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

[Dr. Nick]

I want to add some information because it was brought up. DisneyPlus does not have the anime to compete with Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Crunchyroll(Sony) in the United States. In the US, Hulu has anime, and DisneyPlus is mainly just Disney/Fox IPs. Just in case someone from the US that is confused by the argument.

 

[Dr. Nick]

Been available don't mean be the best seller and be the main target of the switch,

List of best selling Switch game

List of best-selling Nintendo Switch video games - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

If that was the case Microsoft could win the argument against Sony by saying that since Sony has not made a FPS in years therefore they are not competing in the FPS genre in the first place therefore there are no problems there. Just because Nintendo does not publish mature and adult games themselves and mature and adult games aren't the best sellers does not mean that it isn't a market they are competing in. The Switch currently has mature and adult games that both Sony and Microsoft have rejected because of their content. My feeling on that is that Nintendo has created a niche for developers to feel free to put their games on the system which brings more content to their platform.

 

[chris1515]

You know some gamers buy a switch and play games themselves. You do understand that right ? You also understand that some gamers buy a playstation or xbox for children and never once touch it.

CMA can say what they want but that doesn't make it true.


You sure because you still don't seem to understand what you posted .

So these studios were independent making games for another company's platform. Last I checked that is exactly that Bethesda and Activision did. Bethesda and Activision are both closely linked with Microsoft platforms. So why is it okay for Sony to buy those studios but not MS to buy these other studios ?

Todd Howard has already talked about his close relationship with Microsoft and how Microsoft is the company who brought them to consoles with morrowind.

I find it hilarious how you wax poetically about sony buying companys and then say that MS is desperately gobbling up publishers.

Recently Microsoft has bought Zenimax , Double fine , Obsidian , Inxile , Playground , Compulsion and Ninja theory since 2018. They are in the process of buying Activision


Sony has bought Audiokinetic , Insomniac , Evo , Somethin'Else , housemarque , nixxes , Firesprite , fabrik , bluepoint , valkyrie , lasengle , haven , bungie , repeat.gg and savage games.

So MS has bought / in process of buying 8 companies

Sony has bought 15 companies.

Of course its MS gobbling up everything. I 'd love to hear you wax poetically about Sony's releationship with fabrik or savage games


I think you have a fundamental problem when you converse to me. I actually don't have a problem with either company buying publishers. I think its fine for both of them to do it and I haven't complained about either company doing it. My position is simply that if the Market leader is allowed to buy up publishers with no over sight ( and they bought up 15 companes in 4 years) then MS who has sold half the consoles that Sony has sold should be able to buy companies to improve their position in the market and that it makes sense that MS goes after more established companies with strong ip because sony already has a lot of strong ip and is adding more developers so MS not only has to grow to get to where sony was but grow faster to catch up to sony.

At the end of the day Sony/MS/Nintendo having equal market share or as close to equal market share as possible is the best thing for us. It's the same on the pc side. IF epic / steam / gog / xbox and whatever all have as close to equal shares as possible its a good thing for us as a consumer.

Did I say than no people buy Xbox/PS for children but again are they the majority? No This is the problem you don't understand mass market. There is games targeting children on PS and Xbox but out of Minecraft they aren't high seller. Nintendo do games for all age and they sold much better on children demographic than anything MS or Sony or 3rd party do on console out of Minecraft and Roblox.

The majority of games made by Nintendo and with high number of sales are games for family(adult and children friendly). There is no Call of Duty, God of War in the top 10 of the best sales of game.

Lasengle was not bought by SIE but Sony music, this is not for console. You inflate the number of studio making games for console. Funny but Nixxes is not for console too but for PC port. Only studios working on console for Sony and bought recently are Insomniac, Firesprite , Haven, Bluepoint, Valkyrie and Bungie. The complaint from Sony are for the console market. Fabrik was bought by Firesprite not Sony. The negotiation probably began before Sony bought Firesprite.

