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

Crash, Spyro, and Tony Hawk Pro Skater say Hi. They all have Guitar Hero guitars and are racing go karts.
Also, a whole bunch of Sierra adventure game IP.
Aren't these games all on Xbox? How are they holes in the Xbox line-up?
 
Aren't these games all on Xbox? How are they holes in the Xbox line-up?
Not if Activision stop making them. They've moved Vicarious Visions over to a Blizzard support studio and Toys for Bob to a Call of Duty support studio.
 
China's SAMR has approved #Microsoft's purchase of #ActivisionBlizzard!
Just got the news from a New York-based financial analyst.

This means the deal has been approved in 38 countries with a total population of 2.37 billion people and aggregate GDP of US$42 trillion.

The total population size of the countries that approved is more than 35 times that of the United Kingdom and the aggregate GDP is more than 13 times that of the UK.

Why 38 countries? The EU Commission conducts merger reviews on behalf of its 27 member states plus 3 more countries (European Economic Area states that are not EU member states). 7 non-EEA countries cleared before the EU, and now China. 30 + 8 = 38.


 
No arguing with Florian Mueller's math. :nope:

Looking at the Chinese announcement, it looks like great chunks of the IP were not considered relevant to the assessment because it contravened Chinese cultural prohibitions. And Blizzard were forced to cease operating World of Warcraft in China due that the contractural dispute/spat with their Chinese partner. I had thought that was going to be a short term thing when them appointment somebody else, but apparently not. At least not yet.
 
Not if Activision stop making them. They've moved Vicarious Visions over to a Blizzard support studio and Toys for Bob to a Call of Duty support studio.
But that logic Microsoft need to buy everything in case the publishers decides it doesn't want to make them anymore. Now that may well not have been far from the truth for Microsoft's intentions 18 months ago, but in real terms a hole is only problem when competitors have something to fill it.

PlayStation has far bigger holes given Microsoft now own two of the premier western RPG studios with Bethesda and Obsidian.
 
Even with just RPG's , shooters and the like , there can't be too many. Games take a long time to create and if you don't want Gears 1 , 2 ,3 ,4 ,5,6 ,7 or Halo 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 and so on or Horizon Zero down 1,2,3,4,5,VR or Spiderman 1,2,3,4,5 you need to have a lot of teams working on a lot of diffrent ips in each genre to break up the staleness. MS's other franchises that they grew or purchased can now have more time between releases to be better products and keep them fresh.

There are other companies I'd rather MS have bought before this but MS wanted Activision for its IP's , Dev teams and mobile foot print

Don't be surprised if one of the reasons that MS acquired or wanted to acquire ABK was to cease operations for 343i and move Halo to one of the COD development teams. Either that or to merge one of the COD dev teams into 343i or have one of the COD teams work in conjunction with 343i on Halo.

343i has shown that while they've gotten better at making a Halo game (Halo: Infinite is, pun intended, infinitely better than Halo 4 and 5) they still aren't up to where Bungie was WRT making Halo games.

That's left a relatively large pothole in what was formerly one of their strengths. They've got Gears which is still strong but is a 3rd person shooter and they've got Halo, their 1st person shooter, sort of just limping along right now.

Hell, who knows, maybe they'll task the Blizzard Overwatch team with creating a Halo MMO shooter? :p

Regards,
SB
 
Don't be surprised if one of the reasons that MS acquired or wanted to acquire ABK was to cease operations for 343i and move Halo to one of the COD development teams. Either that or to merge one of the COD dev teams into 343i or have one of the COD teams work in conjunction with 343i on Halo.

343i has shown that while they've gotten better at making a Halo game (Halo: Infinite is, pun intended, infinitely better than Halo 4 and 5) they still aren't up to where Bungie was WRT making Halo games.

That's left a relatively large pothole in what was formerly one of their strengths. They've got Gears which is still strong but is a 3rd person shooter and they've got Halo, their 1st person shooter, sort of just limping along right now.

Hell, who knows, maybe they'll task the Blizzard Overwatch team with creating a Halo MMO shooter? :p

Regards,
SB

I think its a bit unfair to 343i as a whole. The single player portion of Infinite was great. It's my favorite halo since 3 actually in terms of single player. I think the people at the top of 343 need to all be replaced. I also think they need to move on from that engine they have been using for decades. I hate that everything seems to become an unreal engine game , but maybe that wouldn't be so bad. I have also heard that 343 has been looking into the ID tech engine , specifically a newer version of it.

So I don't think they need to merge COD dev tems into 343i or shut down 343i. They should perhaps put a few people from some of the cod teams that have been successful perhaps a level or two down from the top in those studios and place them in the top roles at 343i . Then give halo a good 5-6 years rest while they work on the next one.

Even without Activision they still have ID which has doom/ Wolfenstein and they can easily create a team to handle quake for them. Then at the very least they have Doom/wolf/quake/gears/ perfect dark to release before another halo. So that is already another 5 years of dev time before a halo has to be ready.
 
At the end of the day its going to be the UK standing alone. MS will win against the FTC in court. So the question is who blinks first. IF MS was going to blink surely they would have already ended the acquisition.

Contrary to what others (mostly those with invested interest) are stating, CMA/UK approval is needed and can't be circumvented in the current regulatory agreement between the major markets (i.e., US, EU, and the UK). Sure Microsoft and their lawyers will try, but as I see it, this acquisition is dead without the CMA's approval.
 
Contrary to what others (mostly those with invested interest) are stating, CMA/UK approval is needed and can't be circumvented in the current regulatory agreement between the major markets (i.e., US, EU, and the UK). Sure Microsoft and their lawyers will try, but as I see it, this acquisition is dead without the CMA's approval.
And this scenario is likely only only to increase. Regardless of specific merger and acquisiton regulator assessments in this case, a lot of Governments and regulators that exist outside of this space, are moving in the direction of developing policies that make it more difficult for "big tech" to operate as it has been allowed to do and grow and dominate.

And the simple reason for this, is that in tech and with vertical integration, walled gardens and subscription models being so pervasive, that it's diminishing the opportunities for genuine new competition. When you get to be the size of Amazon, Apple, Google, Nvidia or Microsoft, if you are a competitor with a genuinely new idea, you have almost no chance go compete or change a market, the only competition is who will buy you to add to ever-growing impenetrable wall of uncompetitiveness.
 
Why haven't any major news outlets reported this, yet? The only ones reporting this, is Seeking Alpha (which is questionable), and this dude (who is questionable). Not that I think the Chinese wouldn't approve it, but I rather hear it from more creditable sources.
Not sure, but here's some more confirmation using a Microsoft statement. I'm still trying to find a direct link to the MS Statement.

 
Not sure, but here's some more confirmation using a Microsoft statement. I'm still trying to find a direct link to the MS Statement.


I can't find it as well, other than outlets passing around the same original source.

The report comes from private analysis firm Dealreporter (via Seeking Alpha), a group who had previously indicated the merger had received support from Tencent, the largest video games company in the world.

Microsoft has confirmed the news with a statement:

"China's unconditional clearance of our acquisition fo Activision Blizzard follows the European Union and Japan, bringing the total to 37 countries representing more than 2 billion people.

"The acquisition combined with our recent commitments to the European Commission will empower consumers worldwide to play more games on more devices."
 
I can't find it as well, other than outlets passing around the same original source.
I was just in process of replying with the same results as you. I can't find it, and it seems that statement is taken directly from the first SeekingAlpha report.
 
I can't find it as well, other than outlets passing around the same original source.

This is being reported inside China as well, but the 'great firewall of China' limits most western search engines ability to index and translate it.
 
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