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Machiavellian on 16 May 2023
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EpicRandy said:

Was just looking at CMA final conclusion doc to make a comment on the recent article "Cma overstated MS share of cloud gaming" and I think I just found another math/logic error from the CMA.


5.84 The evidence submitted by Microsoft in paragraph 5.77 suggests that currently trying games before downloading them is [] with xCloud users. However the [] noted in the previous paragraph also showed that only [] of consumers who were aware cloud gaming was available on XGPU [].155 We assume respondents mentioning [] would include those who value being able to try games before downloading it.156 We therefore consider this evidence suggests it is unlikely that trying games before downloading is the primary reason people are interested in cloud gaming, despite it being [].

The shares of people are all redacted however it does not matter here. This is a faulty interpretation of a population sample. The CMA basically assumes that respondents not knowing about Xcloud included in GPU would be different than those who know of it (their logic seems to be that user who values trying the game before downloading it would somehow know of Xclouds in greater proportion but that's unsupported by any polls or else.). Unless the sample of people knowing about it was extremely small it should be representative of the overall population being sampled and if it was too small to be representative of the population then it should simply have been discarded. 

This however is only about assessing whats is the current main motivation of Xcloud usage so doubt it amounts to much. But yeah CMA and Math seem to be akin to trying to mix oil and water.

Edit: Even worst than this, CMA seems to assumes people not knowing about cloud gaming are de facto non-users but the UI on Xbox does not make knowledge of it a requirement to use it, it's just there: 

Basically the CMA just dismiss anything that does not conform to the way they believe things should be and just toss out data.  Just from my own usage, I do exactly that.  Why would anyone use XCloud and deal with its issues when you can just download the game.  I only use XCloud to test whether or not I like a game enough to download it but I cannot remember ever actually playing a game on it more than 30 mins to determine if I like it enough.  For a lot of games, I can see XCloud as a gift and a curse.  Sometimes you might sample a game and do not give it enough time as it a slow burner.  Either way, the CMA does not like to be wrong I gather so yeah its probably not going to mean much.  They probably blocked the deal because MS hit them with the last math error.  A second time and they will not let MS even do business in the UK.