Pushback (Premium)

With the UK Competition and Markets Authority CMA unexpectedly pushing back against Microsoft's admittedly concession-free "material changes" in its Activision Blizzard acquisition, the software giant, finally, has blinked. And it is now offering a completely pointless concession that, go figure, meets the needs of the CMA.

And you thought we were done here.

Granted, I thought we were done here. And that what the CMA was engaging in was simply a mulligan, a do-over of its terrible and thoughtless initial decision to block Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard. I referred to it, endlessly, as "regulatory theater," the theory being that the CMA knew it was wrong and was simply taking enough time to make it seem like it was busy considering Microsoft's new "evidence" so that it could rubber-stamp the deal it should have agreed to several months ago.

But that's not what happened. Instead, the CMA reviewed Microsoft's new "evidence" and came away with exactly the same issues that triggered its block in the first place: this pointless and utterly clueless regulatory body is still concerned with the invented market for streaming video games, a market that does not exist today and will not be a force of any kind in the foreseeable future if ever.

In response, Microsoft has made actual "material changes" to the structure of its acquisition, at least from the CMA's perspective (hopefully): it has signed an agreement with Ubisoft that gives that game publisher cloud streaming rights to "the complete slate of current Activision Blizzard games, as well as all their new titles launching in the 15 years" via Ubisoft+. But not just any version of Ubisoft+: the base subscription costs $14.99 but is PC-only. You will need the more expensive $17.99/month plan offering, which offers some games via Xbox consoles and Amazon Luna. Anyway, Ubisoft says that it will announce more about how and when Activision Blizzard titles will be added to Ubisoft+ and other cloud gaming platforms in the future.

So this raises two fairly obvious questions. How does this deal address the CMA's concerns? And what does this mean to Xbox gamers, many of which are already paying $9.99 to $14.99 per month (with prices set to go up soon) for some version of Xbox Game Pass?

Let me address that second one first, because it's straightforward: It doesn't impact Xbox gamers (almost) at all. The Ubisoft deal addresses only cloud gaming (streaming) and not the availability of Activision Blizzard games via Game Pass (in which the games must be downloaded to be played). This is not an issue because no volume of customers is actually using Xbox Cloud Gaming, which is a perk of only the most expensive Game Pass subscription, to play games. More to the point, Activision's biggest games, like Call of Duty, will not perform well over streaming anyway. (In fact, I believe COD multiplayer gaming is essentially is impossible via streaming.) So this is not a major concession f...