Absolutely, there are a number of studios that they should have already bought after they completed the Zenimax acquisition. 

Honestly I believe that it’s one of the reasons why Sony purchased FireWalk after the regulators dropped the Console argument because the Cloud arguments had nothing to do with them.

I'm sure Firewalk will be good but they have done absolutely nothing to warrant regulatory attention, no offence to them but regulators shouldn't care at all about Sony acquiring Firewalk because they're unimportant/not a significant player to the overall market.

Which is why I wonder, is Microsoft being overly cautious or do they simply not want these studios? How the hell would Certain Affinity be a line? They've never released a single major original IP before and half their work has been for Microsoft, Lol. Asobo is borderline too...Flight Sim is Microsoft's and Plague Tale is small-mid tier in sales.

Only IO Interactive should warrant a small degree of uncertainty due to Hitman and their overall size but even then I think they'll be fine.

Get all 3 of them. This deal is 99% dead, I understand why Microsoft has to fight it because this has became bigger than Xbox now and could have negative consequences for Microsoft's business as a whole in terms of acquisition growth but the deal is dead, if EC rejects it then it's 100% dead but even if they don't it's about 99% dead thanks to CMA's crazy power and lack of oversight.

Go back to individual acquisitions to bolster their line-up and support network, Content and Services is increasing but it can increase a lot more with consistent AAA releases. Fight the CMA block in the meanwhile and when they finally block it again, try to get Sega instead as everything else is likely out of bounds now.

Honestly, the Console effect would have been minor as Blizzard releases a title like once every 5 years and Diablo, Overwatch, CoD were remaining multiplatform in the medium-long term so we wouldn't have really seen a major hardware push until likely next gen and by then, that would likely line-up with Elder Scrolls, so meh, Lol.

Would have been a big boost to Game Pass on Xbox but that appears to be growing still, if a little slower than expected, although the plenty of AAAs in the future should improve that and it would only be a big boost to Game Pass on PC if Windows Store was actually fixed or Game Pass PC was built into Battle Net.

The biggest loss by far is obviously, the billions in revenue & profit. But also the huge blow to their Mobile store ambitions, I would not be surprised if they scrap that idea now, they just have no chance of competing with iOS and Android using XGS + Zenimax alone, so they'll have to suck up releasing on iOS/Android only and hope regulators come down on their App store policies.

Funny that Microsoft changed their own store policies for this and allowed unions but regulators obviously didn't give a shit about the workers, Lol. Ah I wonder what morale is like at Activision-Blizzard now, I anticipate they're going to massively bleed talent over the next few years. Also feel a little bad for Imagine.

Sucks that Xbox won't match Windows anytime soon, it may have convinced Satya to give Xbox more power over them, those rumours that Windows and Xbox teams are fighting over the Windows Store and Xbox App is still connected to the Windows Store but the Windows team doesn't want Xbox changing it.

On the Xbox hardware side, I'm not sure what's going on there. 

Series X is still constantly sold out, while Series S is on a sale right now. At least right now, it seems like a lot of people are waiting for a Series X. I wonder if in a few years whether Series S will have been deemed the right call. On the other hand, I think the Series S will probably be a more meaningful addition later in the generation. It's surprising that Sony seems to have gotten out of the shortages with pretty strong supply, whereas MS hasn't yet. Maybe they paid more for shipping or chips or something.

On the software side, I think Microsoft has a great stable of studios. The best they've ever had. There's good room for improvement with support studios, more development studios. And it feels to me like there's a little too much doomposting abroad about their development studios. They're in a great place with or without Activision. I do have some concerns that some of the studios are getting a bit spread out. Seems like there is a lot in the works for how many people some of the studios have. Seems like they need more support in a lot of areas.  

It continues to be wild to me to see how much SIE and XGS are growing development wise the past few years. Plenty of room for improvement, but lots of exciting things in the works. 

Series S is the right call but.

• They made too many of them.
• They're directing them to the wrong markets.

Without Series S, the sale situation would be even worse, Lol. And some of those Series S users will want to upgrade to Series X at some point. I'm not surprised that 3 years into the gen, people want the powerful machine now, not the weaker one, especially with Starfield around the corner. Series S should be thrown more towards lower income countries at a very cheap entry price and new markets.

They've sent too many to USA/UK.

I'm also not surprised that Sony is thrashing Xbox in hardware. Think people need to accept that Sony is a better hardware company than Microsoft, Sony will always beat Microsoft on achieving supply because Sony is more of a hardware company than Microsoft is who only have Xbox and a few low selling Surface devices, Lol. Sony even has their own manufacturing plants whilst Microsoft shut their Surface ones down, Lmao.

