Microsoft has invested huge amounts of capital and time into making cloud gaming a core part of its gaming offering.
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When Microsoft announced its offer to buy Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion, it marked one of the biggest acquisitions in video game history — and the largest-ever deal for the Redmond, Washington-based technology giant.
There were lots of reasons for the U.S. tech giant to buy Activision. Activision owns a multitude of popular game franchises — Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, and Candy Crush Saga.
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Microsoft would gain a host of content to add to its Xbox gaming division. And it would add a slew of talent to its in-house game studios that could help with developing new games.
But the key one, and the thing Microsoft is betting its gaming future on, was cloud gaming — and that’s what ultimately threw a spanner in the works for the company’s multibillion-dollar bid to swallow Activision when U.K. regulators chose to block the deal Wednesday.
What is cloud gaming?
Cloud gaming is a technology that lets people play games from any device with an internet connection – a console, PC, smart TV, or a mobile phone — from a far-flung data center.
Traditionally, you’d need some dedicated hardware to play a game, like an expensive console or PC.
Things have gotten better over time with advances in smartphones, and there are now even major studio-quality games that can be played on phones, like Call of Duty Mobile.
But what cloud gaming offers — that makes it a differentiator — is a service on which you can stream a selection of titles in real time from a company’s remote data centers, just like you would a movie or TV show on Netflix.
Microsoft has invested huge amounts of capital and time into making cloud gaming a core part of its gaming offering. The company added cloud gaming as a free perk within its Xbox Game Pass subscription product, which offers people access to a multitude of titles for a monthly fee.
Cloud gaming could benefit consumers in developing markets where consoles and PCs are too expensive to own.
Microsoft has lost ground to console rivals — particularly Sony — over the years. In the last generation of consoles, Sony won the infamous “console wars” with its PlayStation 4 machine, which topped Microsoft’s Xbox One in terms of lifetime sales.
With the current generation of consoles, which were launched in November 2020, it has been more of the same. The PS5 has sold 32 million units to date, according to its latest quarterly numbers.
Microsoft doesn’t publish unit sales in its results, however an estimate from the video game data website VGC places lifetime sales of its Xbox Series X and S consoles just north of 20 million units.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella outlined the vision the company has for cloud gaming and its incorporation of Activision Blizzard in an interview with CNBC’s Tanvir Gill in November.
“We want people to be able to enjoy the games they love on platforms they are playing in. And that’s our goal,” Nadella said.
“We love the console, the Xbox, we love the PC, we love mobile. We love xCloud, which is the streaming service, so that you can even play on your television and what have you.”
“Activision is a fantastic partner of ours today that we want to be able to sort of take all the content and make sure it’s available on every platform,” he added.
Why the CMA is concerned
In its merger review published Wednesday, the CMA said that it was concerned Microsoft’s dominance of cloud gaming could hurt competition in that particular market.
“Allowing Microsoft to take such a strong position in the cloud gaming market just as it begins to grow rapidly would risk undermining the innovation that is crucial to the development of these opportunities,” the CMA said in a press release Wednesday.
Microsoft takes up 60-70% of the overall cloud gaming market, according to the regulator.
The CMA — in addition to other regulators and rivals like Sony — fear that Microsoft could in future withhold its blockbuster Call of Duty, Warcraft and Diablo titles from other cloud gaming platforms.
Call of Duty is Activision Blizzard’s crown jewel, selling huge numbers every year. Its Warzone battle royale multiplayer mode alone was played by more than 6 million people in the first 24 hours of its release.
That makes it an extremely attractive asset for a company like Microsoft. Think of it like Nintendo announcing it was going to buy Electronic Arts, and it had a subscription service you could pay $10 a month for to play every new FIFA soccer game the day it came out.
In addition to Xbox, Microsoft also owns Azure, the cloud computing platform, which is used by thousands of companies for their data storage and computing power needs.
“While Microsoft has formed partnerships with third party cloud gaming providers to bring select ABK titles to their services, this does not necessarily mean these companies will be receiving unrestricted access to those games by default,” analyst firm Omdia said in emailed comments to CNBC.
“There will still be licensing terms, fees and conditions that operators have to pay – fees which Microsoft will have absorbed in a different way as part of the acquisition itself.”
“Microsoft also owns the Azure infrastructure that powers Xbox Cloud Gaming and other third party cloud services, who will be paying for every minute and every user provided by the Azure backend,” Omdia added.
“This should ensure that ten years down the line – when cloud gaming has a much larger addressable market – Microsoft will face lower operating costs than competing services.”
