Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard King for $69 Billion on 2023-10-13

DSoup said:
Which underlines the point the CMA were suggesting. Microsoft are seemingly content to allow games on platforms with small user bases, but not platforms with larger user bases, i.e. that are legitimately competitive to Xbox/xCloud in the market.
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Are we to believe the 12ish million Geforce Now accounts are a threat to Microsoft but the nearly 50 million PS+ accounts aren't? Both of those numbers are skewed, of course, because PS+ numbers are just for subscribers, with no breakdown for the accounts that include streaming. But GFN has a free option, so those accounts can include people like me, who logged in to stream a game for 5 minutes on my phone just to see how well it worked.

And that's isolating streaming without consideration that providing games to Sony's service bolsters their console business.
 
see colon said:
Are we to believe the 12ish million Geforce Now accounts are a threat to Microsoft but the nearly 50 million PS+ accounts aren't?
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Mate, I don't know why you keep responding to me on on what is included in the CMA report, just read it yourself.

On your comment above, you're talking about the situation now whereas what is described in the report happened in March 2021, back when Geforce Now had 17-18m users, PS Now had about 3.2m and xCloud was Microsoft's next big Xbox project so obviously they considered Geforce Now an actual rival; it was the streaming service market leader. PS Now had launched seven years prior (before Geforce Now) and only had a tiny user base. :???:
 
see colon said:
Reading a report isn't having a conversation. I'm sorry if you felt as though I was directing my comments at you. It was directed at what the CMA is stating.
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Fair enough, and I'd like to have a conversation about what the report doesn't clarify or what might be in those redactions, but every point you've raised in the last page or so can be answered by reading the report. It's very detailed which is why just the provisional findings are 277 pages long, which doesn't include the separate summary at 16 pages, the possible remedies at 12 pages, and the appendices at 43 pages.

There is some interesting stuff in there about the operation of the industry and about Microsoft's approach to business. :yep2:
 
Been away from this thread for a while. Now that took a while to catch up. :p

If the EU does indeed choose not to block the acquisition and if the FTC fails in it's bid to block the acquisition (it's highly likely to lose any case in Federal Court) would MS choose to go ahead with the acquisition if the UK ends up being the only country/region in the world that rules against the acquisition?

Also, at first I thought it was a risky high stakes play for Sony to refuse the 10 year guaranteed contract, however when looking at it more closely, Sony don't have anything to lose. Even if the acquisition goes through and Sony doesn't have a 10 year guaranteed contract for COD, MS will still be publishing COD on PlayStation unless Sony refuses to allow it on their platform.

So, since COD will most likely appear on PlayStation consoles for the foreseeable future, Sony lose nothing by declining to sign a 10 year contract other than potentially losing equality of access to DLC (the contract guaranteed equal access to all content day and date with its release). IE - timed exclusive DLC would be back on the table.

Regards,
SB
 
Silent_Buddha said:
If the EU does indeed choose not to block the acquisition and if the FTC fails in it's bid to block the acquisition (it's highly likely to lose any case in Federal Court) would MS choose to go ahead with the acquisition if the UK ends up being the only country/region in the world that rules against the acquisition?
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No, Microsoft needs Government approval to acquire Activision-Blizzard's assets in the UK. According to public records, Activision-Blizzard employ around ~250 personnel in the UK with an annual revenue of around a billion dollars, so the UK is a big market. Activision would to completely divest it's business in the UK to work around the regulation, which would mean leaving some of that billion dollars on the table.

Don't forget there are a bunch of other regulators still considering the deal, including Australia, China, New Zealand, South Africa, South Korea and Turkey. Also don't forget that the UK's CMA indicated that they would be minded to approve this acquisition if Call of Duty is removed from the deal. Microsoft said Call of Duty isn't important, so Microsoft can make this happen.

Despite all this nonsense, I believe that the deal will be approved eventually.
 
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Not only Activision UK exit but all of Microsoft as well, no?
 
BRiT said:
Not only Activision UK exit but all of Microsoft as well, no?
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Both parties need to be established in the regulator's territory. This is why neither the UK CMA, nor EU, had to approve Sony's acquisition of Bungie, only the FTC. Bungie are exclusively based in North America.

I know, it makes almost no sense. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. It would be fairly expensive to transfer a business with a billion dollars of annual revenue outside of the UK. That is 13% of Activision-Blizzard's annual revenue. Like I said, the UK is a big market for the company. Effectively you would be knocking off $11.1b worth of value off Microsoft's $87b buyout offer.
 