The Studio PlayStation Just Bought Has Now Bought Its Own New Studio - IGN

Firesprite Games, the most recent developer to join PlayStation Studios, has taken a leaf out of its new-found parent company and bought its own new studio.

www.ign.com

Savage Games is working on mobile games and has nothing to do with console. Not part of the SIE case against the ABK deal.

 

[chris1515]

If that was the case Microsoft could win the argument against Sony by saying that since Sony has not made a FPS in years therefore they are not competing in the FPS genre in the first place therefore there are no problems there. Just because Nintendo does not publish mature and adult games themselves and mature and adult games aren't the best sellers does not mean that it isn't a market they are competing in. The Switch currently has mature and adult games that both Sony and Microsoft have rejected because of their content. My feeling on that is that Nintendo has created a niche for developers to feel free to put their games on the system which brings more content to their platform.

If Nintendo lose this games they will survive and continue to thrive. If for any reason Nintendo lose Pokemon games it would be a huge problem. Most people don't buy a Switch for Bayonetta 3 or other mature games but for Nintendo games.

If Sony lose Call of Duty and GTA it would be more than a problem but game over. If they stop making astrobot games they won't disappear. The only exception is on MS side is Minecraft a huge franchise. MS would survive without it but it would be a huge blow.

 

[Dr. Nick]

If Nintendo lose this games they will survive and continue to thrive. If for any reason Nintendo lose Pokemon games it would be a huge problem. Most people don't buy a Switch for Bayonetta 3 or other mature games but for Nintendo games.

If Sony lose Call of Duty and GTA it would be more than a problem but game over. If they stop making astrobot games they won't disappear. The only exception is on MS side is Minecraft a huge franchise. MS would survive without it but it would be a huge blow.

I disagree, they need 3rd party support and good 3rd party support which is the reason I think they allow games that Microsoft doesn't without good 3rd party support a platform dies pretty quickly. Exclusives are nice but platforms can live without them as long as 3rd parties support it well enough. Switch good 3rd party support WiiU bad 3rd party support.

Sony could live without both COD and GTA in my opinion as long as 3rd party support elsewhere remains strong.

 

[eastmen]

Did I say than no people buy Xbox/PS for children but again are they the majority? No This is the problem you don't understand mass market. There is games targeting children on PS and Xbox but out of Minecraft they aren't high seller. Nintendo do games for all age and they sold much better on children demographic than anything MS or Sony or 3rd party do on console out of Minecraft and Roblox.

The majority of games made by Nintendo and with high number of sales are games for family(adult and children friendly). There is no Call of Duty, God of War in the top 10 of the best sales of game.

Lasengle was not bought by SIE but Sony music, this is not for console. You inflate the number of studio making games for console. Funny but Nixxes is not for console too but for PC port. Only studios working on console for Sony and bought recently are Insomniac, Firesprite , Haven, Bluepoint, Valkyrie and Bungie. The complaint from Sony are for the console market. Fabrik was bought by Firesprite not Sony. The negotiation probably began before Sony bought Firesprite.

The Studio PlayStation Just Bought Has Now Bought Its Own New Studio - IGN

Firesprite Games, the most recent developer to join PlayStation Studios, has taken a leaf out of its new-found parent company and bought its own new studio.

www.ign.com

Savage Games is working on mobile games and has nothing to do with console. Not part of the SIE case against the ABK deal.

I understand the mass market just fine. I see you are already putting buts into the list to try and make your point. That is why you are already wrong. There are tons of kid games for sony/ms. I believe starwars lego just hit game pass this week.

As for SIE , so it be okay if a different part of MS bought Activision ? If MS had Mojang buy it but not xbox that be fine? the gaming division is now its own thing.

How many activison studios don't develop for console ? Are we going to sit and parse through all that ?

It's all moving goal posts over and over again.

 

[mr magoo]

When Xbox launched most of the biggest console franchises were mostly Sony exclusives. Tekken devil may cry crash bandicoot wipeout mgs final fantasy etc etc. now we are talking about one title being existential threat to Sony. And available game portfolio is much bigger than it was before, sony has more exclusives and 3rd party games than ever.