Cloud gaming isn’t perfect
Ultimately though, cloud gaming is still in its infancy. The technology requires a strong internet connection to function well, otherwise gamers face drops in performance and latency issues.
Shooters and fighting games are particularly demanding in terms of responsiveness.
Google notably killed its cloud gaming service, Google Stadia, in September only three years after launching it following struggles to find the right product-market fit for the platform.
Cloud gaming also isn’t a huge market. Cloud-enabled gaming services generated $5.1 billion of revenue in 2022, according to data from Omdia, less than 15% of the $35 billion made by console game sales.
But the CMA’s worry is that Microsoft could throttle the industry going forward as it becomes a more mass market technology. Cloud gaming revenues tripled in 2022 year-on-year, according to the CMA.
“What the CMA is doing is taking a forward-looking view on the matter, taking into account concerns of where cloud gaming lands in the future, relative to its small size today,” Omdia said.
“Our projection is that cloud gaming is growing rapidly, with revenue more than doubling by 2026.”
Hiroki Takeuchi, co-founder and CEO of GoCardless.
Zed Jameson | Bloomberg | Getty Images
LISBON, Portugal — Financial technology unicorns aren’t in a rush to go public after buy now, pay later firm Klarna filed for a U.S. IPO — but they’re keeping a watchful eye on it for signs of when the market will open up again.
Last week, Klarna made a confidential filing to go public in the U.S., ending months of speculation over where the Swedish digital payments firm would list. Timing of the IPO is still unclear, and Klarna has yet to decide on pricing or the number of shares it’ll issue to the public.
Still, the development drew buzz from fintech circles with market watchers asking if the move marks the start of a resurgence in big fintech IPOs. For now, that doesn’t appear to be the case — however, founders say they’ll be watching the IPO market, eyeing pricing and eventually stock performance.
Hiroki Takeuchi, CEO of online payments startup GoCardless, said last week that it’s not yet time for his company to fire the starting gun on an IPO. He views listing as more of a milestone on a journey than an end goal.
“The markets have been challenging over the last few years,” Takeuchi, whose business GoCardless was last valued at over $2 billion, said in a CNBC-moderated panel at the Web Summit tech conference in Lisbon, Portugal.
“We need to be focused on building a better business,” Takeuchi added, noting that “the rest will follow” if the startup gets that right. GoCardless specializes in recurring payments, transactions that come out of a consumer’s bank account in a routine fashion — such as a monthly donation to charity.
Lucy Liu, co-founder of cross-border payments firm Airwallex, agreed with Takeuchi and said it’s also not the right time for Airwallex to go public. In a separate interview, Liu directed CNBC to what her fellow Airwallex co-founder and CEO Jack Zhang has said previously — that the firm expects to be “IPO-ready” by 2026.
“Every company is different,” Liu said onstage, sat alongside Takeuchi on the same panel. Airwallex is more focused on becoming the best it can be at solving friction in global cross-border payments, she said.
An IPO is a goal in the company’s trajectory — but it’s not the final milestone, according to Liu. “We’re constantly in conversations with our investors shareholders,” she said, adding that will change “when the time is right.”
‘Stars aligning’ for fintech IPOs
One thing’s for sure, though — analysts are much more optimistic about the outlook for fintech IPOs now than they were before.
“We outlined five handles to open the [IPO] window, and I think those stars are aligning in terms of the macro, interest rates, politics, the elections are out the way, volatility,” Navina Rajan, senior research analyst at private market data firm PitchBook, told CNBC.
“It’s definitely in a better place, but at the end of the day, we don’t know what’s going to happen, there’s a new president in the U.S.,” Rajan continued. “It will be interesting to see the timing of the IPO and also the valuation.”
Fintech companies have raised around 6.2 billion euros ($6.6 billion) in venture capital from the beginning of the year through Oct. 30, according to PitchBook data.
Jaidev Janardana, CEO and co-founder of British digital bank Zopa, told CNBC that an IPO is not an immediate priority for his firm.
“To be honest, it’s not the top of mind for me,” Janardana told CNBC. “I think we continue to be lucky to have supportive and long-term shareholders who support future growth as well.”
He implied private markets are currently still the most accommodative place to be able to build a technology business that’s focused on investing in growth.
However, Zopa’s CEO added that he’s seeing signs pointing toward a more favorable IPO market in the next couple of years, with the U.S. likely opening up in 2025.
That should mean that Europe becomes more open to IPOs happening the following year, according to Janardana. He didn’t disclose where Zopa is looking to go public.
