CMA Fundamentally Misunderstands Cloud Gaming Vs Mobile Gaming

gameranx.com:

As many outlets have noted, the CMA’s decision is demonstrably bad with many smaller details indicating that they either did not properly understand certain aspects of the video game industry. Some speculate whether that is a real misunderstanding or whether the CMA played around with facts to get to the conclusions they wanted.

Today we’re looking at a part of their decision that demonstrates how they misunderstand the mobile gaming industry.

In page 206 of their decision, the CMA explains why they think cloud gaming won’t be limited by the success of mobile gaming:

“With respect to the Parties’ argument that the increasing computational power of mobile devices will limit the growth of cloud gaming, we note that, whilst the computational power of mobile devices has increased and may continue to increase, cloud infrastructure and hardware will continue to be more powerful with more memory, and therefore offer higher performance gaming.

In the same way that there will continue to be demand for consoles and gaming PCs which are able to offer higher performance gaming than smaller, handheld

devices, there is likely to continue to be demand for cloud gaming which can also offer higher performance from hardware housed in data centres. Playing via cloud also offers additional benefits such as using less battery life as less processing is happening locally.”

So, let’s run down what the CMA is not mentioning or willfully ignoring here, one by one:

For one, the CMA demonstrates a clear misunderstanding of the mobile gaming market. While we now understand that mobile games were not going to replace console or PC games, it’s also well understood that it has created a new product category in the industry that enjoys success