Xbox |OT|

[EpicRandy]

Ryuu96 said:

EpicRandy said:

In other words no aunties and grannies appointed by a purely political process that are easily influenced by anyone's opinions like the CMA ;) 

Ryuu96 said:

The Monitoring of Behavioural Remedies.

[...]

G. The Parity Decision may impose reasonable conditions which Microsoft must comply with before, or (if the Adjudicator considers it appropriate) as soon as reasonably practicable after, launching the CoD title. In serious cases of noncompliance, the Adjudicator will have the power to delay the release of the CoD title until appropriate steps have been taken to ensure compliance. The Adjudicator will have regard to the impact of any differences between the Xbox and PlayStation versions on the gaming experience for Xbox and PlayStation gamers in determining whether the parity provisions are complied with. Material differences will only be permitted if these are due to material platform limitations on the relevant PlayStation platform or solely caused by Sony.

So Xbox Series X can still benefits from slight boost in performance and/or resolutions based on the hardware limitation without it being considered a breach of parity. 

Do you know if all of this is conditional to Sony signing the deal with MS or both MS and the CMA are basically side stepping Sony's to ensure the game continue on PS consoles?

Just wait for the article to come out, the same few suspect will inevitably come and tell US how much a victim Sony still remain.

Anyway great read, what an extensive resolution offered by MS, my confidence is once again really high for the deal (70%+) cause I don't see a way to block the deal without acting solely as a Sony lobbied partisan entity which would likely get sever criticism from the CAT were it to go there. 

I think it doesn't matter if Sony signs it, these are basically Microsoft's proposals to the CMA and it's up to the CMA to accept. Sony doesn't have to sign anything and they'll still come out of this with these conditions due to the CMA enforcing them on their behalf.

I also agree, my confidence in the deal passing has increased, I think it's now more likely than not (again), Lol. There's a lot of momentum in Microsoft's favour recently and it's becoming very hard for CMA to justify a block, it even looks like CMA is more open to behavioural remedies than we originally thought.

So if I understood this right, Microsoft is proposing to pay for 3 people to monitor this deal, a Adjudicator, a Monitoring Trustee and a Objective Third Party Assessor to monitor the technical aspects on behalf of the CMA so CMA wouldn't have to do anything nor pay for anything, Lol. Whilst also giving the Adjudicator the power to literally block CoD from releasing if Microsoft breaches the parity terms.

Pretty damn thorough.

They also mention Digital Foundry once, I think they might be the "Objective Third Party Assessor" to monitor the technical aspects...I feel sorry for DF if that is the case, you know the fanboys will be out in force whenever DF says a 3rd party runs better on Xbox, Lmao. It'll be "OMG DF IS BIASED! THEY'RE FUNDED BY MICROSOFT!"

Microsoft really put down some of CMA's sillier arguments whilst at the same time offered great solutions and CMA spent the majority of the time listening to this and going through these solutions, makes it a bit harder to call now, sure they have an obligation to listen to the proposals but they don't have to listen for long/the majority of the time going through it in such detail.

Pretty sure MS have a lot to thanks the UK development scene for their recent view on the deal, while I'm sure there were more respondent than those exposed by the CMA if they had one that was unfavorable to the deal they would likely have divulgated also if only to contrast favorable views. I'm sure it gave CMA a little more openness to dialog with MS and accept behavioral remedies as well as giving Microsoft more credibility with their assertion of the market. 

For Digital foundry, if ever they were the one chosen I don't think there should be any issue. Like mentioned all this procedure would be confidential and DF would likely be constrained not to use any of their work on the process with their public channel. Essentially forcing them to do the work twice and so they would likely expand a second independent team (if they don't already have one) that operate solely in B2B and may not even operate under the DF name.

Last edited by EpicRandy - on 21 March 2023