mergers Microsoft concedes to buy Activision without cloud gaming rights

[Altrius II]

Summary

The new deal for Microsoft to buy Activision without cloud gaming rights has been cleared after the CMA concluded it would preserve competitive prices and better services.

 

Quotes

Quote

"We now have a new transaction in which the cloud distribution of Activision games, old and new, is taken away from Microsoft and put into the hands of Ubisoft, an independent party who is committed to widening access to the games. That’s better for competition, better for consumers and better for economic growth" - Martin Coleman

 

My thoughts

Maybe this will mean that ABK finally has the money sitting around that they won't have another controversy with Overwatch 2! This will mean that Sony's Playstation cloud gaming service, as well as any third party service should be able to offer ABK games without fear of being out-competed by Microsoft on day 0.

 

Sources 

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/microsoft-concession-a-gamechanger-that-will-promote-competition 

[strajk-]

Quote

...from coming under the control of Microsoft in relation to cloud gaming...

So the only issue is Microsoft being able to use these titles through Cloud Instances?

Why would that be such a massive point of denying the acquisition?

 

Microsoft will still be able to sell these products in their XBox Live store and theoretically (if they hate money) outright no longer make these titles available in their competitor stores and platforms.

 

Honestly I don't really care if Microsoft acquires Activision and all rights since I don't consume any of Activision's products, just trying to wrap my head around why Cloud Gaming is such a massive point of contention to go ahead with the purchase, yes I know that Sony gave a statement that more than half their playerbase primarily play Call of Duty, just don't know what Cloud Gaming has anything to do with that.

[LAwLz]

This is a very big surprise to me. Sounds like a good solution though.

 

 

 

1 hour ago, strajk- said:

Honestly I don't really care if Microsoft acquires Activision and all rights since I don't consume any of Activision's products, just trying to wrap my head around why Cloud Gaming is such a massive point of contention to go ahead with the purchase

The worry, and what I fully expected until now, was that Microsoft wanted to buy up as many studios as possible and put their content on Xbox Game Pass and their cloud gaming service. Microsoft isn't really interested in selling consoles anymore. They would rather be a service vendor that you pay a subscription to in order to gain access to games, regardless of which platform you play on.

 

The worry was that if Microsoft were allowed to just keep buying more and more studios, they could make their titles exclusive to Xbox Game Pass and as a result, every gamer including PlayStation users, would essentially be forced to pay a subscription to Microsoft to get access to games. 

 

 

Cloud gaming might also become the norm in the future. It's not close today, but think 10-15 years down the line.

The roadmap Microsoft accidentally leaked for example showed a "hybrid cloud gaming console" for example. The worry there is that if Microsoft has the option to put all their titles on cloud-only so that Sony has no way of competing. Their business model of selling a console and selling a game (or their own cloud gaming service) wouldn't work if everyone just defaulted to Microsoft's because it's so big.

 

I, and I think many others including Microsoft, believe that we are standing at the doorstep of a massive change in the gaming industry. Over the next 10-15 years we will probably see a big change and the actions we take today will determine how things end up.

[Mark Kaine]

1 hour ago, strajk- said:

So the only issue is Microsoft being able to use these titles through Cloud Instances?

Why would that be such a massive point of denying the acquisition?

 

Microsoft will still be able to sell these products in their XBox Live store and theoretically (if they hate money) outright no longer make these titles available in their competitor stores and platforms.

 

Honestly I don't really care if Microsoft acquires Activision and all rights since I don't consume any of Activision's products, just trying to wrap my head around why Cloud Gaming is such a massive point of contention to go ahead with the purchase, yes I know that Sony gave a statement that more than half their playerbase primarily play Call of Duty, just don't know what Cloud Gaming has anything to do with that.

has been talked about before... deal has nothing to do with cloud gaming, this is only to deceive the authorities,  and apparently it's working.

 

deal is all about exclusivity and force more people to make Microsoft accounts (most games will be abandoned in good old Microsoft tradition anyways) 

 

 

1 hour ago, strajk- said:

half their playerbase primarily play Call of Duty, just don't know what Cloud Gaming has anything to do with that.

absolutely nothing of course ~

[Mark Kaine]

24 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

This is a very big surprise to me. Sounds like a good solution though.

