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

iroboto · Dec 10, 2022

mr magoo said:
So COD is killer app? All ps users dont care for god of war, last of us, uncharted, gran tourismo Horizon forbidden ... etc etc its only COD that matters?
Its flawed logic.

It unfortunately works both ways. I’ve been critical of the CMA and Sony for making the argument it is. To slag Nintendo and the other developers is a really shit way to do it, and to claim the market will collapse from it are bad arguments. And because of this I don’t like their position. A better one would have been:
If it is that important then block the deal or give to Sony day one PS+ and availability forever
If it’s not that important as MS says it isn’t: then it should be no issue to give as Sony day one PS+ and availability forever. But even this Sony would not be happy with since it currently holds favourable conditions with ABK today due to market strength. And they would still prefer that no merger occurs.

The reality is; if games never release onto gamepass and PS+ day one; then cloud gaming cannot take off unless you take the GeForce Now model which they both cannot. So cloud will not take off unless these top titles are willing to release on gamepass and ps+ day one. And that isn’t a problem for publishers and developers to solve, that’s an issue for platform holders to solve.

We can see how it’s turning out right now, just buy things up and force it onto gamepass. It’s a nuclear option that could in theory work, but the scrutiny makes this difficult.

Deleted member 11852 · Dec 11, 2022

iroboto said:
Yea. They are 1/2 the size of Sony in terms of platform. So they need to make up 4x to get the same deals as Sony. And then pay extra for the per user loss of not purchasing CoD and degrading the brand to be a gamepass title because now people will wait out for the title to come to game pass. This doesn’t work for them while it would work very well for titles they aren’t doing too strong on the market (ie: this worked out very well for discovery titles that often are left out like Plagues Tale which is now a GOTY candidate)

For Call of Duty, the difference in player numbers difference is nothing like 2:1 in favour of PlayStaton, even if it were 2:1 why would Microsoft need to pay 400% more?

If you're a publisher, what you don't want to do is lose is money on sales by putting something into Game Pass. So if Microsoft cover that 100%, or let's be generous, 120%, that's still a relatively low cost. From Activision-Blizzard's perspective, they lose nothing and they probably make more because Xbox gamers who would otherwise have spent $60-70 on Call of Duty, now have $60-70 more to spend on MTX. It's win-wn.

Of course, that's using common sense, I'm not sure there is much of that inside Activision-Blizzard, which is why, as I posted back on page 1 of this thread, I would be happy to see Microsoft get the green light so that several companies full of talented individuals would no longer managed by assholes.

mr magoo · Dec 11, 2022

The more i think about his deal i am not sure of this is good idea or not.
Probelm here is that msft wasnt big enought to compete with sony, they have like 5 studio that were able to produce big AAA games (forza, halo, gears, forza horzion and minecraft?). That is obviously not enough. But they purchased zenimax and they are right now in possession of like 20+ studios.
Sony has better deal with 3rd party publishers, we can see SIlent HIll 2 being exclusive, FF being exclusive, Death stranding, rumors say about MGS remake being sony exlsuives. BUT this is not sony fault that they make those deals, msft could scores those deals as well but they didnt chose to do so. This is on msft alone.
The launch of series consoles was catastrophical, we still barely have any big "bangers" on xboxes, this is bad management, not sony fault (again).

I am not sold on any of the companies arguments, will this ABK deal create monoply or create better competition? What msft needs right now is better management, because they are failing to attract customers even with all the studios they are currently have.
Having this is mind i dont think msft should get green light on acquisition because of their incompetence. At the same tine i dont think it will create this tipping point at wich sony is no longer able to compete. Even if this means big economical damage to sony. Again we want better competition not more monopoly.

BRiT · Dec 11, 2022

mr magoo said:
BUT this is not sony fault that they make those deals, msft could scores those deals as well but they didnt chose to do so. This is on msft alone.

When they did, the negative backlash made it untenable to do big exclusives in the future. One simply has to look at the endless amount of negative press surrounding that Tomb Raider deal.

Deleted member 11852 · Dec 11, 2022

BRiT said:
Not quite right. The FTC isn't moving to stop the deal from closing. If they were it would have filed an injunction in Federal Court.

The FTC don't need to file a preliminary injunction because of the UK CMA, EU and China proceedings and their timings, without the approval of which the deal cannot proceed. The FTC would only file a preliminary injunction to buy more time to assess the acquisition, which isn't needed here.

What exactly would an injunction seek to prevent? It's clear the FTC has not completed their deliberations. :-?

