| Britain’s antitrust watchdog vetoed the gaming industry’s biggest ever deal saying it would harm competition in cloud gaming
Cloud gaming? Really? Seems a bit tone deaf. Is the CMA known for not understanding the markets they regulate?
Cloud gaming? Really? Seems a bit tone deaf. Is the CMA known for not understanding the markets they regulate?
Timed exclusives are not an unfair advantage, both Sony and MS have bought or paid for timed (or perpetual) exclusive games for their platforms.
Are we going to make a rule that bans all exclusive games, and force developers to create ports for all system that launch on the same day?
I don't think just because the two biggest actors can afford to pay for exclusivity that means that paying for exclusivity is fair. Would you expect itch.io to pay for exclusivity in order to compete in the games market?
> Are we going to make a rule that bans all exclusive games, and force developers to create ports for all system that launch on the same day?
If you made a rule about this, it would be about banning paying for exclusivity. If a developer wants to make a game exclusive to the PS5 that's up to them, but Sony can't pay them for the privilege.
All the console makers are already massive publishers with many in-house studios, perhaps there should be restrictions on publishers from owning developers. But there would also need to be a restriction on console makers from owning publishers and developers as well, but perhaps some small allowance for first party devs?
E.g. the platform owner also owns all content production to stuff its channel with content.
In the short term this can be good for gamers (as long as the platform owner throws absurd amounts of money around for content production in order to grow the subscription base), but I can't see this being good for the long run, especially when there are only two or three big players on the market, and no more independent game developers and publishers are left (Activision/Blizzard isn't exactly a fountain of creativity of course, so that's a bad example).
Nowadays Stadia is dead, Xcloud is kind of usable under the condition you use a controller (which makes it a non-started for pretty much any non first-person game) and pay for Game Pass. Geforce Now is still going strong, has much better and stable quality and is the gold standard.
How does any large company build into a new/growing market without having a "huge advantage"? Do they have to wait until the market is matured from smaller companies before they can get into that market?
It works Just Fine(tm) (with fiber internet) but guess what's missing: a lot of AAA titles.
So yes, there's a problem with cloud gaming.
Not sure if it's mine or theirs though. I don't have a gaming PC right now, only a PS5. Since we're speaking of ActiBlizzard, i maybe would try Diablo 4 if it were available on GeForce Now. But it isn't and I won't.
Incidentally, I doubt there will be a console Diablo 4 for the PS5 either. They were too far into the acquisition process to not dump non Microsoft platforms.
I'm not sure what you mean by there being a hold up. I assumed the deal was dependent on the ABK deal going through, which the CMA just blocked and they've all but guaranteed that GeForce Now won't get Call of Duty.
I don't know if i even want to try playing that with a controller, but maybe... just maybe. Depending on how predatory the game proves to be after 6 months of updates.
Consider dota 2 -- it's a service entirely on the cloud continuously updated.
The list goes on with in terms of aaa games offered by either company where the main offering is actually multiplayer.
Nonetheless, my point was that cloud gaming is probably the least concerning part of the merger.
Not so sure about this. Stadia was an odd service - even google's own devices (new google tv for example) didn't support stadia. You had to pay for subscription + a whole game price in most cases.
Combine that with the fact that people already made peace with stadia being shutdown before it even launched - who wants to pay money for a game that can disappear any day.
I had Stadia and played from time to time. I know people who used Stadia exclusively. I play xCloud all the time on my iPad... Stadia had a market, just it being from Google killed it. Well, publishers also played their role there - they wanted consumers to buy games again instead of just giving them access to steam.
Shadow, GeForce Now and Amazon Luna are still alive.