 

 

 

The worry, and what I fully expected until now, was that Microsoft wanted to buy up as many studios as possible and put their content on Xbox Game Pass and their cloud gaming service. Microsoft isn't really interested in selling consoles anymore. They would rather be a service vendor that you pay a subscription to in order to gain access to games, regardless of which platform you play on.

 

The worry was that if Microsoft were allowed to just keep buying more and more studios, they could make their titles exclusive to Xbox Game Pass and as a result, every gamer including PlayStation users, would essentially be forced to pay a subscription to Microsoft to get access to games. 

 

 

Cloud gaming might also become the norm in the future. It's not close today, but think 10-15 years down the line.

The roadmap Microsoft accidentally leaked for example showed a "hybrid cloud gaming console" for example. The worry there is that if Microsoft has the option to put all their titles on cloud-only so that Sony has no way of competing. Their business model of selling a console and selling a game (or their own cloud gaming service) wouldn't work if everyone just defaulted to Microsoft's because it's so big.

 

I, and I think many others including Microsoft, believe that we are standing at the doorstep of a massive change in the gaming industry. Over the next 10-15 years we will probably see a big change and the actions we take today will determine how things end up.

yeah, hook line and sinker,  these regulators seem to actually believe this, but in reality nothing is stopping Microsoft from making these games exclusive anyway, plus as said they will abandon most franchises as they always do, there won't be a "Overwatch 3" etc, probably only interested in COD tbh, and with Microsoft it's never about money,  it's about marketshare and killing the competition, money is secondary at best. 

[LAwLz]

4 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

yeah, hook line and sinker,  these regulators seem to actually believe this, but in reality nothing is stopping Microsoft from making these games exclusive anyway, plus as said they will abandon most franchises as they always do, there won't be a "Overwatch 3" etc, probably only interested in COD tbh, and with Microsoft it's never about money,  it's about marketshare and killing the competition, money is secondary at best. 

It's a good thing we have smart people like you who don't fall for this obvious tactic then.

I am sure the cloud hybrid console that Microsoft accidentally leaked was done on purpose too, just to deceive the public and regulators.

 

Since you aren't as dumb as I am, what do you think Microsoft's plan is here? Is it just to get people to make Microsoft accounts?

[Mark Kaine]

13 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

accidentally leaked

there's no such thing as an accidental leak , ever.

 

13 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

what do you think Microsoft's plan is here?

already answered,  as always their main goal is marketshare,  crush the competition.  if you cant beat them,  buy them.  its nothing new Microsoft does this since decades... 

 

43 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

and put their content on Xbox Game Pass and their cloud gaming service

ok, so -- since Im not as smart as you seem to think -- can you explain to me how this is going to work in this hypothetical example? 

 

So lets go with this, lets say COD is now Xbox exclusive,  but they aren't allowed to offer it through game pass (btw game pass is not a streaming service afaik, but lets go with this anyway, ig?) - so far so good,  but what about Ubisoft who just got the rights for "cloud streaming"?

 

Will they be able to sell/rent out COD (a Xbox exclusive,  mind you) to customers on their "cloud gaming service"?

 

Dont get me wrong i think this is entirely possible,  i just wanna know what you think how this is going to play out, and why would people choose "cloud gaming" with all its issues over a probably fairly cheap Xbox without any of these issues? 

 

I just think its a pretty funny scenario tbth... 

 

[LAwLz]

42 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

there's no such thing as an accidental leak , ever.

Yes, because as we know, no human ever makes a mistake.

 

 

43 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

already answered,  as always their main goal is marketshare,  crush the competition.  if you cant beat them,  buy them.  its nothing new Microsoft does this since decades... 

What marketshare exactly? Do you mean the console markeshare? Because it is pretty obvious that Microsoft don't really care about that, since they are now focusing so much on their game pass and putting titles on Windows too, and partnering up with Samsung and others to put cloud gaming on as many devices as they can. In addition to things like making a new controller that directly connects to their cloud gaming platform to reduce latency.