Deleted member 11852 · Dec 11, 2022

mr magoo said:
Even if this means big economical damage to sony. Again we want better competition not more monopoly.

If, which I am skeptical of, this acquisition over time impacted Sony's profits significantly enough, that the profits were no longer worth the time and effort to run a console team, they could exit the market leaving you with just two players: Nintendo and Microsoft. That would also not been good for consumers.

iroboto · Dec 11, 2022

DSoup said:
For Call of Duty, the difference in player numbers difference is nothing like 2:1 in favour of PlayStaton, even if it were 2:1 why would Microsoft need to pay 400% more?

Oh I squared it.
2:1 PS4:XB1 and 2:1 PS5:XS

You have to pay 2x for losing both total addressable Sony markets in terms of reach. So 2x2 is 4.

Eventually it would drop back to 2x. Maybe, I always assumed exclusivity deals are based on TAM because you’re shrunk the pool significantly of who can market annd sell to. Ie Xbox guys don’t really talk about exclusive 1st party games on Sonys side. So that goodwill is lost too once titles go exclusive. Ie. final fantasy continually does worse each time it skips Xbox platform because mindshare is lost to other titles during its absence.

But I was just looking at this current point where mid gen has not dropped off.

see colon · Dec 11, 2022

iroboto said:
Oh I squared it.
2:1 PS4:XB1 and 2:1 PS5:XS

You have to pay 2x for losing both total addressable Sony markets in terms of reach. So 2x2 is 4.

Eventually it would drop back to 2x. Maybe, I always assumed exclusivity deals are based on TAM because you’re shrunk the pool significantly of who can market annd sell to. Ie Xbox guys don’t really talk about exclusive 1st party games on Sonys side. So that goodwill is lost too once titles go exclusive. Ie. final fantasy continually does worse each time it skips Xbox platform because mindshare is lost to other titles during its absence.

But I was just looking at this current point where mid gen has not dropped off.

That's still 2:1. When you add 2 pools of 2:1 you still have the ratio of 2:1.

mr magoo · Dec 11, 2022

DSoup said:
If, which I am skeptical of, this acquisition over time impacted Sony's profits significantly enough, that the profits were no longer worth the time and effort to run a console team, they could exit the market leaving you with just two players: Nintendo and Microsoft. That would also not been good for consumers.

agree, noone wants that. If anything we have seen good sign of increased competition right now, sony games are being available on pc, gamepass etc etc. It is a good time to be consumer right now. Hopefully it will get better or at least stay this way.

iroboto · Dec 11, 2022

see colon said:
That's still 2:1. When you add 2 pools of 2:1 you still have the ratio of 2:1.

Yup. I messed up. Too much mental gymnastics too quick

Inuhanyou · Dec 11, 2022

"Sony is trying to make MS smaller! It's not fair!"

Come on phil. Your literally buying a pub for 70 billion to lock IP to your ecosystem at your own leisure and discretion.

You can tell he's not used to being pressured cause this is such a stupid take when MS and Sony literally do the same shit. Neither of them should have actual ownership of major publishers in the industry like MS is currently attempting, it's just a power grab

Dr. Nick · Dec 11, 2022

Inuhanyou said:
"Sony is trying to make MS smaller! It's not fair!"

Come on phil. Your literally buying a pub for 70 billion to lock IP to your ecosystem at your own leisure and discretion.

You can tell he's not used to being pressured cause this is such a stupid take when MS and Sony literally do the same shit. Neither of them should have actual ownership of major publishers in the industry like MS is currently attempting, it's just a power grab

All I have to say is I don't think Sony is innocent in all of this. In a world without Microsoft making this deal and Microsoft sticking with the status quo, I think Phil would be correct to say that.

Inuhanyou · Dec 11, 2022

Dr. Nick said:
All I have to say is I don't think Sony is innocent in all of this. In a world without Microsoft making this deal and Microsoft sticking with the status quo, I think Phil would be correct to say that.

To be clear, no one is saying Sony is innocent, I literally said Sony was similar. That's why neither of them should have the ability to buy entire publishers out in large swaths like MS did with Bethesda and is trying to do with Activision. Because they both are trying to compete by making the other smaller just as Phil claims only Sony is doing.

In a world without this Activision deal and the Bethesda deal, MS would still had the financial resources to build their own studios from scratch anywhere on the planet, cultivate independent studios into large scale teams, make deals with publishers to make exclusive games and timed exclusives. Something every company in the industry already does.

What they are doing now is completely different and a large scale attempted take over.

