Last week Microsoft filed its appeal against the UK Competition and Markets Authority’s decision to block its acquisition, and now the details of its appeal have been revealed. Microsoft has said that the CMA made “fundamental errors” when assessing its position in the cloud gaming sector, a vital part of the UK’s decision to block the acquisition.
Microsoft has said that the CMA failed to properly consider the constraints of “native gaming,” that is playing a game that is installed on your device, on cloud gaming services. Microsoft argues that cloud gaming shouldn’t be seen as a seperate market, due to the potential for gamers to decide to switch to native gaming instead.
Along with correcting the CMA’s “erroneous, narrow, market definition” of cloud gaming, Microsoft points to “three long-term commercial agreements” that would bring Microsoft-owned games to other cloud services for the next ten years, including Activision titles if the merger goes through.
These…