Sony will likely achieve larger orders, priority orders, simply due to the fact that PlayStation is more demanded, Sony likely knows the ins and outs of manufacturing better than Microsoft, Sony likely has a better process than Microsoft, etc. That's not to say that Microsoft's situation should be as bad as it is but that it's no surprise to me, that Sony beat them to fixing their supply situation first.

Agreed on the studio situation, I've no worries there, I do understand some look spread thin but some also purposely choose to be that way (such as Obsidian) as they believe it is better, and then I recall about Josh Sawyer saying not a single developer left the Pentiment team during development, which makes me further convinced that these smaller titles are key for keeping talent.

However this may cause titles to release a little later than expected. Crazy that Obsidian's Avowed team is closer to 100 than 200. 🥴

Either way they'll end up with hundreds - a thousand via outsourcing though, Lol. But they need more internal support, Microsoft relies a lot on outside teams who are also tied up with helping other projects when they could all be helping Xbox projects

I agree just saying that it’s likely that Sony’s was being cautious too, MS lost out on Crystal, Eidos and Skybox because of this deal and honestly that Mobile studio would not have been shut down if it were MS to have made that purchase and not Embracer. 

"Analysts on Wednesday questioned whether the CMA was making an apples-to-oranges comparison between the Microsoft Game Pass's cloud offering and those of Amazon, Sony, Nvidia Corp. and others.

"I think they're rather misinformed on what the cloud gaming market is," said Joost Van Dreunen, who lectures at New York University's Stern business school. "They're conflating cloud gaming with the revenue model. Then they're looking at it as a distinct technology and a market in another sense."

For example, the CMA may be overstating the Game Pass's role in Microsoft's cloud gaming dominance when cloud gaming is just one feature of the service.

"I don't think we can compare the way Microsoft uses cloud gaming to the way Amazon uses it for Luna," said Joost Rietvalt, an associate professor of strategy and entrepreneurship at University College London's School of Management. "The market share is driven by the popularity of Game Pass, not the popularity of cloud gaming within gamers."

It's an argument that analysts say Microsoft and Activision may invoke when they appeal. Activision on Wednesday called the CMA decision "disproportionate, irrational and inconsistent with the evidence,"

Cloud Gaming Niche Is a Big Headache for Microsoft, Activision - Bloomberg

Gunna suck to live in the UK when everyone else in the world is getting Xbox and call of duty and your left out in the cold, gloomy, rainy hellscape known as the UK. MS will simply move on without the UK. They may even move MS as a whole out, not just Xbox. Enjoy your Linux and battlefield!

Wait, is CMA basing their "Microsoft has 60% of the Cloud Gaming Market" on Game Pass Ultimate numbers? Lol. That's nonsense...Those numbers are largely due to Game Pass itself and Xbox Live Gold. If xCloud wasn't attached to Game Pass it would be significantly less but Microsoft attaches it to Game Pass because it's really not a viable market on its own, as evidenced by Stadia and Luna, Lol. By that logic, they should include Amazon Prime in the Luna numbers, Lol.

"We recognise that market share data may not be particularly informative to assess relative strength in this market. Cloud gaming services remain in their infancy and, as such, static measures of market share are unlikely to accurately reflect the relative strengths of different cloud gaming services providers."

"The Parties submitted that shares of supply analysis is misleading and overstates Microsoft's strength as [], and it is therefore not comparable to standalone cloud gaming services such as GFN. Whilst it is not possible to determine how many users xCloud would have as a standalone service, the evidence described above indicates that cloud gaming attracts users to XGPU and that a significant proportion ([]%) of users would be willing to pay extra for it, even though they already have access to offline play, which suggests for those customers, streaming and offline play are not substitutes, and these customers may be interested in cloud gaming as a standalone service (although we recognise that it is difficult to fully separate Microsoft's ability to 'upsell' xCloud to Game Pass customers from Microsoft's ability to compete for stand-alone xCloud customers). In any case our concern is about Microsoft's future position based on our assessment of its strength, and its substantial number of users now indicates that it may continue to attract a large number of users as cloud gaming grows."

I've strong doubts that xCloud attracts users in large numbers to XGPU...Especially not in f*cking UK of all places, our ISPs are absolute garbage, Lol. What indication do they have that a significant proportion of users would be willing to pay extra for xCloud? Or are they saying that a significant proportion of GPU users are paying extra for xCloud? Cause if so, Lol. Big doubt.

Let it go Ryu. It doesn't matter what their dumb fucking reasoning is. They made their decision.