 

Everything we know points towards their focus on making cloud streamig the next big thing in gaming. There is a mountain of evidence to support that idea, so I don't really understand why you think it's some kind of conspiracy. I don't understand what you think they will gain from all these proposed lies and deception tactics.

 

 

44 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

So lets go with this, lets say COD is now Xbox exclusive

I don't think you understood my post. I have never said that COD would be Xbox exclusive. In fact, I said the opposite.

 

 

45 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

but they aren't allowed to offer it through game pass (btw game pass is not a streaming service afaik, but lets go with this anyway, ig?)

The cloud streaming service is part of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. You get access to cloud streaming when you subscribe to Game Pass Ultimate. I am not sure why you're acting so smug when you clearly haven't looked into the topic you're commenting on.

 

 

I am not going to comment on the scenario you painted because you got my entire post backwards. 

 

 

 

53 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

Dont get me wrong i think this is entirely possible,  i just wanna know what you think how this is going to play out, and why would people choose "cloud gaming" with all its issues over a probably fairly cheap Xbox without any of these issues? 

You are thinking of this in terms of how the technology works today, which is once again you missing very crucial pieces of my post.

The point is to look into the future, not compare the current Xbox vs cloud gaming.

[Doobeedoo]

Surprised this has draged for so long.

[Fasterthannothing]

2 hours ago, LAwLz said:

This is a very big surprise to me. Sounds like a good solution though.

 

 

 

The worry, and what I fully expected until now, was that Microsoft wanted to buy up as many studios as possible and put their content on Xbox Game Pass and their cloud gaming service. Microsoft isn't really interested in selling consoles anymore. They would rather be a service vendor that you pay a subscription to in order to gain access to games, regardless of which platform you play on.

 

The worry was that if Microsoft were allowed to just keep buying more and more studios, they could make their titles exclusive to Xbox Game Pass and as a result, every gamer including PlayStation users, would essentially be forced to pay a subscription to Microsoft to get access to games. 

 

 

Cloud gaming might also become the norm in the future. It's not close today, but think 10-15 years down the line.

The roadmap Microsoft accidentally leaked for example showed a "hybrid cloud gaming console" for example. The worry there is that if Microsoft has the option to put all their titles on cloud-only so that Sony has no way of competing. Their business model of selling a console and selling a game (or their own cloud gaming service) wouldn't work if everyone just defaulted to Microsoft's because it's so big.

 

I, and I think many others including Microsoft, believe that we are standing at the doorstep of a massive change in the gaming industry. Over the next 10-15 years we will probably see a big change and the actions we take today will determine how things end up.

O no the horror of PlayStation people being able to play Xbox games on PlayStation through the cloud /s

[leadeater]

7 hours ago, Altrius II said:

and put into the hands of Ubisoft

Um? This is worse, so much worse. Why not just leave it separate and independent 

[Mark Kaine]

2 hours ago, LAwLz said:

don't think you understood my post. I have never said that COD would be Xbox exclusive. In fact, I said the opposite.

likewise because that's what im saying,  the whole point of this acquisition is to make the games in question Microsoft exclusive (or simply abandon them as Microsoft always does)

 

2 hours ago, LAwLz said:

The point is to look into the future, not compare the current Xbox vs cloud gaming.

i already did... you don't have to agree i guess, but from previous precedents we know pretty much what the "future" of franchises Microsoft buys is.

 

2 hours ago, LAwLz said:

am not going to comment on the scenario you painted because you got my entire post backwards. 

i got nothing backwards, and ok.

[Mark Kaine]

9 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Um? This is worse, so much worse. Why not just leave it separate and independent 

this... so much... UwU

 

ps: this is really weird also, because does Ubisoft even want it? what if they don't?  lol... 

 

i just don't see game streaming as a viable option any time soon, the issues it has won't just go away... 

 

 

1 hour ago, Fasterthannothing said:

O no the horror of PlayStation people being able to play Xbox games on PlayStation through the cloud /s

as i already said this hypothetical scenario is pretty funny, ngl.

