Microsoft Sign Cloud Gaming Deal with UK Mobile and Broadband ISP EE
Software and internet technology giant Microsoft have today announced an expanded 10-year partnership with broadband ISP and mobile giant EE (BT). This is said to reflect a “commitment in cloud gaming to bring PC games built by Activision Blizzard, following the acquisition, and Xbox” to customers of the UK telecoms provider.
At the time of writing, this announcement only seems to have been confirmed via two vague posts from Microsoft and EE on Twitter (here and here). Neither of which clarifies what customers can actually expect from the expanded agreement. But historically, both customers of EE and BT have often been offered broadband and mobile packages with discounted access to Microsoft’s Xbox Live service for online gaming (game passes).
The CEO of BT’s Consumer Division, Marc Allera, added: “We share Microsoft’s vision of more games for more players. It’s all part of EE’s ambition to be the no.1 destination for gamers and the most personal, customer-focused brand in the UK. We’re providing an unbeatable network for gaming, offering the best 5G and fibre connectivity with the best partners, products and great value services.”
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At this point it’s worth noting that the UK’s competition regulator (CMA) is still investigating (Phase 2) the anticipated acquisition by Microsoft of Activision Blizzard, which came after their Phase 1 investigation initially suggested that the mega-merger “[gave] rise to a realistic prospect of a substantial lessening of competition (SLC) in gaming consoles, multi-game subscription services, and cloud gaming services.”
However, the CMA later narrowed their focus to the cloud gaming side of things, which came after they provisionally concluded that the merger would not result in a substantial lessening of competition in console gaming services “because the cost to Microsoft of withholding Call of Duty from PlayStation would outweigh any gains from taking such action“.
The result of all this is expected before the end of April 2023.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Interesting, they just did a 10 year deal with Nvidia for the games to be on GeForce Now too..I wonder if there will be packages in the future to encourage people to go with them? I know they currently do 1 year of Xbox Ultimate for the 900mbps package but 100% included would be a smart move for FTTP
They only offer that for new customers I think
Don’t believe that is public info yet?
Within the FTTP industry that’s probably a bigger deal than you might imagine.
The majority of the general public don’t need high speed fibre optic connections right now and don’t feel the need to start paying for them.
However the gamers obviously crave high speed/low latency connections and are willing to pay a premium.
Good move.
From involvement in the forum of a certain UK ISP, I agree many gamers crave fast connections, I can also observe that (luckily for ISP marketing departments), actual understanding of technical basics is poor amongst most gamers.
So many think they need massive bandwidth to actual play online games, many misunderstand the limited inter-relationship of latency versus speed, some confuse latency and ping (ie round trip versus one way), and there’s widespread inability to realise how little impact large proportionate differences in minimum latency actually have, or the disproportionate impact of packet loss or when latency spiking becomes material.
And as result it’s pretty common to find gamers paying for 1 Gbps connection that they’re using around 0.3% of when gaming, and then still complaining that they get poor speeds and bad latency when connecting an Xbox over wifi to a the so-so hub that the ISP offers as standard.
But back to the topic, will an inclusive offer encourage FTTP take up – potentially, Britons are absolute suckers for marketing!
Slightly off topic, but as per reference in the article, if the CMA believe that Microsoft would be as blunt as to withhold CoD from Playstation, then CMA’s commercial nous has to be questioned. There’s far more subtle ways of influencing the market than withholding a title. All manner of add-ons, marketing linkages and bundles, as an example some form of “privileged early access” to certain customers. If Activision release headline titles to Xbox a few days earlier, that really matters to some people – you can see the importance of immediate availability in the impact of big releases on ISP traffic volumes. In the short term PS owners might have to wait until official release date, but when it comes to new console time, recollection of the frustration of having to wait (eg) four long days whilst other people are playing and you’re waiting will have an impact. Technically the game isn’t withheld, the impact on MS would be minimal as PS buyers would be unlikely to boycott a new release……but still a way of slanting the playing field. Perhaps CMA staff have been studying Prince 2 when they should have been reading “The Prince”.
They’ve taken that stance because it’s Sony’s complaint. Nothing to do with their lack of “nous”.
Sony has said “block this takeover it’ll be bad if they withold the game from us” – They’re saying even if MS made it an exclusive (Sony have plenty of studios which are Sony exclusive – like Naughty Dog) – it won’t matter in the broad scheme of things. MS had also come out against that complaint and said they won’t do that. (They’d be better getting a cut from both platforms than just their own)