
Another capitulation
Why did they then allow this to go through?
How many brown envelopes must have passed by now?
Britain's competition regulator finally waved through Microsoft's $69 billion purchase of games developer Activision Blizzard today, ending a 15-month saga that turned more than a little tetchy at times. The Windows giant said it can now close its takeover of the publishing house. The decision seemed a mere formality …
Looks like CMA does not understand markets, competition and capitalism.
How smaller businesses can compete with Microsoft if CMA helps it to get even bigger?
What is the point of that institution then?
Just another gravy train, so the people working there can feel fake power and pretend they care while pocketing tax payer money?
Not only did every other country allow this to go ahead (including Japan where Sony and Nintendo would be most affected), but the CMA’s point about cloud gaming is just laughable.
Once again the UK is a joke on the world stage. The much more significant story is in the FT today saying that Microsoft was considering approaching Nintendo in 2020 and how undervalued Nintendo (along with other Japanese companies) is.
I'm not a gamer (at least not since the ZX Spectrum went out of fashion...) and I thought the Cloud objection was kind of arbitrary and hard to appreciate. But its absolutely true that all these mega-mergers achieve is increasingly banal products for consumers.
Just look at the output of the big film studios, prequel this, reboot that, spin-off the other, very little that counts as original thought or content. There has never been more content available ever but its nearly all just dross. I imagine this is what will happen to gaming, but I'm not a gamer, so that doesn't bother me (but I do have a lifelong hatred of MS so actually it does bother me).
At least the CMA sort of tried to object (I can't believe I'm defending a quango...), but we all knew ultimately where it would end. And that's the real problem. Big Tech believe they are above the law and for all practical purposes they are.
And as if by magic, mere minutes after the announcement, the button was pressed and the trailer was released.