Call of Duty was a red herring: Why cloud gaming is the real problem for Microsoft and Activision

polygon.com:

Microsoft and Activision Blizzard, looking to finalize the $68.7 billion merger of the two companies, have spent a ton of energy placating regulators on the issue of Call of Duty. If approved, the deal would bring one of gaming’s biggest franchises under the already thriving Xbox ecosystem. Regulators and rival platform holders — namely, Sony, which has aggressively lobbied global governments in an effort to shut down the acquisition — have fretted about the potential for console exclusivity that would stifle competition. U.K. regulators in late March seemingly set aside the issue of potential Call of Duty exclusivity in what originally looked to be a tipping point in favor of the deal.

And so, it surprised onlookers when the U.K. antitrust regulator, the Competition and Markets Authority, moved to block the deal on April 26, citing concerns over its impact on the cloud gaming market. The CMA’s worries about cloud gaming aren’t new. The regulator outlined them in its provisional findings report from earlier this year, but the public focus remained squarely on Microsoft potentially making Call of Duty games exclusive to Xbox. Cloud gaming is indeed a relatively young market, but its impact goes beyond which games you can stream to your phone via Game Pass. The big picture of cloud gaming includes everything around how information is stored, saved, distributed, and accessed.

Related

Cloud gaming is considered a nascent market in a formative period that’s defining how the new technology will be adopted by players. Companies have been toying with cloud gaming for more than 20 years, but the technology hasn’t advanced enough to bring it to a wider audience — until recently, that is. U.K. regulators have positioned cloud