- Some market players told the CMA they believed vetoing the deal was "excessive," while others said it would be disproportionate if alternative, effective remedies were available. Others said they did not see harm to competition in the first place.

- Only Sony and an undisclosed third party agreed with vetoing the deal.

It's literally only Sony and Google who are opposed to the deal, Sony barely tries in Cloud Gaming and Stadia was completely different to xCloud, for starters it was positioned as a direct competitor and a standalone thing whilst xCloud is inherently attached to Game Pass, Microsoft realised it wouldn't be a success without Game Pass. Stadia was completely different as a business proposition to xCloud.

And now Stadia is out of the market so what the hell is their opinion worth? Lol.

Meanwhile everyone else is saying the CMA are being excessive, that it would be disproportionate to block the deal if remedies were available, or that there's no harm to competition in the first place. The actual Cloud providers in the market either don't care (Amazon) or support the deal (Ubitus, Boosteroid, EE, GeForce Now) along with two Microsoft rivals (Valve and Nintendo).

Even crazier this represents a majority of the Cloud competitors that CMA listed IIRC.

The majority of the actual Cloud market seems in favour of the deal...But CMA is protecting Sony, Google and some imaginary entrees that may or may not enter the market in the future if the market even exists healthily in the future, and then saying to Ubitus, Boosteroid, EE, Nvidia that even though they accept the 10 year deals and think they are good enough, the CMA doesn't. It's madness.

- MLex also says that the veto should alarm tech companies like Broadcom or Amazon, among other large tech companies expecting to make an acquisition or in the process.

Yeah, I think a few tech companies are going to be quite annoyed by this decision, CMA is overreaching. You put every acquisition at risk if you can block them all based on complete and utter speculation, Lol.

Tried the Street Fighter 6 demo.
Man the character creator in World Tour mode is crazy. You can create some real ugly people with extremely unrealistic proportions. I'm sure there will be hundreds of creations on the internet soon that will haunt your dreams for weeks.

No clue why the World Tour mode is set to only 30 FPS on default during battles. Though I heard from PS users that you can change it to 60 FPS. Still a weird decision, especially when the non-battle sections are already using 60 FPS.

Funniest thing is that the UK is literally going to harm the gaming sector that they say they are trying to protect, none of those Cloud companies are getting access to Activision and MS titles now.

So eager to block the deal based on a tiny market that it just screwed over the small companies in that market.

Although Microsoft is expected to appeal the decision, many traders and analysts see the U.K. ruling as a deal-ender.

"Essentially, there has never been a successful appeal in the UK on an antitrust decision," said Aaron Glick, a merger arbitrage strategist at TD Cowen. "There does not appear to be a path forward for Microsoft."

Microsoft-Activision spread blows out on bets deal will collapse - BNN Bloomberg

Wait, so, of those 33% of appeals that were sent back to CMA, they still kept their decision? Lmao.

So basically, CMA has a 100% win rate.

I wonder if Microsoft will do a series of Starfield controllers like they're doing for Redfall on Design Labs as well.

Like I said a few months ago, If this deal follows the same path, I think MS has ground to challenge UK constitutionally arguing the CMA mandate and unilateral power are disproportionate and highly subject to opinion and partisan ruling.

That said the deals would be done, but MS may ask for compensation for their expenses and loss revenue which would be quite staggering. If US companies are also disproportionately blocked by the CMA on such dubious ground I wonder if there's a possibility for the US government to create a similar challenge with the WTO.

Redfall almost double wish listed on Steam versus Deathloop.

Pre-load is up, 103 Fucking GB.

Oops, 103 for PC, 77 for Xbox.

People doubted "The Power of the Cloud"

Turns out it was stronger than we all realised.