Did you think cloud gaming’s future seems bleak at the moment? That may not entirely be the case, as the CMA has made some interesting revelations.
In their investigation of the Microsoft deal to purchase Activision Blizzard King, the regulator has revealed they know about several cloud gaming companies that have yet to properly enter the market.
IDAS of Resetera shared this quote from the CMA. This comes from the investigation CMA commissioned to a third party, in their appendices on page C5:
“Some cloud gaming services—notably Amazon Luna—are not fully launched. Furthermore, other potential providers have not yet entered. For example, [REDACTED] 4, [REDACTED].”
So, to explain part of this quote. When the CMA says that Amazon Luna “has not fully launched”, they are referring to the fact that Luna is still only available in the United States. While some players can try to circumvent this limitation by using a VPN, for the purposes of UK commerce, they are still not quite a factor in the UK gaming market for consumers.
Of course, UK based game studios can make video games for the Amazon Luna, so the CMA cannot fully discount their impact on the UK either.
More interestingly, the CMA alludes to “potential providers” that “have not yet entered.”
What this means is there are other companies that are planning to launch cloud gaming services of their own. These companies are still working on those services, and possibly, some of them are fledgling projects that may never go off the ground.
For the purposes of this investigation, their feasibility as a venture would not be a factor. Either they reached out to the CMA, or the CMA got to them to ask about the potential impact of the Microsoft transaction, and how it would affect their businesses in the future. If it’s possible that those companies would do business with Activision Blizzard King, or a merger between them could have been possible instead, that possibility would be shut down if this transaction goes through.
Ultimately, of course, CMA is inquiring about cloud gaming companies because it directly relates to Microsoft’s xCloud service, which has now been integrated to their Game Pass.
In case you were curious, Nvidia’s GeForce Now is available in the UK. They do not share the same situation as Amazon Luna. That also means that there are even more potential providers than Nvidia, or for that matter, the defunct Google Stadia.
Depending on what you believe, it’s either an exciting or uninteresting time for gaming, if the game cloud streaming revolution is still trying to happen, alongside the VR revolution and even the NFT games revolution.