 

[Nesh]

When Xbox launched most of the biggest console franchises were mostly Sony exclusives. Tekken devil may cry crash bandicoot wipeout mgs final fantasy etc etc. now we are talking about one title being existential threat to Sony. And available game portfolio is much bigger than it was before, sony has more exclusives and 3rd party games than ever.

These games werent contracted by Sony to be exclusive on PS2. They were on PS2 because it existed before XBOX which was a newcomer.
Wipeout was a Sony property.
Crash Bandicoot, MGS did make it on the original XBOX (Substance was released on XBOX first as a timed exclusive with ads saying Only on XBOX), with Devil May Cry, Tekken and Final Fantasy finding their way on MS platform the generation after that. Developers werent forced by any means. Namco, Capcom, EA, SEGA and many more were releasing a lot of games on XBOX.
Plus the XBOX had a huge list of exclusives too from many of these developers. Before the XBOX launch MS was looking to purchase big developers themselves that supported Sony. Even went to Nintendo to make an offer.

Lets be more accurate with the info please.

The PS2 was organically enjoying bigger support because it was selling more.

 

[stu11]

You sure because you still don't seem to understand what you posted .

So these studios were independent making games for another company's platform. Last I checked that is exactly that Bethesda and Activision did. Bethesda and Activision are both closely linked with Microsoft platforms. So why is it okay for Sony to buy those studios but not MS to buy these other studios ?

Todd Howard has already talked about his close relationship with Microsoft and how Microsoft is the company who brought them to consoles with morrowind.

I find it hilarious how you wax poetically about sony buying companys and then say that MS is desperately gobbling up publishers.

Recently Microsoft has bought Zenimax , Double fine , Obsidian , Inxile , Playground , Compulsion and Ninja theory since 2018. They are in the process of buying Activision


Sony has bought Audiokinetic , Insomniac , Evo , Somethin'Else , housemarque , nixxes , Firesprite , fabrik , bluepoint , valkyrie , lasengle , haven , bungie , repeat.gg and savage games.

So MS has bought / in process of buying 8 companies

Sony has bought 15 companies.

Of course its MS gobbling up everything. I 'd love to hear you wax poetically about Sony's releationship with fabrik or savage games


I think you have a fundamental problem when you converse to me. I actually don't have a problem with either company buying publishers. I think its fine for both of them to do it and I haven't complained about either company doing it. My position is simply that if the Market leader is allowed to buy up publishers with no over sight ( and they bought up 15 companes in 4 years) then MS who has sold half the consoles that Sony has sold should be able to buy companies to improve their position in the market and that it makes sense that MS goes after more established companies with strong ip because sony already has a lot of strong ip and is adding more developers so MS not only has to grow to get to where sony was but grow faster to catch up to sony.

At the end of the day Sony/MS/Nintendo having equal market share or as close to equal market share as possible is the best thing for us. It's the same on the pc side. IF epic / steam / gog / xbox and whatever all have as close to equal shares as possible its a good thing for us as a consumer.

People don't trust Microsoft full stop. If Microsoft are allowed to buy up the larger publishers (eg Activision, EA, Ubisoft etc) and then lock everything behind their GamePass pay wall then the competition is going to suffer. Allowing Microsoft to buy Activision unchecked creates a precedent. It sounds like Microsoft buying Bethesda has already caused Google to drop Stadia. What will it do to other companies trying to enter (eg Amazon)?

 

[chris1515]

I understand the mass market just fine. I see you are already putting buts into the list to try and make your point. That is why you are already wrong. There are tons of kid games for sony/ms. I believe starwars lego just hit game pass this week.

As for SIE , so it be okay if a different part of MS bought Activision ? If MS had Mojang buy it but not xbox that be fine? the gaming division is now its own thing.

How many activison studios don't develop for console ? Are we going to sit and parse through all that ?

