Phil Spencer Says Xbox Will Forge Ahead, Even Without Activision Blizzard - Report

@dushness: Well,the CMA said they see no problems Xbox having CoD and other franchises as far its about consoles.

The CMA saw issues in the cloud gaming sector(which is just a jokingly around 3% of the current gaming revenue if i recall it correctly) and the fear Xboxs possible dominance in future could prevent cloud gaming from innovation and stuff in the UK.

@nintendians: Sure, they'll just buy up some other giant company. In the meantime, while they were working on this deal plenty more billions of $ have piled up, so they can aim for an even bigger deal now.

@Slannmage: Of course they are not friends, they are in it to make money as any company does. They want you pay your money and not cheap sometimes, but they are not a charity where everything is free. Sony is not my friend and I do not expect free stuff, Some of Sony's games are exclusive and MS is the wrong one here Oh please. Oh, and yes, I own a PS 2 through 5 as well as a OG Xbox and Xbox X series.

@Slannmage: Corporations have much better intentions than the Government. Can not really put all the blame here on them. Corporations only get away with things like Microsoft does at the mercy of the politicians they are paying off.

I have no doubt this play by the CMA is either UK politicians trying to get their cut. Or they already have and actually blocked this because they were paid by Sony in Retaliation for Microsoft doing the same thing to them over the Bungie buyout.

@Slannmage: and how is game pass a problem when it's significantly better than anything that Sony has to offer?

@squishytia: Is Sony trustworthy? I do not trust either one of them and with good reason but business is business and sorry Sony is sour about the whole thing. They are a business and they will eventually work things out.

@proceeder: No, but even with buying up smaller to larger devs eventually lead to a megacorp each purchase adds and not subtract and Sony may not like that as well looking at their behavior.

@proceeder: Yeah,lets buy all the smaller and mid studios seperatly then in future ....chomp chomp chomp.
Sony shows that these deal get through as fast as you tie your shoes.

@hardwenzen: To be fair, Sony hasn't been much better lately as more and more of their games are feeling mainstreamed, and we KNOW Ryan is all-in on GaaS. We just had Yoshida state outright he often encourages devs to abandon any game he doesn't consider worthwhile, or as he put it, save them from burdening themselves with a poorly selling idea.

@hardwenzen: Infinite is on Xbox shoulders for sure but Zenimax/Bethesda act independent as before so Redfall is their burden to carry.

@Carpetfluff: Oh, he's already "gone". They only keep him around for PR. Other executives have been signing off on all of his decisions for a good while now. Pay close attention to any announcement or topic he talks about. There is always one of MS' top brass behind him. There have also been numerous instances where he has said something along the lines of "I'd love to do this, but I can't". This is in stark contrast to when the Xbox One first released when he was often bragging about how he reversed all of the X1's polarizing decisions and how the BC thing was all his idea. When none of that did little to break the Xbox's 30 million cap, that is when Spencer seemed to fade.

"OMG LOL!?!)a!? THEN WHY THEY PROMOTE HIM?" you say? Simple: when you can't fire someone because they're too well liked, but you don't want to lighten up too much on their leash, you promote them. A lot of people think promotions are always this amazing thing, but the reality is one of the best ways to neuter a popular progressive personality is to put them in the boardroom where their influence is reduced to just one vote.