What you need to know
- Microsoft President Brad Smith is leading Microsoft’s legal position in the legal battle.
- When Microsoft acquired Activision, British regulators notoriously refused to allow the deal to go through.
- At the time, Brad Smith said some of the UK’s regulatory decisions represented a “dark age” for Microsoft operating in the UK, saying the UK had been “shut down”. Ta.
- Brad Smith believes British regulators have been “fair” in a new interview.
Last year, Microsoft’s massive legal battle over Activision-Blizzard gave it a near monopoly on gaming broadcasting, as Microsoft battled with the European Union, US FTC and UK CMA for regulatory approval. The EU approved the acquisition, giving it legal scope to provide cloud gaming, while the UK approved it after forcing Microsoft to license out its cloud gaming rights to Ubisoft to maintain competition. However, the US FTC was unable to secure an injunction against the completion of the deal with Microsoft this summer and is still fighting in court to cancel the acquisition.
Microsoft finally struck a deal with Activision-Blizzard last October, with most of the world’s regulators either approving or abstaining. The deal frees the developer of games like Call of Duty and World of Warcraft from the administration of Bobby Kotick, whose former CEO left the company just days ago. Current and former developers have told stories of Kotick’s tenure at Activision, including how Kotick once threatened to “have employees killed” during a riot he described as “hyperbolic.” Ta. In fact, it seems unlikely that Microsoft will get this deal through UK regulators because the majority of shareholders, developers, and even his Activision customers are optimistic about the future of his Microsoft-owned company. It was a little baffling how difficult it was.
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The UK has been particularly stubborn about the takeover, and appears to have arbitrarily taken PlayStation’s claims at face value during public hearings and debates. Early discussions seemed to give Sony the upper hand as the “default” console, but deeper investigation caused the CMA to change tactics. It will no longer be about competition in console gaming, but about the cloud gaming market. This market is still largely absent and will likely require investment from large cloud players to capture the opportunity.
Still, the UK and EU probably quite correctly envisioned a world in which Microsoft would eventually dominate the gaming industry, losing all digital ownership. Competition between streaming services such as Netflix and Disney+ has led to industry strikes in the US as actors and writers demand better pay and conditions. Netflix and others are arbitrarily raising prices at a faster pace than Microsoft’s similarly structured Xbox Game Pass.
Brad Smith now thinks the UK CMA was ‘fair’
There is no denying that industry consolidation can lead to less competition, higher prices for consumers, and less protection for employees. The EU and UK forced Microsoft to concede some rights to cloud-streamed versions of its games. While the EU has forced Microsoft to provide comprehensive access to its games to other cloud providers such as Boosteroid and NVIDIA GeForce Now, the UK has forced Microsoft to go a step further and license it to a completely separate company. (Ubisoft won).
During preliminary discussions, long before the above solution was found, Microsoft president Brad Smith criticized the UK CMA and the UK legal framework in general. Mr Smith described the UK as being in a “shutdown” and said the fighting represented some of Microsoft’s “darkest days” in the UK.
The comments could potentially be problematic for the UK government, which is trying to call itself “pro-business” as it seeks US investment in the post-Brexit economic downturn. The UK’s CMA regulator is independent from the UK’s parliamentary structure, which has drawn criticism from some British MPs who speculate that the regulator should consider broader economics rather than ideology. There were even accusations that the UK regulator was colluding with the US FTC, but the US FTC has so far only been able to protect Microsoft from markets dominated by foreign competitors such as China’s Tencent and Tencent. provides no evidence of how it attempts to blame competition. Sony in Japan. In fact, Mr. Smith’s recent comments may be aimed at defusing the FTC’s ongoing debate in the United States, where the FTC continues to campaign against the agreement even after Microsoft signed it.
In an interview with BBC, Brad Smith, who heads most of Microsoft’s legal operations, said the UK CMA was “tough but fair”. Mr Smith continued: “I think the CMA has justified its position while setting out a realistic path towards innovation and investment, which I think is good for everyone.”
Smith also mentioned that Microsoft is working with the UK government to invest £2.5 billion ($3.16 billion) in cloud infrastructure and AI in the UK. “The UK government actually acted bolder than any other government on earth in 2023, spending £900m on construction.” [AI] The deal was announced within weeks of Microsoft completing its acquisitions of Activision and Blizzard, allowing Microsoft to “double” its data center footprint in the UK, while also training AI research in the country. This means that funds will be invested in improvements. Microsoft aims to create 20,000 jobs in this part of the UK, London and Cardiff, and could expand further north into areas in desperate need of investment.
Happy end (?)
The UK CMA vs. Microsoft drama may be over (for now), but Microsoft still faces intense scrutiny over its Microsoft Teams work tool practices, which Slack and others have described as “anti-competitive.” There is. The European Union may also seek concessions from Microsoft regarding its designation as a “gatekeeper” company, while the same bill would force Apple and Google to open their mobile platforms to sideloading and third-party apps. Microsoft could also benefit here. store. Microsoft’s big strategy for Activision-Blizzard is, after all, to build a competing mobile game store on iOS and Android, and perhaps he’ll see the fruits of that investment as early as 2024.
Either way, at the end of the day, it’s just business. Microsoft could face the FTC again in court over Activision in the future, and may try to use the UK CMA concession as an example that it is willing to sell and find a solution that benefits as many players as possible. there’s a possibility that. The FTC may lack the legislative power that the UK CMA or the European Commission enjoys over competition regulation, but it is not entirely profitable and is bankrupt under even the vaguest oversight. presents a malicious argument.
For Activision’s developers and customers, the new Xbox era promises to be a healthier working environment for those teams and a new focus on players rather than shareholders.
And when it comes to creating jobs in the UK with Microsoft’s huge cloud investment, I think, as a Brit, we need all the help we can get. Let’s build a nice big data center in the north too, right?