It's all moving goal posts over and over again.

Sony music don't do consoles games and Laserleng don't do console games. Your argument are invalid. Talking nonsense take nowhere. Again the top kids game on Sony and PS are not the top sellers out of Minecraft and maybe Roblox even if I suppose Roblox is more popular on PC.

 

[Nesh]

Every merger gets some sort of investigation, but the fact that it's moved to a higher level of scrutiny is because Microsoft's competitors have "raised concerns". I'm not implying that the commission has some sort of bias against Microsoft. I'm saying that Sony (and other unnamed competitors) are voicing concerns to the commission in an effort to protect themselves while Sony's competitors aren't petitioning the commission when Sony makes acquisitions.

I don't disagree that Activision is a large company, and it's acquisition is of a larger than usual scale. But it isn't like we haven't seen acquisitions on this scale, or even larger, in other entertainment industries. We just saw WB/Discovery merge, and that's on a much larger scale. This is more on the level of Disney buying Lucas.

I disagree. Because we aren't really talking about video games, we are talking about regulatory scrutiny.

We are talking about markets. Each market is different and regulatory scrutiny depends on the characteristics of the specific market and the nature of the merger. Hence why Zenimax went through faster. When MS announced the merger of ABK, they knew it was going to go through that process with or without competitors expressing concerns and they were confident it was going to go through effortlessly.
So you cant be raising a question mark of why "not the other mergers" and have as an explanation that "it's Sony's fault". These mergers are reviewed by regulators anyways. Its part of the process. It didnt end there because some competitor complained. If that was the case with Sony, the other mergers would have been delayed too (but maybe they were to some extend and we just dont know the details) by competitor complaints as well. Nothing could have stopped them.

Here is a short explanation of the procedures in EU for example. Sony or without Sony, this particular merger was going to go through the more detailed process:

https://competition-policy.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2021-02/merger_control_procedures_en.pdf

Lets stop the paranoia, the assumptions, evil Sony conspiracies and junk arguments now.

 

[mr magoo]

These games werent contracted by Sony to be exclusive on PS2. They were on PS2 because it existed before XBOX which was a newcomer.
Wipeout was a Sony property.
Crash Bandicoot, MGS did make it on the original XBOX (Substance was released on XBOX first as a timed exclusive with ads saying Only on XBOX), with Devil May Cry, Tekken and Final Fantasy finding their way on MS platform the generation after that. Developers werent forced by any means. Namco, Capcom, EA, SEGA and many more were releasing a lot of games on XBOX.
Plus the XBOX had a huge list of exclusives too from many of these developers. Before the XBOX launch MS was looking to purchase big developers themselves that supported Sony. Even went to Nintendo to make an offer.

Lets be more accurate with the info please.

The PS2 was organically enjoying bigger support because it was selling more.

Yes but many of those games weren’t on Saturn or n64 as well. This was hyperbolic from my side sure and some of the games were available on Xbox BUT generation later as you mentioned.

Organically enjoyed bigger support because it was selling more.

Yeah ….

 

[Dr. Nick]

When Xbox launched most of the biggest console franchises were mostly Sony exclusives. Tekken devil may cry crash bandicoot wipeout mgs final fantasy etc etc. now we are talking about one title being existential threat to Sony. And available game portfolio is much bigger than it was before, sony has more exclusives and 3rd party games than ever.

Also remember for a significant chunk of the OG Xbox lifetime GTA3 and Vice City and San Andreas were Playstation exclusives.

 

[mr magoo]

Also remember for a significant chunk of the OG Xbox lifetime GTA3 and Vice City and San Andreas were Playstation exclusives.

Yeah when Xbox launched PlayStation had multiple “CODs” that weren’t available on Xbox and only partially arrived on next generation.

 

[Nesh]

Yes but many of those games weren’t on Saturn or n64 as well.

We have went this discussion many pages ago about that era too. So lets stop this drivelling nonsense. It has been covered.