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DSoup said:
Both parties need to be established in the regulator's territory. This is why neither the UK CMA, nor EU, had to approve Sony's acquisition of Bungie, only the FTC. Bungie are exclusively based in North America.

I know, it makes almost no sense. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. It would be fairly expensive to transfer a business with a billion dollars of annual revenue outside of the UK. That is 13% of Activision-Blizzard's annual revenue. Like I said, the UK is a big market for the company. Effectively you would be knocking off $11.1b worth of value off Microsoft's $87b buyout offer.
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The ATVI UK assets account for $1 billion in revenue or ATVIs UK revenue is $1 billion? I am thinking it's the latter. The 250 employees in UK accounts for a bit over 2.5% of their worldwide staff.
 
AlphaWolf said:
The ATVI UK assets account for $1 billion in revenue or ATVIs UK revenue is $1 billion? I am thinking it's the latter. The 250 employees in UK accounts for a bit over 2.5% of their worldwide staff.
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DSoup said:
According to public records, Activision-Blizzard employ around ~250 personnel in the UK with an annual revenue of around a billion dollars, so the UK is a big market.
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Their filing doesn't suggest anything significant in capital assets, but you can read it yourself. It looks like Activision-Blizzard printed this on a HP LaserJet 4, then scanned it at 150dpi on a scanner from 1998. :???:

It's interesting that Microsoft continue to take the no incentive position. Most will recall that Microsoft said there was no incentive to deprive rival platforms of games during their acquisition of Zenimax (and the EU did not force Microsoft to commit to that), later doubled-down by confirmed Microsoft wouldn't force studios to be platform exclusive, before realising that there is actually a massive incentive to make Redfall, Starfield and Elder Scrolls VI console exclusive to Xbox and did just that.

When are people going to stop believing what megacorp execs say? There is zero penalty for being untruthful in public comms. Nobody cares. :nope:
 
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I dont know why CoD is the only thing mentioned as a concern. It is one of the biggest multiplatform publishers in the industry owning many significant franchises and the ability to output huge AAA titles.
In addition it should have been a concern where MS is standing considering it's previous acquisition of another third party that owns another big list of popular franchises.
MS owns a big presence in the PC and the Console space with the ability to limit their games on these two options. Lets not forget that the reason, from interviews and the history of XBOX, Bill Gates wanted MS to enter the Console market to use it as a means to enhance the PC gaming and entertainment and stop Sony from dominating the digital entertainment space. XBOX was originally conceived as a streamlined Windows PC/Gaming console for that reason.

For MS, XBOX isnt just consoles. It is the bridge between console gaming and Windows gaming.
 
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DSoup said:
Their filing doesn't suggest anything significant in capital assets, but you can read it yourself. It looks like Activision-Blizzard printed this on a HP LaserJet 4, then scanned it at 150dpi on a scanner from 1998. :???:

It's interesting that Microsoft continue to take the no incentive position. Most will recall that Microsoft said there was no incentive to deprive rival platforms of games during their acquisition of Zenimax (and the EU did not force Microsoft to commit to that), later doubled-down by confirmed Microsoft wouldn't force studios to be platform exclusive, before realising that there is actually a massive incentive to make Redfall, Starfield and Elder Scrolls VI console exclusive to Xbox and did just that.

When are people going to stop believing what megacorp execs say? There is zero penalty for being untruthful in public comms. Nobody cares. :nope:
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They never said titles wouldn't be exclusive, they just said they wouldn't prevent Bethesda from releasing on PlayStation.

Keep in mind that included in their statement in one of your links.

What we want is we want that content, in the long run, to be either first or better or best or pick your differentiated experience, on our platforms. We will want Bethesda content to show up the best as—on our platforms. If you think about something like Game Pass, if it shows up best in Game Pass, that's what we want to see, and we want to drive our Game Pass subscriber base through that Bethesda pipeline.
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Which means they have said they either want the best version or they want timed console exclusivity (getting the title first) or DLC exclusivity (differentiated experience). As well, WRT permanent exclusivity, there is certainly a relatively huge difference between "won't prevent Bethesda from releasing on PlayStation" and "all Bethesda titles will release on PlayStation". The first case means it's still possible for a title to appear (or not) on PS while the second guarantees that a title will appear on PS.

