Lol.

Honestly, I think that in their attempts to "protect" the nascent "Cloud Gaming" market, regulators will end up actually hurting it, if it becomes a reason to block the deal, which according to the CMA, it is a reason (along with the console market) to demand strict concessions (although they are fine with Game Pass).

Stadia is out and no it wasn't because "Microsoft acquired Bethesda", that is a ridiculous excuse from a company that rarely puts any effort into anything new that they enter, it failed because the business model was firstly awful, secondly because it is an extremely early market and thirdly because they didn't put the effort in and didn't want to wait it out (because lets face it, Cloud Gaming is at minimum 5-10 years away from being a viable market).

Luna (Amazon) who are filthy rich won't even commit to putting their own published titles into the service. Amazon has just as much money as Microsoft and yet they can't even do that, not even Amazon seems to believe in the market that deeply. Not even Amazon seems to want to bother to invest now to grow the business in the long term. Luna is looking like the next Stadia.

It feels like honestly, more that regulators are punishing Microsoft for actually putting the effort into the market and taking a monetary loss to try to create a new market, a market which may never be viable, may never take off and is definitely a loss leader right now for everyone but at least they're putting the commitment in.

It also requires a huge cloud infrastructure that few can do, lets be honest, regulators are waiting for some imaginary competitor to enter the market, they're protecting a competitor which doesn't even exist and may never exist all because Microsoft may put CoD into xCloud which, if not for the acquisition wouldn't have ever hit any Cloud service anyway!

Right now, Microsoft's efforts are benefiting consumers of the small Cloud market, by blocking it for these reasons, all you're doing is in fact punishing consumers by not allowing them CoD and other ABK titles on xCloud, at the end of the day, one cloud service is at least better than none at all.

If xCloud becomes a reason why the deal should be blocked, then does Microsoft bother with it in the future if this tiny market which may never succeed and is losing them money, is going to pose a problem for future business opportunities? It isn't Microsoft's fault that Amazon/Google can't be bothered to put in the long term effort even though they're both just as rich as Microsoft. I'm glad they dropped their Game Pass complaints at least but I think the Cloud complaints should have been dropped too.

It's baffling for sure. Everything about Redfall's marketing so far has basically been a 101 course on how not to market your game. Right from the very first teaser trailer many people weren't happy with it, the comments on that first teaser I remember there were alot of people complaining about "cringe gen z humor" and people worried that it was going to be too much like Borderlands, and the like-dislike ratio was not all that great. Subsequent gameplay trailers had similar issues with rather poor like-dislike ratios relative to most other game trailers. We had lots of people worried that Arkane was abandoning their DNA as a studio to chase after a different game genre. The marketing campaign never really revved up properly. Then all of these controversial features to boot, host only campaign progress, always online, no disc in box.

If it does end up flopping, hopefully it will be a learning experience for Bethesda, rather than being some excuse to gut Arkane Austin or anything like that. It definitely feels like alot of the bad decisions here are on the Bethesda leadership, rather than on Arkane Austin.

Lol wtf... Bethesda wants this game to fail. 

Microsoft have been shitting on physical this entire gen with games been unplayable on the disc just shipped with an installer on it so no surprise to see the disc gone altogether.

Arkane waited for MS to buy them to do all of this so they could get all the blame LOL

Seriously tho, wtf are they on

Physical has no disc, Progress being tied to host, online required...

It's kind of funny how alot of the features we were so mad about when Xbox One was first announced, such as always online connection, and DRM that bound a game to a single XBL account and only allowed game ownership transfer at certain retailers and only then if the publisher allowed it, have basically been fed back to us in smaller doses over the course of a whole decade now, and because it was drip fed to us over a decade instead of all at once, alot of us have just grown to accept it. What once enraged large numbers of gamers, now just feels normalcy to many of us. It's kind of insidious honestly.

Yeah, I think this is a Bethesda issue/decision but I've no doubt that Xbox doesn't care so it basically becomes their issue too

Probably will require Bethesda.net account as well like fucking Doom Eternal did, Lol.

Funny enough that would be better than we currently get where our digital purchases sit in the hidden game graveyard never to be seen of again.

lol and yall wanted me to play with yall? Me game 100% confirmed! 

Co-op games can die for all i care