It's a little bit funny to me after yesterday.

There was a lot of optimism on Era because of Lulu's tweet and the article that MS was planning on closing the deal already. "Of course she knows already"

Sorry I get a kick out of it when someone is confidently wrong.  

It's baffling that to protect an unproven market they in fact protect the status quo in a way larger and proven unbalanced market where lack of competition leads to higher prices. I'm not saying cloud concerns should not be addressed, but the laziness of CMA not wanting to simply monitor remedies in this market prevent all benefits from more competitiveness in the much larger market.

And to top, that off this decision again relies only on CoD and a few other select IPs without any acknowledgment that the success of those today is not warrant of success in the future and in no way acts in prevention to the success of other franchises. If MS were to only have bought the IPs from ABK and contracted the same entity for continued developments and support leading to the same market impact, regulatory bodies would not have had a say in this at least not in a preventive way.

Or Microsoft can just do an exclusive xCloud deal with Activision-Blizzard, there is literally nothing stopping money-hungry Activision from creating an exclusive licensing agreement with any Cloud provider if they offered enough, especially since ABK doesn't seem to care about the Cloud market on their own so it'll probably require a lot of financial incentives.

COULD BE.

To be fair, optimist was still cautious for most and only took hold very recently following months of doom forecasting due to the CMA phase 1 decision.

Jefferies analyst Andrew Uerkwitz said he was surprised that the U.K. used cloud-based gaming as its main reason for blocking the deal. Uerkwitz said there is "overwhelming evidence that cloud services are beneficial to consumers" and that the use of the cloud for by the TV, video and music industries also inspire broader investment in technology in general.

Uerkwitz also estimated that cloud-based gaming "is less than 2% of the overall gaming market," and that the industry is still "several years away" from seeing a version of Call of Duty, for example that is playable on a mass-market level via a cloud service.

Stifel analyst Drew Crum said that the U.K.'s decision to block the deal was somewhat surprising, as "recent commentary from the U.K. suggested such [competition] issues had been adequately addressed by Microsoft."

So, the big question now is: What comes next?

Microsoft is expected to appeal the CMA's decision, but the organization doesn't have a history of siding with many such actions. Uerkwitz said that if the U.K. turns down Microsoft's appeal, there could be a negative impact on the cloud market.

"We see this deal [if it is ultimately denied] as slowing down interest by all parties in cloud and/or subscription services," Uerkwitz said.

Stifel's Crum said that while Microsoft has indicated it will appeal the U.K.'s ruling, the company is also facing a U.S. Federal Trade Commission suit against its proposed acquisition, with a trial in that case expected to be held later this summer. Crum said that even it wins its case with the FTC, without the British regulators' approval, "it would seem impractical to operate outside an important market such as the U.K."

UK blocking of Microsoft-Activision deal surprises Wall Street | Seeking Alpha

Idas Said:

Kingdom Hearts Diary Day 24: Blah blah blah KH bad blah blah blah.

Sad day.. tomorrow will hopefully bring a better entry @NobleTeam360

Oh yeah!  I forgot to add that to my previous comment.  You have:

-Lulu's confidence

-That announced MS presser

-Wedbush giving the thumbs-up

Most sensible thing I've read today

Hope Microsoft just says fuck it and acquires some smaller studios in the meantime, CMA has made their position clear, a few less than ~200m studios aren't changing that. They need to get some of their support studios like Certain Affinity under their belt and Asobo if possible. Bulk up their support network with other acquisitions to get games out quicker.

As I said before, Xbox didn't own Activision before and still don't own them now, they have a very strong line-up of AAAs in the near future but they need to get them out consistently now, can't afford to wait around for Activision-Blizzard for another year either, they can still appeal the process but let the lawyers handle that shit, Xbox business has to continue to grow.

Thankfully it does continue to grow, some big exclusives coming in the near future as well, but they may have to start thinking about their plans without Activision-Blizzard, I'm assuming it will just be reverting back to their plans post-Zenimax acquisition but those titles are taking a bit to release, obviously they can't go for another publisher in the meanwhile but they can go harder on marketing, content and studio acquisition.

They will still be "all in" on Gaming with Zenimax but probably without their Mobile aspirations and having to adjust some growth forecasts.