| gtotheunit91 said: God damn the FTC case is beyond dead |
that’s just brutal!Yup. While this was just a troll lawsuit, it also used a lot of FTC's and CMA's arguments. To see a judge so easily dismiss it in both an anticompetitive law standpoint and using simple logic to easily dismiss the CoD foreclosure concern is not a good sign at all for FTC's chances.
We did all know that FTC will lose in court because the law simply doesn't back them up at all and all they rely on is speculative nonsense but now we have an actual real-world example rather than speculation they will lose. If FTC were at all smart they would drop the case immediately if the CMA approves the deal. Crazy what using simple logic and facts does, Lol.
Feels like a lot of positive news in Microsoft's direction lately and the momentum/PR is on their side again.
- Gamers Lawsuit being so easily dismissed when it uses a lot of FTC's arguments.
- China reportedly approving the deal and Tencent being in favour of it.
- EU reportedly approving the deal with only behavioural concessions related to Cloud.
- CMA spending a lot of time listening to behavioural remedies.
- Nvidia coming onboard to support the deal, one of the major Cloud companies, along with multiple smaller ones.
Course it still ultimately comes down to the CMA but their case was already incredibly weak for blocking the deal, Microsoft and Sony are not close enough in UK, especially not when CMA's own arguments determine that only 3% would leave PlayStation for Xbox, how on Earth can they argue that is an SLC when PlayStation is at least 10%+ ahead of Xbox in UK and will grow considering PS's stock situation was awful last year.
The RCB's (Relevant Consumer Benefits) are growing fast thanks to all of these deals and one way to get CMA to accept behavioural remedies is by increasing RCBs, essentially Microsoft needs to say "if the deal is approved, it benefits this many consumers/companies, if the deal is blocked, it benefits this many" and the former needs to be more than the latter to encourage CMA to accept behavioural remedies, I think Microsoft has done that part.
CMA doesn't like monitoring behavioural remedies, well, Microsoft has offered to pay for an independent monitoring agency and now EU will be monitoring the Cloud concessions which will apply worldwide so CMA doesn't have to worry about that side. Once more, CMA has demanded any concessions they have be applied worldwide but if they want that then they should look at the worldwide market too.
This was all before Microsoft pointed out a huge flaw in their maths in regards to CMA's belief that Microsoft has incentive to foreclose CoD on PlayStation, if CMA doesn't fix that mistake then it will 100% be taken to CAT and CMA surely has to know that, they have to know that they already had a weak case even before Microsoft pointed out their maths error, are they happy for it to be taken to CAT? Maybe, Lol.
CMA could still block it because it has felt a little like they've wanted to block it from day one and their arguments are incredibly weak but they've stuck by them and if they do they will seemingly be the only regulator to do so and be on their own little island, FTC has not yet issued an attempt to block the deal and we can now see clearly that the US Courts don't back them.
Last edited by Ryuu96 - on 21 March 2023
