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Machiavellian on 21 March 2023
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EpicRandy said:
Ryuu96 said:

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.

DF would absoluty love this.  Money in the bank for doing what they already do for 10 years.  Yeah, they woud sign up without hesitation.