And they never would have put themselves in this situation where they felt desperate enough to do this if they had not pivoted in the 360 generation to only caring about Kinect and a very small amount of first party teams instead of growing their studios all the while like Nintendo and Sony were doing.

There are much less shitty ways for the industry of using their business acumen to compete than buying out huge portions of the industry and then claiming the other guy is trying to make them smaller by doing what any company would do in trying to keep their ecosystem full for titles to stay on there indefinitely. He's literally claiming Sony is doing what MS is doing because Sony is doing what every company historically has done in gaming space.

And it wasn't that long ago where they were claiming Sony wasn't even major competition and they were looking at Google. So now Sony is the big bad huge market leader that is trying to make small fledgling MS smaller because they are challenging them on eating entire pubs that were previously open to everyone? It can't be both.

Silent_Buddha · Dec 11, 2022

Inuhanyou said:
And it wasn't that long ago where they were claiming Sony wasn't even major competition and they were looking at Google. So now Sony is the big bad huge market leader that is trying to make small fledgling MS smaller because they are challenging them on eating entire pubs that were previously open to everyone? It can't be both.

I'm pretty sure they still don't think that Sony is the largest competition they face. That doesn't preclude them acknowledging that Sony is the largest competitor in the console gaming space as a rebuttal to various regulatory agencies concerns about protecting Sony's ability to compete. Sony attempting to block the deal would impact their ability to compete with Google/Amazon/Apple/etc. Although Google has for the moment backed off their gaming market aspirations somewhat.

Sony are the ones basically saying (to the regulatory agencies) that they can't exist without COD. That if they lost COD, they might be forced to shut down the PlayStation business.

Regards,
SB

Dr. Nick · Dec 11, 2022

Inuhanyou said:
To be clear, no one is saying Sony is innocent, I literally said Sony was similar. That's why neither of them should have the ability to buy entire publishers out in large swaths like MS did with Bethesda and is trying to do with Activision. Because they both are trying to compete by making the other smaller just as Phil claims only Sony is doing.

In a world without this Activision deal and the Bethesda deal, MS would still had the financial resources to build their own studios from scratch anywhere on the planet, cultivate independent studios into large scale teams, make deals with publishers to make exclusive games and timed exclusives. Something every company in the industry already does.

What they are doing now is completely different and a large scale attempted take over.

And they never would have put themselves in this situation where they felt desperate enough to do this if they had not pivoted in the 360 generation to only caring about Kinect and a very small amount of first party teams instead of growing their studios all the while like Nintendo and Sony were doing.

There are much less shitty ways for the industry of using their business acumen to compete than buying out huge portions of the industry and then claiming the other guy is trying to make them smaller by doing what any company would do in trying to keep their ecosystem full for titles to stay on there indefinitely. He's literally claiming Sony is doing what MS is doing because Sony is doing what every company historically has done in gaming space.

And it wasn't that long ago where they were claiming Sony wasn't even major competition and they were looking at Google. So now Sony is the big bad huge market leader that is trying to make small fledgling MS smaller because they are challenging them on eating entire pubs that were previously open to everyone? It can't be both.

I'm afraid I have to disagree with you on most of that. I believe this is Microsoft dealing with the world as it is. Call me when Microsoft buys another publisher because even with ABK, they still aren't big enough to have a true impact and not enough to keep GamePass subscribers happy(one of the silly TOH). I expected Google, Amazon, Facebook, and even Apple if they were truly serious about this market, to do the same thing that Microsoft is doing. If Google had not bailed out so early (Remember Microsoft said that when Google and Amazon were getting into the market.) I would have expected Bobby to have called them first instead of Facebook to see if they were interested. Thing is Amazon, Apple, and Facebook are still there.

It's not only that Sony is doing the same thing Microsoft is doing. It's more about Sony's intentions when doing what they are doing. That is what I meant when I said they aren't innocent. I think Sony's purchase of Bungie is more relevant to this conversation then has been disclosed and their intentions might also be the same reason Microsoft purchased ZeniMax in 2020. I think Microsoft in their position, with their access to the industry is likely able to say that with a straight face and that they have been more reactionary then activist.

Inuhanyou · Dec 11, 2022

Silent_Buddha said:
I'm pretty sure they still don't think that Sony is the largest competition they face. That doesn't preclude them acknowledging that Sony is the largest competitor in the console gaming space as a rebuttal to various regulatory agencies concerns about protecting Sony's ability to compete. Sony attempting to block the deal would impact their ability to compete with Google/Amazon/Apple/etc. Although Google has for the moment backed off their gaming market aspirations somewhat.

