Whether people like it or not, Microsoft is being cucked because they are a massive tech conglomerate, and everything they do is going to be viewed with suspicion.
They are not your friend, or anyone's friend. They're out to make money as they always have been. Behavioural remedies are meaningless.
The entire reason they want ABK's IP portfolio is so they can foreclose their competition from access to those IP to strengthen the market position of their gaming platform. They talked big about how Sony and Nintendo aren't their "real competitors", those "real competitors" being other massive cloud providers like Apple, Google, and AWS. They talked about an addressable market beyond the 200-odd million console gamers we see to today and referred to a potential market of BILLIONS.
They've partnered with Samsung to bring xCloud to their TVs so it becomes part of the fucking furniture. Microsoft's entire strategic goal with everything they're doing and everything they're investing in, is to circumvent the console landscape which they have conceded is; entirely by their own making, a lost cause. So they're hoping to cannibalise the market initially through an instant-access, game subscription service, which will then follow through to a cloud gaming service. Who cares if your box didn't sell 50 million units, when you have a billion TV's with your subscription service plastered all over its home operating system and accessible through a loss-leading pricing structure that only they have the raw capital to subsidise. Then when you add MS studios, Zenimax and ABK IP portfolios to that system, it becomes an instant win.
Here's the kicker, even if they promise and actually do license their IP out to other subscription services like PlayStation + Premium (hint: they'll give it to everyone BUT PlayStation), they'll collect a nice license fee, which will force the competitor to have reduced margins and they can price them out of the picture using their enormous scale. Why bother subscribing to <Insert competing cloud gaming service> when it costs more because of license fees. Why not just do the easy thing, and subscribe to xCloud and you can have it all much more easily. Plus Microsoft have so much more clout to get their App on Windows, TV's, Phones, Tablets, Fridges and even TI-82's because they can pay X billion dollars to get the deal signed.
They absolutely can perform their behaviour remedies, whilst simultaneously squeezing competitors out of the market.
Its so fucking transparent.
Microsoft loved downplaying their poor performance in gaming to their investors, by saying they're setting their sights beyond the console gaming market, and are building the GaaS Cloud model. But when it comes to regulators, they flipped the script saying poor widdle Microsoft is just a babby player in the gaming market, and that Cloud gaming isn't real yet, and please don't pay attention to everything we've been building and investing in - that doesn't count.
The CMA are regulating Microsoft as per their own publicly iterated aspirations, so they can choke on them now.
Market consolidation is good for nobody. And allowing the market to consolidate so that a multi trillion dollar corporation can better compete, in spite of their abject incompetence in the market, is pure foolishness. You could argue that Xbox as a brand has been crippled by its parent's massive cash reserves and corporate backing. Nothing is at risk, because they've got billions in the bank and a compliant CEO. If they didn't have the financial security they did, maybe their leadership would have been more ruthless and savvy, because its that or heading the route of SEGA.