So, Microsoft "doubled down" on wanting either timed exclusivity, best version and/or exclusive DLC while allowing Bethesda to choose which platforms they would release on. Granted that last is likely with consultation from MS, but for all we know, it could be in writing that Bethesda has final say on what platforms their titles will release on as they still operate semi-autonomously from MS.

Regardless, in general, no publisher that is releasing a timed exclusive on any platform is going to at the same time reveal that there are plans to release the title on other unannounced platforms. So, it's a bit early to say that Redfall, Starfield and ES VI aren't coming to PlayStation. They may or they may not. If those titles haven't appeared on PS a year after they release on PC and Xbox then it might be safe to say it's not coming to PS, ever.

But as for right now? We do know that Redfall is at the very least going to be a timed exclusive, what we don't know is whether it will or won't appear on PlayStation after X amount of time. As well, consider that Redfall has been delayed (On May 12, 2022, it was announced that the release was delayed to the first half of 2023) it would stand to reason that Arkane/Bethesda/MS may have decided to focus all efforts on Xbox and PC and then potentially continue work on a PS version after those releases are out the door and any needed post-release patches and fixes have been worked on. IE - even if Arkane had been working on a PS edition, it would make sense to focus efforts on the PC and Xbox versions once they knew the title was going to be delayed in order to get them out the door sooner. NOTE: I'm not saying there is or will be a PS version of the game, only that it is certainly far too soon to declare that there won't be one or that there isn't still plans for one.

As well, Arkane/Bethesda never announced that Redfall was coming to PS ever, so we have no idea whether there was ever a plan for a PS version. It's entirely possible, albeit unlikely, that MS contracted with them for an Xbox exclusive title (timed or otherwise) prior to the acquisition.

If we take a look at their largest studio acquisition prior to Bethesda, Mojang, they certainly didn't limit the platforms Mojang were allowed to release Minecraft on ... likely because it made no financial sense to do so considering how much they paid for Mojang.

Regards,
SB
 
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Silent_Buddha said:
They never said titles wouldn't be exclusive, they just said they wouldn't prevent Bethesda from releasing on PlayStation.
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I think your post missed my point, which is just because Microsoft may be repeating their view that there is no incentive to deprive rivals of certain content/IP, that doesn't mean all content they may acquire, beyond any legal agreements in place, and outside of regulator imposed remedies, will not be Xbox console exclusive the day after the acquisition is approved. That can happen.

Microsoft's assertions that that there was "no incentive to deprive rivals of content" meant squat for Redfall, Starfield and Elder Scrolls VI on consoles, and Microsoft repeating this statement so often recently is only going to remind everybody how meaningless this statement is.

Microsoft's motive and rationale are immaterial.
 
Silent_Buddha said:
Regardless, in general, no publisher that is releasing a timed exclusive on any platform is going to at the same time reveal that there are plans to release the title on other unannounced platforms
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Not the same thing really, but this just reminded me that Cuphead, which is a "true console exclusive" for Xbox, despite not being a Microsoft IP, ended up on Switch because Microsoft asked MDHR if they wanted to do it. Which is a really weird way to treat your exclusives.
 
SmooTh said:
Ah yeah the "true exclusive" which was announced as a timed-exclusive and lol at "and that’s not necessarily a good thing"
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According to articles and the developer in interviews, it wasn't a timed deal. Microsoft had exclusive lifetime rights to the first Cuphead game, MDHR owns the IP. Assuming that's true, and I don't see why the developers would lie about it, MS allowed them to make the game on Playstation and asked them to make the game on Switch. They could have made a sequel without permission, though.

Link
Cuphead is lifetime exclusive on Xbox for the console space, but in the PC space it’s going to be on every platform we can. So we’ll launch on PC and look into Mac and Linux thereafter.
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Link2
Cuphead will never come out on PlayStation 4, its developer has confirmed.
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"Yes, this Cuphead game is exclusive to Xbox and PC (with Steam and Win10 versions at launch and a GOG release likely shortly after). There will likely be a Mac version down the road and possibly a Linux version beyond that (unless we lose our houses or whatever).

"We own the Cuphead IP."
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StudioMDHR's "Director of Experience" Ryan Moldenhauer told Eurogamer: "It's 100 per cent true. Cuphead is a console exclusive for Xbox One. There will be no PS4 version."
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