Sony are the ones basically saying (to the regulatory agencies) that they can't exist without COD. That if they lost COD, they might be forced to shut down the PlayStation business.

Regards,
SB

That's fair though, I think the sales of Cod this month and for the past decade and a half show that.

But much more importantly I also think this is not just about cod but about all the games outside of cod that acti has.

If their access to all those games suddenly becomes restricted or outright taken away, it absolutely becomes a danger to their business they can't ignore. Something that does not affect MS if the deal doesn't go through as they still gain access to any of those activision/blizzard games regardless of any marketing deals in place.

The pressure would probably be less if MS didn't already own Bethesda, but now they are on the cusp of owning 2 previously major independent tenants of the industry where Sony makes their money through third party games.

I can totally see why they are very worried regardless of what their first party situation is like.

Deleted member 11852 · Dec 11, 2022

Silent_Buddha said:
Sony are the ones basically saying (to the regulatory agencies) that they can't exist without COD. That if they lost COD, they might be forced to shut down the PlayStation business.

I've seen this posted before, asked for a source and didn't' get one. Can you quote the source for this? Because I cannot find one.

Sony said Call of Duty produces a lot of revenue for them, which we already knew, but I can't see any comms where Sony claim they couldn't survive without that one game's revenue.

Inuhanyou · Dec 11, 2022

Dr. Nick said:
I'm afraid I have to disagree with you on most of that. I believe this is Microsoft dealing with the world as it is. Call me when Microsoft buys another publisher because even with ABK, they still aren't big enough to have a true impact and not enough to keep GamePass subscribers happy(one of the silly TOH). I expected Google, Amazon, Facebook, and even Apple if they were truly serious about this market, to do the same thing that Microsoft is doing. If Google had not bailed out so early (Remember Microsoft said that when Google and Amazon were getting into the market.) I would have expected Bobby to have called them first instead of Facebook to see if they were interested. Thing is Amazon, Apple, and Facebook are still there.

It's not only that Sony is doing the same thing Microsoft is doing. It's more about Sony's intentions when doing what they are doing. That is what I meant when I said they aren't innocent. I think Sony's purchase of Bungie is more relevant to this conversation then has been disclosed and their intentions might also be the same reason Microsoft purchased ZeniMax in 2020. I think Microsoft in their position, with their access to the industry is likely able to say that with a straight face and that they have been more reactionary then activist.

You don't have to agree with any thing I say. But it's a fact that both bethesda and Activision are huge parts of the gaming industry that would be locked behind MS forever and regardless of the spin that's something that inherently can't work and still supposedly allow fair competition.

It's not even an argument to say "wait till MS purchases a third huge publisher worth a trillion dollars with 20 development studios attached to complain"

What MS wants isn't "the reality of the industry". It's what they want. Same with any other move attempted by a corporation. We see with Google that to get into gaming you need actual business savvy which goes against the arguments saying MS need to be the monopoly or else someone else would be.

Going back to my original point, the reality is that Phil can't come out here and say MS are some poor underdog of the industry Sony is unfairly bullying with going against the moves tens of billions of dollar moves MS are attempting. It's just clear hypocrisy. Cutthroat tactics exist as a matter of course in business. The question is what is the limit. If there are no limits than one just admits they want a dystopia with false choices as an eventuality.

That's really all I have to say on this matter.

Dr. Nick · Dec 11, 2022

Inuhanyou said:
What MS wants isn't "the reality of the industry". It's what they want. Same with any other move attempted by a corporation. We see with Google that to get into gaming you need actual business savvy which goes against the arguments saying MS need to be the monopoly or else someone else would be

That might be all that you have to say but Microsoft would still not be a monopoly in the game industry after the purchase. Full Stop. They would still be a fraction of it. I know that there is more IPs to it but Sony has put everything in on COD and nothing else.

Dr. Nick · Dec 11, 2022

DSoup said:
I've seen this posted before, asked for a source and didn't' get one. Can you quote the source for this? Because I cannot find one.

Sony said Call of Duty produces a lot of revenue for them, which we already knew, but I can't see any comms where Sony claim they couldn't survive without that one game's revenue.

I believe it comes from Sony's response to the CMA that I'm sure is linked to somewhere in the thread. It's also in one of the Hoeg Law video's posted in the thread.

Microsoft acquiring Activision Blizzard for $69 Billion, NICE! Possibly Completes 2022-07 to 2023-06

Unlike some countries consumer benefit/harm is the most important thing to look at with regards to any deal going through. I do not have time looking through the video for the comment that you refer to, but this is from the UK CMA website We work to promote competition for the benefit of...

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