This absolutely has zero chance of happening. Can't pull Activision-Blizzard out of UK without pulling the whole of Microsoft out of UK and they'd incur massive fines. They could attempt something called "Ring-Fencing" but it's an extreme longshot and extremely unlikely to happen but also the time for remedies is over, Microsoft needs to beat them now in CAT and hope CMA changes their mind which is extremely unlikely.

Microsoft also has defence contracts with UK, not to mention the whole backbone of the NHS is Windows based, it's not worth entertaining this scenario because it won't happen, Microsoft would put themselves in a political shitstorm of epic proportions, it wouldn't only be the UK who tells them to piss off after that but also Europe and USA, to cripple a countries infrastructure because you didn't get your way will not go down well with anyone.

No way in hell is this gonna happen lol

Windows, Azure, etc are way more important to Microsoft than Xbox.

They arent gonna risk burning entire bridges over a block on a video game acquisition.

I'll be back to Gaming tomorrow and over this whole thing, still enjoying Gaming for the most part this year but I'm slightly tempted to hunker down and avoid the internet for a while with some TV Shows

Still have Dead Island 2 and Minecraft Legends to finish though, then Redfall very soon too.

Could they go after the just the cod franchise and just try to buy that packaged with king or do something creative like that? Or is this dead and they are better off spending 70 bil on other smaller developers like the team behind hitman etc? 

Option to divest is off the table now, they'll have to wait for CAT to make their decision first or abandon the deal.

If CAT rules in favour of Microsoft, I don't know if Microsoft can change their remedies or if CMA has to re-look at what was offered only.

CMA did say Microsoft could divest Activision to get the deal through, Microsoft didn't want to, as they'd lose CoD and CoD Mobile and Microsoft would still have to acquire Activision-Blizzard-King in its whole but then find a buyer for Activision or other more complicated scenarios. CMA is bitching about CoD so anything which involves Microsoft keeping Activision/CoD is off the table.

Could they abandon the deal and theoretically then attempt to acquire only Bliizard-King? Theoretically they could but Activision-Blizzard-King wouldn't go for that, if they still want to sell which I think they will, they'll want to sell the whole company, not piece by piece and I'm sure once this deal fails, Tencent and Saudi's PIF will be lining up, Lol.

So yeah, deal is pretty much dead. Microsoft may win CAT appeal but CMA will make the same ruling, CMA has lost about 30-40% of appeals against them but then still made the same decision and blocked the deals when it was thrown back to them, so basically CMA has like a 100% win rate in the end, Lol. Crazy power.

Agree that UK's weather sucks

I'm actually curious about one thing...why does CAT exist? If the CMA ultimately has full power regardless, and doesn't actually ever change their decisions based on CAT appeals...what's the point of the whole system?

I was just skimming through the final report, and there is a lot to unpack here.

A few examples:

The remedies offered to the CMA were different to the the ones offered to the EC (page 351)

Microsoft told us that the revised details of the Microsoft Cloud Remedy set out in its response to the Remedies Working Paper were consistent with the revised remedy proposal which had been put forward to the European Commission, but that Microsoft's proposal to the CMA went beyond the proposed commitments to the European Commission in certain respects in order to address the CMA's specific concerns set out in the Remedies Working Paper.

No one can predict the evolution of the cloud gaming market: the CMA, MS, ABK or third parties 🤔 (page 368)

Cloud gaming is an early-stage and growing dynamic market, and there is considerable uncertainty as to how it will develop and what competing business models will emerge. We believe, for the reasons set out in detail in Chapter 8, that foreclosure of Microsoft's rivals in cloud gaming services may be expected to result in substantial harm to competition in this market. We recognise that we cannot predict with any certainty how exactly the market might evolve absent the Merger (or if the Merger is allowed to proceed on the basis of the Microsoft Cloud Remedy). Neither, in our view, can the Parties or third parties. We consider this represents an inherent specification risk in the Microsoft Cloud Remedy – even if the remedy could be well-specified to cover the current status of the market, it may not be suited to future changes. This means that we cannot have a high degree of confidence that the terms of the remedy would be sufficiently well-specified to address these unpredictable market changes.

COD could make Nintendo (Switch) a closer competitor to Xbox (page 389)

We have concluded in Chapter 7 that Microsoft would not have the incentive to foreclose rival console gaming services in the UK. However, this is not determinative of whether Microsoft has a commercial incentive to develop and publish native CoD titles for Nintendo. This would involve substantial costs that would need to be recouped through additional sales of native versions of CoD on Nintendo. In addition, placing valuable CoD content on Nintendo would in principle increase diversion away from Xbox and towards Nintendo. While this effect may be relatively limited given our findings in Chapter 7 that Nintendo competes less closely with Xbox, making CoD on Nintendo could make it a closer competitor to Xbox, which we consider would not be in Microsoft's interest. The Parties have not provided us with convincing evidence of the expected costs, revenues and profitability that might inform an assessment of Microsoft's commercial incentives in this respect.

Predicting the evolution of COD and customer behaviour in ten years is hard (page 391)

The agreement has a ten-year term. We consider that account must be made for the inherent uncertainty over the scale of the benefits over time. The likelihood of the assumptions remaining constant will decrease over time, and the changing nature of the console market makes it harder to make any predictions about how a particular retail product (for example, CoD [REDACTED]) might evolve, or how customer behaviour might develop. As such, it is not a reasonable assumption that any annual benefit would remain constant over the term of the agreement. Instead, in our view the benefits are likely to decline significantly (and certainly at a rate greater than the 'risk-free' rate used in Microsoft's NPV calculation) over time, reducing our confidence that they can be expected to be realised.

MS has tried to buy at least one mobile games publisher (page 394)

We note Microsoft's submission that Activision has significant strength in mobile gaming, and consider that the presence of Activision's games on any mobile gaming store would enhance its competitiveness. However, we also consider that this could be achieved by less anti-competitive means than the Merger, and Microsoft could acquire 'attractive content and experience with player engagement and acquisition' by buying a different mobile games publisher. This appears to have been Microsoft's strategy – it attempted to buy [REDACTED] in [REDACTED], and said [REDACTED].

A lot more coming this weekend!

Source: Idas

lol "cloud gaming is a super unpredictable market, so it's best we all just leave it alone"

If you are MS where do you go from here? They had a rough couple months and I really thought this would bring them back up, do they shrug it off and buy Io Interactive and studios like that? Or do they keep grinding this out which seems like a lost cause at this point? What becomes of Billionaire Bobby Kotics job at Actvi? so many questions. The biggest blow of this to me and i think was pointed out ITT is the loss of gamepass games this deal would have given them, esp if they cleaned up cheating on the older cods when they hit GP