It was clear that something was wrong. He’s felt it for some time. Secret meetings with people from the FTC with bizarre arguments to block the purchase. It all comes down to embarrassing ridicule on Twitter accusing the European Union of not going along with their decision. The CMA has practically lost all respect that you can have an institution that should look after the user and not the companies.
Some things have already come to light that escalate the case, such as the fact that the director in charge of signing the award in the agency, had worked for the law firm that represented Sony in the process. You understand the movement, don’t you?
Weird things in the process that give rise to a legitimate belief of malpractice
The AMC complains that it did not have time to prepare for the process because the lawyer it chose is unprepared for the case; however, the judge assigned to the case agreed that it would be in the month of July. This gives a definite advantage to Microsoft, but once again highlights the clumsiness of the British: do they really have no lawyer ready to defend them?
However, today’s news is different, and that is that the lawyer who is defending Activision in the process, has been by rummaging through the more than 400 pages what this case entails and found several things that have neither head nor tail. But Marcus Smith recalls that of the 32 weeks of investigation, only 4 of them were devoted to cloud gaming, a short time to have been so decisive in its blocking.
The vast majority of the CMA’s time spent, in the 32 weeks it spent investigating, 28 weeks was devoted to its first concern, that there was or would be anti-competitive behavior. if this merger was authorized as it concerns the console market”.
The end of the 32 weeks was devoted to the history of the cloud. Of course, in the end, against many expectations, they decided that the console part of the story was good. There was no problem. So ultimately the reason we lost is because of his opinions on console history.
One aspect of the console part of the debate was the foreclosure argument, which was dismissed. And so you have one along with the conclusion, “well, we don’t think there’s going to be a valid argument for exclusion over console history, but we do think there will be an exclusion, or likelihood that the result of the exclusion regarding those competitors not being able to access those Activision games, regarding the cloud.
At first glance, this is a pair of surprising conclusions. They are diametrically opposed to each other, and one wonders what the point of that would be, and why anyone would behave this way, given the discovery of the other way we know.
It is also completely incompatible with the decision taken by the European Commission, which takes a completely different view of what is meant by “the market” and whether or not the proposition that there would be exclusion by compared to cloud streaming.
The cloud is not a separate market, and it makes no sense to use it to block the purchase
Likewise, Activision wants to appear explicitly in the process to clarify why the CMA acted inconsistently.
We will briefly refer to market definition, which is base 1, to show that the CMA did not consider switching between cloud and native console, PC or mobile gaming and out-of-market restrictions.
What the CMA never addresses, and is certainly not questioned at all, is the notion that the player might be able to switch between cloud streaming and native gaming through the same hardware.
This concept is very important as it relates to the key issue of market definition. Because if you have, in fact, the ability to make the switch, then the idea that it’s a separate market becomes much harder to explain or justify.
Activision will be able to explain why cloud gaming, which is nothing more than a delivery mechanism, via the cloud, is just another means of delivering the product to the gamer. That’s all. It’s a different way of doing it, but it’s just a delivery mechanism.