 

[Nesh]

Also remember for a significant chunk of the OG Xbox lifetime GTA3 and Vice City and San Andreas were Playstation exclusives.

GTA was offered to MS as an exclusive but rejected the offer:

GTA 3 Could Have Changed Xbox History, But Microsoft Turned Down A Rockstar Proposal - theGeek.games

theGeek.games

thegeek.games

Also MS had timed exclusive DLC content for GTA4 and FO3:

Are GTA IV DLCs just timed exclusives for Microsoft?

Gamers know that Microsoft scored a “coup” of sorts by cornering the downloadable content for such hits as Grand Theft Auto IV and Fallout 3. The deal it struck with Rock Star Games and Bethesda is that DLCs for the two games will only be made available on the Xbox 360 — much to the ...

www.forevergeek.com

Both companies do exclusive deals with 3rd parties.

 

[mr magoo]

We have went this discussion many pages ago about that era too. So lets stop this drivelling nonsense. It has been covered.

Point is one title cannot be existential threat to Sony. You don’t seem to be understanding the point I’m trying to make and focusing on wrong details. I don’t know if this is my English not being my primary language or other barrier.

 

[eastmen]

People don't trust Microsoft full stop. If Microsoft are allowed to buy up the larger publishers (eg Activision, EA, Ubisoft etc) and then lock everything behind their GamePass pay wall then the competition is going to suffer. Allowing Microsoft to buy Activision unchecked creates a precedent. It sounds like Microsoft buying Bethesda has already caused Google to drop Stadia. What will it do to other companies trying to enter (eg Amazon)?

I don't trust sony. They installed root kits into my computer when I bought music cds. They have always had bad business habbits. In one generation they went from a $300 to a $500/$600 console to try and push a movie standard, during a generation they raised games $10 and systems $50 .

We can play this all day long if you really want. It's all just a game for you to pick your favorite. Forget a bit here , fudge something a little here and then boom justify your position on your favorite console.

 

[eastmen]

Also remember for a significant chunk of the OG Xbox lifetime GTA3 and Vice City and San Andreas were Playstation exclusives.

Yeah when Xbox launched PlayStation had multiple “CODs” that weren’t available on Xbox and only partially arrived on next generation.

I find this conversation to go like this

1) Sony fans who want only sony to exist and might tolerate Nintendo. They don't want competition and would be happy paying any price for a console as long as it says sony on it.

2) People who want healthier competition in the market. The market has been moved forward multiple times thanks to MS taking up the torch of other companies or innovating on their own. the majority of these people understand that Activision will simply move the needle towards that end but on its own even if COD was full exclusive it wouldn't remove sony from first place in the market let alone bankrupt them. The majority of these people also understand that the market leader has inherent advantages that 3rd place doesn't get. So for instance if sony wants a game exclusive they have the sold through number of systems to back them up and market leader status to get deals. Being in third place Ms will have to pony up more cash to get the same deals since they not only need to guarantee the difference in hardware units but add the incentive on top. We also know that sony continues to buy up developers. So if MS bought up small developers it wouldn't really move the needle in the market as they would just be maintaining the status quo

 

[eastmen]

Oh look https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2022/12/ps-plus-logo-hints-at-more-upcoming-day-1-games

If you’re subscribed to PS Plus Essential or PS Plus Extra, it’s been a pretty good year. While we have our criticisms of the flagship PS Plus Premium, the lower two rungs of Sony’s subscription service have been rock-solid. Perhaps the biggest criticism, then, has been the lack of day one releases – especially when you consider the offerings from other console manufacturers.

The Japanese giant has debuted the odd title at launch, it always has – but members want more of that. Well, the upcoming Divine Knockout is one new game that will be available day one with PS Plus Essential when the subscription’s software lineup rotates on 6th December. And, perhaps indicating that there’s more of exactly that to come, the firm has added a promo logo on its announcement banner to acknowledge the fact.

Amazing how much change MS can usher in and Sony will keep getting pulled forward kicking and screaming into the future