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

[Silent_Buddha]

The lack of transparency is why these questions get raised all the time. There is an easy answer: the be more transparent about these parts of Microsoft's business. As as I said in an earlier post, if nothing else comes of this it should result in a shareholder direction that Microsoft needs to include more information in their financial reports about how these sizeable investments are paying over over time. I.e. we may actually get some real data about Microsoft's Xbox business. After 20+ years.

Unfortunately shareholders generally only really care about the minutiae if the corporation is losing money, flirting with the possibility of losing money (small profits relative to revenue) or alternately making money or losing money depending on the year.

If the corporation is consistently making money hand over fist year after year and shareholders are getting good value for their shares, then they often only care about the broad strokes of a corporation's strategy and trust the company to handle the minutiae.

As long as MS continues to make bucketloads of profit year after year, shareholders are unlikely to start pestering them to release more information.

And as a result, MS will continue to use profitable divisions to hide the losses generated by unprofitable ventures ... when possible. Sometimes, it's not possible.

Regards,
SB

 

[London Geezer]

Wow. $70B CASH is a lot of cash. Not sure everyone here even cares or realises that most acquisitions are not made with pure cash, certainly not those this large, so this size of a deal is really humongous and just shows the utter size and buying power MS has, that very few companies in the world have.

Is it good value? Not sure and not my job to check. I’m just impressed by the sheer power this shows.

And we thought $7B for Bethesda was a lot.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Call of duty has generated more than 11 Billion in revenue since 2003.

Revenue is incoming money before costs are subtracted. Revenue is almost meaningless. If you take 1 billion in revenue and your costs are 999.9m then your revenue numbers are less impressive. Without knowing the profitability ratio of a business, revenue is of limited use. Lots of companies with massive revenue makes losses ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[mr magoo]

Revenue is incoming money before costs are subtracted. Revenue is almost meaningless. If you take 1 billion in revenue and your costs are 999.9m then your revenue numbers are less impressive. Without knowing the profitability ratio of a business, revenue is of limited use. Lots of companies with massive revenue makes losses ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

You think making all cods costs more than 11 billions?

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Unfortunately shareholders generally only really care about the minutiae if the corporation is losing money, flirting with the possibility of losing money (small profits relative to revenue) or alternately making money or losing money depending on the year.

A $70b acquisition isn't going to pass without comment because it is Microsoft's largest acquisition ever and almost three times what they paid for LinkedIn, which was generally considered to be a poor investment which has increasingly been referred to as "a new franchise" in reports. Investors will absolutely expect to see a return on $70b. You know what you could do with $70b spare cash? Dividends.

 

[mrcorbo]

I wonder if we ever get to a point where Xbox is not the most dominant consumer-facing Microsoft Gaming brand?

 

[Deleted member 11852]

You think making all cods costs more than 11 billions?

I have no idea. What is the actual profitability of Call of Duty? Because I looked and found nothing. It's kind of weird, Activision-Blizzard's reports are really vague on core monetary costs. Is this why Microsoft bought them, to employ new meaningless metrics of engagement like bullets fired?

 

[Deleted member 11852]

I wonder if we ever get to a point where Xbox is not the most dominant consumer-facing Microsoft Gaming brand?

I think Teams will hold that honour until the pandemic is over. Hundreds of millions of people use Teams. The poor bastards.

 

[iroboto]

Has anyone had a stab at trying to figure out the return on Mojang thus far?

I agree with your post.
But as per this, I believe they are significantly positive with respect to the purchase price paid. Minecraft licensing and sales are everywhere from toys, plushies, to mobile, to tv series, to game spin offs; I'm sure their 2B is recovered directly, not including possible indirect benefits.

 

[Phantom88]

The list of IPs that could potentially be owned by Xbox following Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard includes:

• Blur
• Caesar
• Call of Duty
• Candy Crush
• Crash Bandicoot
• Diablo
• DJ Hero
• Empire Earth
• Gabriel Knight
• Geometry Wars
• Guitar Hero
• Gun
• Hearthstone
• Heroes of the Storm
• Hexen
• Interstate ’76
• King’s Quest
• Laura Bow Mysteries
• The Lost Vikings
• Overwatch
• Phantasmagoria
• Pitfall
• Police Quest
• Prototype
• Quest for Glory
• Singularity
• Skylanders
• Solider of Fortune
• Space Quest
• Spyro the Dragon
• StarCraft
• Tenchu (legacy games)
• TimeShift
• Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater
• True Crime
• World of Warcraft
• Zork

https://www.videogameschronicle.com...ns-including-crash-bandicoot-and-guitar-hero/

 

[Deleted member 11852]

King's Quest, Police Quest and Pitfall FTW! Along with Zork.