[ToboRobot]

Can't wait for Bobby to get the boot.  

https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fql6nneb35ztb1.jpg

But I don't know why they need so many Publishing groups.  Bethesda, Blizzard and Activision don't have a big differentiation unlike King for mobile.  Bethesda is lot of RPG stuff, but then you have the id FPS stuff together.

 

[leadeater]

Just FYI, Microsoft basically still get the streaming rights, just not exclusively.

 

Quote

At the same time, Microsoft will receive a non-exclusive licence from Ubisoft for cloud streaming rights to the extent necessary for Microsoft to fulfil its obligations under its commitments to the European Commission and certain existing third-party cloud streaming agreements.

 

 

Quote

The terms of the transaction will allow Ubisoft to commercialise these rights to other cloud gaming services providers (including to Microsoft itself).

 

Existing games will be on Microsoft's service and likely Microsoft will just pay enough to Ubisoft to have anything new that isn't already under licenses that must be adhered to anyway.

 

Legitimately a win win for Microsoft and this realistically changes nothing at all but now Ubisoft is contractually/legally required to compensate Microsoft for the next 15 years.

 

Quote

Ubisoft will compensate Microsoft for the cloud streaming rights to Activision’s games through a one-off payment and through a market-based wholesale pricing mechanism, including an option that supports pricing based on usage.

https://www.gov.uk/cma-cases/microsoft-slash-activision-blizzard-ex-cloud-streaming-rights-merger-inquiry

 

Microsoft right now:

[leadeater]

The one and maybe only actually good thing to come out of this

Quote

Microsoft must port Activision Games to non-Windows OS following a request from Ubisoft. Ubisoft may also request that Microsoft perform technical modifications, including to ensure that the Activision Games support emulators like Proton. Microsoft must carry out this work at its regular pace and at a quality and standard which is customary in the gaming industry. Microsoft can only charge Ubisoft for the reasonable costs incurred for this work. Microsoft is also required to provide Ubisoft with development and porting plans for Activision Games reasonably in advance.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/652863e32548ca0014ddf20b/Full_text_decision__final_acceptance_of_UILs_.pdf

 

I guess time to get Ubisoft to always ask for Mac OS and Linux versions of every game 

[Mark Kaine]

49 minutes ago, leadeater said:

The one and maybe only actually good thing to come out of this

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/652863e32548ca0014ddf20b/Full_text_decision__final_acceptance_of_UILs_.pdf

 

I guess time to get Ubisoft to always ask for Mac OS and Linux versions of every game 

The year of Linux, finally?  

Spoiler

 

 

[Altrius II]

13 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

The year of Linux, finally?

 

I hope, but do not hold your breath

[Taf the Ghost]

4 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

yeah, hook line and sinker,  these regulators seem to actually believe this, but in reality nothing is stopping Microsoft from making these games exclusive anyway, plus as said they will abandon most franchises as they always do, there won't be a "Overwatch 3" etc, probably only interested in COD tbh, and with Microsoft it's never about money,  it's about marketshare and killing the competition, money is secondary at best. 

 

I know everyone gets focused on CoD, but King is more valuable. Microsoft has extremely little in the way of Mobile Gaming. Which is a problem when it's about 1/2 the revenue in the entire Gaming Market.  They want CoD as well, but they'll probably leave that division mostly to its own devices.

 

 

25 minutes ago, leadeater said:

The one and maybe only actually good thing to come out of this

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/652863e32548ca0014ddf20b/Full_text_decision__final_acceptance_of_UILs_.pdf

 

I guess time to get Ubisoft to always ask for Mac OS and Linux versions of every game 

 

Reading the document, the real question is how do we force Ubisoft to always request the ports. MS is only required to provide them if Ubisoft requests them.

 

I'm also quite confused how we got to this point, as this seems like less "Cloud Gaming" and more about third party distribution being available, maybe. 

 

This also feels like it's working off all of those 2015 era documents about "The Future of Gaming is the Cloud!" that landed us with Google Stadia.  Cloud Gaming as a direct service would always be too expensive per user to attract enough users to make it sustainable. I was just mentioning over in another thread how Netflix installs this single server units at the local central offices of ISPs all over the world because it radically lowers the network carriage bandwidth. You can put the entire Netflix catalog on one of these servers and cover 1000s of users. A Cloud Gaming Service needs 1 "console" per user expected at peak hours.  The physical infrastructure doesn't scale in the way it does for a lot of other products.