Charles Liang, chief executive officer of Super Micro Computer Inc., during the Computex conference in Taipei, Taiwan, on Wednesday, June 5, 2024. The trade show runs through June 7.
Annabelle Chih | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Embattled server maker Super Micro Computer said on Monday that it’s hired BDO as its new auditor and submitted a plan to Nasdaq detailing its efforts to regain compliance with the exchange. The shares jumped 23% in extended trading.
“This is an important next step to bring our financial statements current, an effort we are pursuing with both diligence and urgency,” Super Micro CEO Charles Liang said in a statement.
Super Micro is late in filing its 2024 year-end report with the SEC, and said earlier this month that it was looking for a new accountant after its previous auditor, Ernst & Young, stepped down in October. Ernst & Young was new to the job, having just replaced Deloitte & Touche as Super Micro’s accounting firm in March 2023.
Super Micro said it told Nasdaq that it believes it will be able to file its annual report for the year ended June 30, and quarterly report for the period ended Sept. 30. The company said it will remain listed on the Nasdaq pending the exchange’s “review of the compliance plan.”
Shares of Super Micro soared more than twentyfold over a two year period from early 2022 until their peak in March of this year. But the stock has been hammered on troubling news about its compliance with Nasdaq. Once valued at about $70 billion, the company’s market cap was at $12.6 billion at the close on Monday, following a 16% rally during regular trading.
Super Micro has been one of the primary beneficiaries of the artificial intelligence boom, due to its relationship with Nvidia. Sales last fiscal year more than doubled to $15 billion.
On Monday, Super Micro announced that it was selling products featuring Nvidia’s next-generation AI chip called Blackwell. The company competes with vendors like Dell and Hewlett Packard Enterprise in packaging up Nvidia AI chips for other companies to access.
Super Micro was added to the S&P 500 in March, reflecting its rapidly growing business and then-soaring stock price. Less than two weeks after the index changes were announced, Super Micro reached its closing high of $118.81.
The troubles began within months. In August, Super Micro said it wouldn’t file its annual report with the SEC on time. Noted short seller Hindenburg Research then disclosed a short position in the company, and said in a report that it identified “fresh evidence of accounting manipulation.” The Wall Street Journal later reported that the Department of Justice was at the early stages of a probe into the company.
The month after announcing its report delay, Super Micro said it had received a notification from the Nasdaq, indicating that the delay in the filing of its annual report meant the company wasn’t in compliance with the exchange’s listing rules. Super Micro said the Nasdaq’s rules allowed the company 60 days to file its report or submit a plan to regain compliance. Based on that timeframe, the deadline was Monday.
Kelly Steckelberg attends an Evening from the Heart LA 2022 Gala hosted by the John Ritter Foundation for Aortic Health at Valley Relics Museum in Van Nuys, California, on May 5, 2022.
Araya Doheny | Getty Images
Canva, a high-valued design software startup that competes with Adobe, said Monday that it hired Kelly Steckelberg as its chief financial officer, five years after she helped take Zoom public and then guided the company through its Covid-19 pandemic surge.
Founded in 2013, Canva was valued recently at $32 billion, a drop from its peak of $40 billion in 2021.
“Kelly’s impressive track record as a strong leader and strategic thinker, combined with her proven expertise in scaling enterprise companies, make her the perfect addition to our leadership bench,” Canva said in an emailed statement.
Canva is generating about $2.5 billion in annualized revenue and boasts 220 million monthly users. The company is widely viewed as a top initial public offering candidate for venture-backed tech companies after a historically slow period for new offerings dating back to early 2022.
On Monday, ServiceTitan, which sells software for the trades, filed to list on the Nasdaq. Cerebras, a maker of artificial intelligence chips, has been on file since late September, and online lender Klarna said last week that it has confidentially filed its IPO paperwork with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
A Canva spokesperson declined to comment on the startup’s timeline for an IPO.
Steckelberg held financial positions at Cisco and was CEO of online dating company Zoosk before joining Zoom in 2017. Steckelberg is based in Austin, Texas, while Canva has its headquarters in Sydney, Australia.
Zoom went public with Steckelberg’s help in 2019. The video-chat company saw its market cap soar to upward of $160 billion in October 2020, early in the Covid-19 pandemic, as users working from home swarmed to the app. Zoom has since lost more than 85% of its value.
Steckelberg announced her departure from Zoom in August after seven years at the company. Last month, former Microsoft executive Michelle Chang replaced Steckelberg as Zoom’s CFO.
Canva’s previous finance chief Damien Singh resigned in February after the company said it was conducting an internal investigation surrounding inappropriate behavior.