Epic.

 

[BRiT]

I think Teams will hold that honour until the pandemic is over. Hundreds of millions of people use Teams. The poor bastards.

Not to distract from the huge acquisition news, but Teams is far better than the other work platforms that were out there.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

You think company that big as MSFT dont have smart people to figure it out and just throwing away money left and right? I think they know exactly what they are doing, we may not see whole picture right now

That doesn't make them immune from making a big mistake (see Nokia acquisition).

Time will obviously tell if this acquisition turns out to have been a good one or not, but it's not out there to question whether this was a good acquisition at 68.7 billion USD.

Keep in mind that Blizzard have been on a downward spiral for a few years now with many of their most talented developers jumping ship. COD remains profitable, but the Blizzard properties much less so.

The Blizzard IPs might still be worth quite a bit, but it's also going to take a lot of time and effort (and maybe even more money) to salvage the Blizzard side of Activision-Blizzard.

Regards,
SB

 

[mr magoo]

I have no idea. What is the actual profitability of Call of Duty? Because I looked and found nothing. It's kind of weird, Activision-Blizzard's reports are really vague on core monetary costs. Is this why Microsoft bought them, to employ new meaningless metrics of engagement like bullets fired?

they released new game every year and it sells like hot cakes. You think they are doing this for fun?

 

[iroboto]

The list of IPs that could potentially be owned by Xbox following Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard includes:

• Blur
• Caesar
• Call of Duty
• Candy Crush
• Crash Bandicoot
• Diablo
• DJ Hero
• Empire Earth
• Gabriel Knight
• Geometry Wars
• Guitar Hero
• Gun
• Hearthstone
• Heroes of the Storm
• Hexen
• Interstate ’76
• King’s Quest
• Laura Bow Mysteries
• The Lost Vikings
• Overwatch
• Phantasmagoria
• Pitfall
• Police Quest
• Prototype
• Quest for Glory
• Singularity
• Skylanders
• Solider of Fortune
• Space Quest
• Spyro the Dragon
• StarCraft
• Tenchu (legacy games)
• TimeShift
• Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater
• True Crime
• World of Warcraft
• Zork

https://www.videogameschronicle.com...ns-including-crash-bandicoot-and-guitar-hero/

This list of games here is incredible, and it's absolutely nauseating to me that everyone is focused on CoD being kept away from PS.
Like really, this is an incredible list of games made during the golden ages of PC gaming.

I was thinking Battlezone would be there, but I think Atari still owns that. Mechwarrior is still owned by FASA.

This list is missing Dark Reign. One of the greatest RTS there is (imo)

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Not to distract from the huge acquisition news, but Teams is far better than the other work platforms that were out there.

I think it's debatable if it's a better (or more intuitive) platform than Zoom, but it certainly is a very poor option if CISCO Telepresence is an option. You get what you pay for obviously.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

they released new game every year and it sells like hot cakes.

So it should be really easy to provide numbers on how profitable it is. I mean it's not like loads of companies have conflated their success over the years, citing revenue and downplaying actual profits whilst eating through investors margins. That would never happen.

It's a simple question. How much profit has Call of Duty made? It's fine if you can't answer is, just move on.

 

[Globalisateur]

The list of IPs that could potentially be owned by Xbox following Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard includes:

• Blur
• Caesar
• Call of Duty
• Candy Crush
• Crash Bandicoot
• Diablo
• DJ Hero
• Empire Earth
• Gabriel Knight
• Geometry Wars
• Guitar Hero
• Gun
• Hearthstone
• Heroes of the Storm
• Hexen
• Interstate ’76
• King’s Quest
• Laura Bow Mysteries
• The Lost Vikings
• Overwatch
• Phantasmagoria
• Pitfall
• Police Quest
• Prototype
• Quest for Glory
• Singularity
• Skylanders
• Solider of Fortune
• Space Quest
• Spyro the Dragon
• StarCraft
• Tenchu (legacy games)
• TimeShift
• Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater
• True Crime
• World of Warcraft
• Zork

https://www.videogameschronicle.com...ns-including-crash-bandicoot-and-guitar-hero/

Maybe they could revive Tenchu?

 

[PSman1700]

Do they need to make returns on this one before humans die out though? I assume MS wont be any less worth after the buyout of Activision. They could aswell buy every company they can to elimate competition perhaps.
I dont mind MS's buying of game studios, they aim for cross-platform instead of single platform agnostic. Though Sony is going the better way aswell.

How much is 70b for MS anyway? Its not that much of a number seeing their total assets?

 

[BRiT]

How much is 70b for MS anyway?

Pocket Cash...