 

Having read this document twice, I think I figured it out. This is the most Ubisoft of Ubisoft type of moves. (They're a French Company, so under the EU and thus why their complaints would go through the EU.)  I don't think this is a "fast one" pulled by MS or Activision. I honestly think Ubisoft is dumb enough to have worried about this and this is the issue they made the biggest issue.

 

And, to drive home the point about how dumb this is.  This is a link to Ubisoft's Cloud Gaming Service.  Something I didn't know existed until a few minutes ago. It's not available in the USA, which is fine. But they link to a "dedicated FAQ article" about the list of eligible countries.  Here's the link.

 

 

I really can't make this up.

 

 

[leadeater]

6 hours ago, Taf the Ghost said:

A Cloud Gaming Service needs 1 "console" per user expected at peak hours.  The physical infrastructure doesn't scale in the way it does for a lot of other products.

You can do multiple, but the ratio is indeed not high. Take an L40 48GB for example, it actually has enough performance to run 4 instances on that single card while also offering 12GB VRAM for each. That is actually the same performance as an RTX 4070 12GB per user. Those that want to pay more can get half or a whole L40.

 

Once you factor in DLSS and something more modern than an L40 and 4x L40 (or newer) per server you are getting up to 16 users per server and you can do that in 1U if you water cool it.

 

Obviously it's well off Netflix but you also don't have to have the same service and cost model as them either. You can have a basic monthly subscription for non-new titles and for the newest ones you can have those as temporary service upgrades or whatever.

 

Not that I think Cloud game will ever actually take off, local devices are never going to stop generationally improving and a plethora of extremely close servers for the purposes of gaming is not going to happen when it's competing with local devices.

 

Cloud gaming might find it's place but it's never going to be the latest and greatest most graphically demanding games and it's not going to be for the well known FPS games either. You might be able to play them on such a service but it's just not going to be the primary way to play for these. There are a lot of games far more suited to such a service than CoD, Battlefield etc.

 

The simple truth is the root of the issue cannot be worked around, distance. With all the actual billions of dollars invested in VDI/Remote Workstations, dedicated special protocol for it, specialized techniques to optimize screen draw performance the difference between a remote session and a local session is easily noticeable for CAD, photo editing, video editing etc and that's on connections with as low as 4ms, 9-11ms is only marginally worse. The overhead in rendering local, encoding, transmitting, decoding, synchronizing HID will always make it an inferior experience and one that can always be noticed. That means the type of games explicitly matter for such a service.

 

'Cloud' and 'Cloud gaming' has no better chances of reality than nuclear powered vacuum cleaners and microwaves that everyone was dead certain were going to be a thing. Technical challenges do matter, so does cost (for the user and the service provider).

[Taf the Ghost]

33 minutes ago, leadeater said:

You can do multiple, but the ratio is indeed not high. Take an L40 48GB for example, it actually has enough performance to run 4 instances on that single card while also offering 12GB VRAM for each. That is actually the same performance as an RTX 4070 12GB per user. Those that want to pay more can get half or a whole L40.

 

Once you factor in DLSS and something more modern than an L40 and 4x L40 (or newer) per server you are getting up to 16 users per server and you can do that in 1U if you water cool it.

 

Obviously it's well off Netflix but you also don't have to have the same service and cost model as them either. You can have a basic monthly subscription for non-new titles and for the newest ones you can have those as temporary service upgrades or whatever.

 

Not that I think Cloud game will ever actually take off, local devices are never going to stop generationally improving and a plethora of extremely close servers for the purposes of gaming is not going to happen when it's competing with local devices.

 

Cloud gaming might find it's place but it's never going to be the latest and greatest most graphically demanding games and it's not going to be for the well known FPS games either. You might be able to play them on such a service but it's just not going to be the primary way to play for these. There are a lot of games far more suited to such a service than CoD, Battlefield etc.

