are the documents sony had to hand over.

So not only that but the deal is seemingly going through. If that arbitrary definition of high console market stands, sony may not even be ALLOWED to make a retaliatory acquisition in Japan. I get it all of this was unforeseen but whose ever strategy of blocking the deal so stubbornly even after the 10 year offer instead of taking advantage to acquire they’re own key partners should be fired in the most humiliating way possible. This week has been a disaster for Sony.

Even ignoring the quasi-xenophobic tendencies their rhetoric stokes (though really this should probably be blamed on Satya Nadella, considering he's the one that oddly made it sound like MS having only 4% of the Japanese gaming market should be "looked into" in that PR interview with MSNBC), even ignoring the obvious MS funding money that senator receives...

If under any circumstances they're able to BS their way into trying to suggest collusion between Sony and the Japanese government to suppress Xbox presence in Japan, rather than acknowledging the REAL reason Microsoft is a non-competitor in that market in terms of market share, that will be a problem. Complete ignoring of the Japanese market with the XBO generation, no 1P games designed to appeal to gamers in that region, little to no efforts to secure Japanese 3P content or marketing deals that could appeal to said market, MS willingly reducing their own marketing budget in the region that generation, etc.), THOSE are the actual reasons MS's presence in Japan is so small.

To your last paragraph though, there is kind of a way Sony would be able to slip out of being locked down and make acquisitions: just make a new handheld. They could justify any acquisition as an attempt to bolster their portable offerings, since they have less than 1% of that market in Japan compared to Nintendo. They could posit having that acquired content benefit users across their gaming ecosystem, that opens the door for having PS5 versions of the games made as well, with content enrichment had from playing both versions (same way Nintendo used to do when they had separate home consoles and portables).

If a paid-off female senator wants to try locking Sony out of making Japanese acquisitions for PS5, then Sony can just find a gaming segment in Japan where they are very small and argue the acquisition is driven to make them more "competitive" in those areas they barely have a presence in. Hybrid/portable gaming devices is one area. Mobile is another although they have a bit more presence there, still nowhere at the level of some of the biggest mobile gaming providers and their market share in Japan. Or they can take yet ANOTHER page from Microsoft's playbook and develop a mobile storefront and argue they need content from acquired Japanese devs/pubs to "fuel the beast" that is a mobile storefront, particularly to the taste of Japanese mobile gamers.

And hey, if Microsoft is able to convince that global (and especially Western) mobile gamers want access to console gaming content, why can't Sony use similar to justify acquiring a Japanese company or two for a market initiative in a part of the market they have very little presence in? Take it even further: Microsoft are acquiring a large 3P Western publisher whose biggest console-orientated games do most of their revenue in two specific Western markets where Xbox happens to be most competitive in and only two generations ago easily held majority market share in (US and UK, with the 360), but that doesn't seem to be any factor of concern in buying & leveraging that content for moves into market segments they argue they have little to no presence in.

Why can't Sony make a play for, say, Capcom or Kadokawa (or both) even if sales of their games in a "high end console market" lean heavily on PlayStation by majority, if those acquisitions can be argued as having content leveraged for bolstering Sony's presence in adjacent gaming market segments they have no presence in or very little presence in either in Japan and/or globally? Since a company like Microsoft can determine their own market position and size by limiting the scope specifically to a market where they have little presence in, Sony should technically be able to make that exact same type of definition for themselves. And if that therefore is suitable for them for a move in the Japanese market, it is a suitable thing that can be used for Western gaming acquisitions, too, even of the larger variety.

This is all in addition to knowing how these things pair with other aspects of Microsoft's strategy, like their offers to provide COD content to cloud providers, honoring providence of existing multiplatform content providing more points of access of content to gamers. Sony acquires Capcom or Square-Enix; no reason they can't allow what Switch games they were making to still come to Switch, but they'd also have grounds to provide bonus content for PlayStation owners (console, handheld, mobile) because, hey, the CMA seem to agree that partial foreclosure of COD and other ABK content on Microsoft's direct console competitor in the high-end segment is both okay and would only result in a very small shift of PS gamers to Xbox platforms 👍. So what would be conceptually different in the example of Sony doing similar with Capcom or Square-Enix content on their platforms and Nintendo platforms when it would fit a similar partial foreclosure definition, therefore meaning very few Nintendo players would switch to a PlayStation offering if such were done?

Meanwhile in this same scenario, Sony would have no incentive to make certain acquired content (such as new IP) once planned for Xbox & PlayStation platforms, to target Xbox platforms because they could argue that focusing the new IP on their own products & ecosystem would ensure better focus, and could argue that cutting Xbox out for these games would not result in a significant loss of revenue...again mirroring new arguments the CMA have made in regards to justifying Microsoft's decisions to make games like RedFall and Starfield console-exclusive to Xbox 😉. And if by some chance Sony would need to go an extra mile, for example if "certain parties" tried arguing that their position in the gaming market or specific regions of the gaming market in particular should prevent them from making such acquisitions (that is assuming the other things I just mentioned above are for some reason ignored), they could just turn it into an argument of their relative size in the tech market compared to companies like Microsoft, and that such acquisitions are needed so that they can better "compete" with companies several times their size on the global scale.

I wasn't even kidding when I said this ABK acquisition would set a blueprint. But people like that U.S senator and the US international committee she chairs are too consumed by greed and corruption to realize that blueprint is for MANY things, even for companies like Sony to turn a hypothetical doomsday scenario as you've described it, directly against them. These people try twisting rules and definitions so much they accidentally paint themselves right into a corner.
 
24 Jun 2022
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The funny thing about monopoly is that US law doesn't forbid monopolies, just using anticompetitive behavior to stop competitors. Now, the FF16 exclusivity deal could possibly be viewed as anticompetitive, but it's only timed and Microsoft has made plenty of its own exclusivity deals. You don't get penalized by antitrust law for simply being extremely good at what you do.

But it can't, because anticompetitive laws (or at least, in the perspective of the regulatory bodies) state that exclusivity deals between two entities where the one who stands to benefit directly provides a benefit to the content the other entity is making (in terms of things like providing much-needed funding, technical support/assistance, creative support and input, etc.) are benefits in a competitive market and are not considered anticompetitive!

I think the FTC have it mentioned on their own website, and I'd imagine the other regulators have similar conclusions in that respect. A company like Sony providing funding & development support for a game like Final Fantasy XVI, in exchange for timed exclusivity, in a deal Square-Enix themselves were able to choose to either accept or reject, is not anticompetitive.

This is even more true when it can be statistically proven that users on the competing console platform made up a pitifully small percentage of paying customers for the previous sequential mainline installment, meaning had Sony not locked in specific terms, a direct competitor could have simply paid for that very same game to go into their Game Pass service Day 1, completely nullifying and undermining a part of the exclusivity arrangement between Sony & Square-Enix (bolstered marketing to boost direct revenue from B2P sales).

Which ironically, would be a much more upfront example of a pure moneyhat than anything Sony has done with FF XVI, or even FF VII Remake.
 
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