Well this is relatively big news.
Personally, I'm very uneasy with single companies owning more and more of the popular gaming space.
For sure they’d get dev kits - Activision would already have them. Sony would have Xbox dev kits too, they develop MLB the Show for it.
But prior to the merger Sony seemed to have a close relationship with Activision where it would discuss specs and features of upcoming consoles with them ahead of time, which is no surprise considering how much money it’s worth to them.
All that presumably stops now, though, on both sides. Sony won’t want to provide too much info to MS and MS presumably have no interest in making the best version of their game appear on a rival console.
These days the consoles are almost identical anyway.
It was very different in the era of PS2 v Xbox, PS3 v 360, as the rival consoles had completely different custom architecture built by different firms.
The PS5 and Xbox Series X are, generally speaking, using identical hardware. Both based off the same AMD architecture for both CPU and GPU.
The biggest problem is probably the Xbox Series S. While having a weaker graphics card is no big deal given you can just run at lower resolution/settings, not much you can do about a 10GB ram pool when the Series X and PS5 both have 16GB.
I do think the Series S is an important and worthwhile console for making the generation more affordable to people by making smart compromises. That said, it’ll definitely be a sticking point for some games going forward - I think Baldur’s Gate 3 is the first where the developers have overtly cited the Series S limitations as a sticking point?
Will Baulders Gate play on older PC hardware?
Apologies for the brevity and the text speak, but: LOL
I’m sure it will. The particular issue here seems to be the requirement for feature parity, which is proving an issue for Larian when it comes to split-screen. There’s still an Xbox version coming, but just behind the other versions.
Ha, Jesus, that's mad. You'd hope that those lawyers aren't getting paid until they win, otherwise the "gamers" have spent far more on this lawsuit than a buying a Series X and several years of full price Game Pass.
Unsurprisingly, this was denied by one of the democrats on the court.
The deadline to complete the merger has now been extended by 3 months to October.
MS has restructured the deal, with them essentially selling off the cloud gaming rights of the next 15 years worth of ABK games to Ubisoft, of all people. This is world wide too, so it's not just the UK.
I'm not terribly surprised by this, I think that MS has cooled considerably on the potential of Cloud Gaming, at least console based anyway. New CMA Phase 1 report is due in October, so if they find that it doesn't cause a substantial lessening of competition, then it'll go ahead.
Well done on the UK, once again, making everything more difficult for everyone, with no real benefit to anyone.
The only way this benefits anyone is if they include Ubisoft + in there, which won't happen.
This is nothing but a hindrance to consumers.
What a stupid outcome, if true!
It's only a hinderence if you want to play the games on the cloud, which I believe most people won't. The games will still be on Game Pass.
Ubisoft in futre might licence the games to MS for cloud gaming.
This will get the deal over the line.
The games will still be available on XCloud, the rights are going to be handled by Ubisoft to prevent Xbox/Microsoft exclusivity.
Yes, I would say you're right but that's not 100% confirmed but it means Ubisoft can put it on other platforms too, including PS+.
I do want to play them in the cloud.
I play games in the cloud all the time.
Between geforce now, ps now and xcloud, there isn't a day when I don't play something in the cloud.
I know I'm in the minority, but okay, I'll play wait and see, but I'm being cautiously pessimistic :D
Ubisoft make my favourite franchises, but I don't trust them to make business decisions, they are morons of the highest order!
You have nothing to worry about.
The EU has a separate ruling as it has approved the deal already.
Either way Microsoft will stlll have the games under licence from UBISOFT in outside EU markets.
By the way, Ubisoft didn't manage to make your favourite franchises and be as big as they are by being morons.
I figured no matter what word I used there, would seem too harsh!
I am a fan of their games made generally by the devs, but the management tend to make poor decisions in my opinion. Poor choice of word for emphasis.
Will wait for what shakes out before I comment more :)
Yes but as I said, the Ubisoft deal excludes the EU, so if you're in Ireland it won't be impacted.
CIAB's original message said it was worldwide, not just UK!
That's why I said it's an awful thing, overkill just to get the UK market into the deal!
Don’t know what CIAB is but the deal is worldwide but definitely excludes the EU as MS already has agreement in place for cloud gaming with the EU.
Either way this is not going to impact the consumer in any way except to guarantee that streaming of the games will be on more platforms. Agree it’s overkill. CMA are being ridiculous but MS clearly want to get deal through and remain on good terms with CMA.
Sorry, CIAB is CatInABox, the one that posted the message earlier this morning.
I must admit, I didn't realise that it excluded the EU, so I am happy about that!
Pity the lads in the UK though, just red tape nightmare for the sake of it.
Apologies folks, it was my mistake!
No hassle, just a little mix up :)
it 99.999% won't impact UK gamers though.
MS will simply licence back the AB titles for XCloud. The only impact is that it makes it far more likely that an AB title will be available to be streamed on the PS services. MS won't lose their own titles from their own services.
I'm sorry man, but from Ubi's own tweet, they say these titles are to be rolled into Ubisoft+ which is an extra fee!
That's how I thought it would affect UK players!
I'm wrong on this?
Ubi+ is not just an Xbox thing. It is PC too. You can have Ubi+ without having gamepass, and you can have gamepass without having Ubi+.
If you have Ubi+, you will be able to stream the titles within that sub, but it doesn't mean that is an exclusive. They will licence the games to be streamed on many platforms, that is the point of the deal; it is just them negotiating the licences with PS or whomever rather than Xbox.
Can't you see where they say they can licence it to other platforms. The games will definitely be licenced to MS platforms.
This restructure is just a business set up change with no change to how consumers receive the games.
Xbox Cloud users will have games as normal and other platforms will use Ubisoft+ or services that Ubisoft will licence. This will actually make the games more widely available on more cloud services than they are now.
Alright, I wasn't seeing that you could still stream games pass.
I was thinking it was only Ubi+
So then what's bad about this deal?
There's nothing bad about it but many people are getting confused and think you'll need to subscribe to Ubi+ as well as Gamepass to access the games but it's not the case.
Also does not apply to the EU.
It's ridiculous that the CMA are causing this as their original reason for blocking was ridiculous and I'm convinced they're working in cahoots with the FTC who have also made fools of themselves. Both are protecting companies (ie Sony) rather than consumers.
I don't see how they can block this deal now but you just never know what they come up with.
I think there is a lot of confusion going on with this and rightly so. I think I get it now but surely they can just come out with a graphic to show what this would mean for people on different platforms and subscriptions.
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