 

The simple truth is the root of the issue cannot be worked around, distance. With all the actual billions of dollars invested in VDI/Remote Workstations, dedicated special protocol for it, specialized techniques to optimize screen draw performance the difference between a remote session and a local session is easily noticeable for CAD, photo editing, video editing etc and that's on connections with as low as 4ms, 9-11ms is only marginally worse. The overhead in rending local, encoding, transmitting, decoding, synchronizing HID will always make it an inferior experience and one that can always be noticed. That means the type of games explicitly matter for such a service.

 

'Cloud' and 'Cloud gaming' has no better chances of reality than nuclear powered vacuum cleaners and microwaves that everyone was dead certain were going to be a thing. Technical challenges do matter, so does cost (for the user and the service provider).

 

The funniest part about Stadia, after we got some understanding of the tech they were using, is that they basically bought a fairly "cheap" but large scale amount of GPU Compute that they could also run games on. Which is still likely the primary purpose for the entire Stadia product. But Stadia also really highlighted the problems, even with Google having only so many data centers they could produce to provide support. Yes, it worked generally anywhere, but a lot of games went out the window if you weren't fairly close to a data center.  Though Stadia failed for a lot of other reasons. Whoever the idiot that didn't get Civ6 on the platform is already fired, but they should be fired again.

 

The funny part about the processing locality is I've had this discussion with a pretty high ranking member of an SI I know. I should probably take another crack at it, because there's a few kind of obvious trends (in a few specific fields I won't get into) that are going to break one direction or the other pretty soon and there's a lot of money to be made capitalizing on it. Where you put your processing matters for a lot more than just latency.

 

On the Cloud Gaming, though, the fact that this isn't a huge thing in Tokyo is always the give away that it's not going to work. The place with the strongest Internet Infrastructure and it's not appealing to the audience there. And it's the largest mega-city in human history. It's probably wise to rethink the business strategy with Cloud Gaming. 

 

As a more general note, but it really effect Cloud Gaming, gaming is first and foremost about the Interaction Medium. How you interact with the game sets the forms in which the game can exist. This is why handhelds will always have enduring appeal. It's a very comfortable form factor, which allows the games to work well in that way. It does help that Pokemon exists.

[PocketNerd]

8 hours ago, strajk- said:

just trying to wrap my head around why Cloud Gaming is such a massive point

Cause that’s where these AAA publishers think the industry is headed.

 

remember: “you will own nothing and you will be happy”

[Kisai]

6 hours ago, LAwLz said:

 

Cloud gaming might also become the norm in the future. It's not close today, but think 10-15 years down the line.

The roadmap Microsoft accidentally leaked for example showed a "hybrid cloud gaming console" for example. The worry there is that if Microsoft has the option to put all their titles on cloud-only so that Sony has no way of competing. Their business model of selling a console and selling a game (or their own cloud gaming service) wouldn't work if everyone just defaulted to Microsoft's because it's so big.

 

I, and I think many others including Microsoft, believe that we are standing at the doorstep of a massive change in the gaming industry. Over the next 10-15 years we will probably see a big change and the actions we take today will determine how things end up.

I think "cloud gaming" is going to be a mistake, and short of competitive MMO's, (think FPTP(first past the post) competitions) most people are going to balk at having to "stream" a game that will take 100GB to finish, over just downloading the 100GB game in the first place. Perhaps a re-think in how to progressively download the game, eg modularize like how we used to with floppy disk and multi-CD games is in order to "hybrid" the approach.

 

Streaming twitchy games (eg Rythm, FPS, and action RPG's) will fail, and people won't want to play these games because it adds additional, avoidable, difficulty. One of the reasons why players violate the terms of use and mod FPS and RPG games is due to personally annoying aspects of the UI.

 

 

[VixAAT]

so when do we get the new games on game pass?

[Holmes108]

19 minutes ago, VixAAT said:

so when do we get the new games on game pass?

 

The one press release I saw said something along the lines of news regarding that in the "coming months", so I don't think it's going to be overnight, although I suppose titles could start trickling in anytime, theoretically.