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

[BRiT]

Somewhat relate as it speaks to workers benefits.

Around 300 QA workers at Microsoft-owned ZeniMax Studios have voted in favor of a union. Microsoft has formally recognized the union, making it the first studio in a union at Microsoft

https://twitter.com/x/status/1610352567883796482

 

[iroboto]

Even before the Zenimax acquisition, how did Microsoft not have enough studios to release at least one game every year? What about Forza Horizon?

I don’t honestly recall. I believe a lot of 2nd party and timed exclusivity. But that doesn’t work for them anymore.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

I don’t honestly recall. I believe a lot of 2nd party and timed exclusivity. But that doesn’t work for them anymore.

Forza is first party. I meant Forza Motorsport, rather than Horizon though. It's out this year.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

You didn't say lack of investment, you said Microsoft were late to market: "When something disruptive comes along, you need to get on it or fall behind and become irrelevant. MS was late to music, late to mobile phones, and late to tablets, etc."

Correction, MS wasn't late to tablets. I had a Windows Tablet (2002) years before Apple released the iPad (2010). It was based on Windows XP Tablet PC Edition which was released to the public in 2002 along with Tablets using said OS. It did well enough among professionals that an updated version was released in 2005 with the creatively named Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005.

Regards,
SB

 

[iroboto]

Forza is first party. I meant Forza Motorsport, rather than Horizon though. It's out this year.

Yea.
I’m not that well versed into console history, only really taking part during last generation. But if I recall, most of their exclusive titles were during launch of XBO, then it became a cycle of the big three largely with Fora having the most consistent due dates met.

 

[BRiT]

Thats a whole different subject. That doesnt change the real question which is "should MS buy ABK".
Do you have a credible source with full details regarding this though?

You can find the details in a direct Activision breakdown of events where they talked about other Parties involved too.

One of many public articles covering the news:

Activision Blizzard wanted to sell, so it approached Microsoft

Activision Blizzard had no obvious vector for growth after tapping out Call of Duty and failing to maintain World of Warcraft.

venturebeat.com

Talked about in this thread earlier @ https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/...mpletes-2022-07-to-2023-06.62702/post-2237204

Activision Blizzard wanted to sell, so it approached Microsoft

Activision Blizzard had no obvious vector for growth after tapping out Call of Duty and failing to maintain World of Warcraft.

venturebeat.com

Interesting......

Still digesting this. The fact that AB approached MS in and of itself..... This really does seem to have been thrown together. By the usual standards of buyouts of this size anyway.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

How is that related to the above?

Maybe not related to the above, but it does beg the question.

Is it better for a company to get acquired by another company OR is it better if said company went bankrupt and terminated business operations with a high chance that their property gets sold off to IP "Holding Companies"?

Bethesda wasn't yet at the point of filing for bankruptcy but they were headed in that direction. Activision-Blizzard while also not in immediate danger of bankruptcy filings, was heavily trending down due to lackluster performance of Blizzard titles and Activision titles not named COD. And all of that was only exacerbated by all the sordid goings on at both Activision and Blizzard which were further reducing the sales potential of their titles. In other words, ABK approached MS (and likely other companies as well, like Sony) hoping to find a buyer to dig them out of a hole that was likely its death spiral.

There's quite a few developers that I loved who were part of a publisher that went under and their IP got acquired by holding companies that have either done nothing with their properties or have released absolute crap with those properties.

Regards,
SB

 

[Nesh]

How is that related to the above?

Because whether ABK was interested in being acquired by MS specifically doesnt change anything from the matter at hand. Whether MS should purchase ABK for the purposes outlined by MS.

 

[Nesh]

It’s not a hostile takeover. This isn’t MS just buying shares of ABK. ABK is actively pursuing the merger as per their social media accounts.

Not unlike Bethesda, not a hostile takeover for that either. Had MS not made the purchase, Sony would have locked up Starfield, Redfall alongside the deathloop and Tokyo ghost wire for timed exclusivity.

Would have straight up killed Xbox lol. No games for 2023.

Because the subject of the discussion was never about whether it was a hostile take over or not. Nobody implied ABK was challenging the acquisition.

 

[iroboto]

Because the subject of the discussion was never about whether it was a hostile take over or not. Nobody implied ABK was challenging the acquisition.

I was responding to “should MS buy ABK”.
That’s a one sided argument in which makes MS seem like they can buyout whomever they want. They sought to merge together.

 

[eastmen]

It depends on the team and, to a degree, the ambition. Examples of teams who used to knock games out a a good pace are Bethesda (2006 Oblivion, 2008 Fallout 3, 2011 Skyrim, 2015 Fallout 4) and Naughty Dog (2007 Uncharted, 2009, Uncharted 2, 2011 Uncharted 3, 2013 The Last of Us) and both have gotten slow as molasses.

Then you look at Insomniac Games who has not slowed at all: 2006 Resistance Fall of Man, 2007 Ratchet & Clank Tools of Destruction, 2008 R&C Quest for Booty (DLC) and Resistance 2, 2009 Ratchet & Clank A Rift in Time, 2011 Resistance 3, 2013 R&C Into the Nexus, 2014 Sunset Overdrive, 2016 Ratchet & Clank, 2018 Spider-Man, 2020 Spider-Man Miles Morales, 2021 R&C A Rift Apart, 2023 Spider-man 2 (planned).

You absolutely can knock out high-scoring, highly polished games on a regular timetable. Whatever Insomniac's process is, I wish they would share it wider.

It comes down to scope of content. I doubt many here will argue that resistance or ratchet and clank are as big of a game as skyrim or fall out 4. Then there is also a question of how similar those games are. R&C 2007 and 2009 likely used very similar assets and engine to turn around a game much faster. same with the spider-man games. Even then we see Spider-man 2 is going to take a year longer than the gap between Spier-man and MM

 

[JPT]

I was responding to “should MS buy ABK”.
That’s a one sided argument in which makes MS seem like they can buyout whomever they want. They sought to merge together.

MS got the war chest to buy most companies I guess, especially in the gaming industry.

But, I see we are now at, MS must be allowed to buy ABK, if not the industry will be worse off because ABK are on the path to bankruptcy?

 

[Nesh]

I was responding to “should MS buy ABK”.
That’s a one sided argument in which makes MS seem like they can buyout whomever they want. They sought to merge together.

Again this doesnt change from or contribute anything to the discussion that was taking hold before.
Previous arguments and the investigation are still valid. The point was never whether it was a hostile take over or not. We knew from beforehand that the two businesses agreed to an acquisition

 

[Deleted member 2197]

TechScape: With a $67bn takeover in the works, is it finally game on for Microsoft?

With the acquisition of Activision Blizzard in the works, the company is facing investigations by trade commissions the world over. If the deal goes through, could it help the forgotten tech giant gain new relevance?

www.theguardian.com

The purchase isn’t controversial just because of the cost of the buyout, but also because of one game: Call of Duty. The military shooter series is one of the most commercially successful game series of all time. Few other titles are guaranteed as many sales, and those that are, like Grand Theft Auto or The Legend of Zelda, are rare entries in the release calendar, averaging two or so publications a decade.

Call of Duty, by contrast, is a machine that Activision has rebuilt itself to power. Three development studios rotate producing one new entry every year, with a host of smaller units providing support in roles like asset creation and play testing, and a new massively successful free-to-play Fortnite competitor, Warzone, bolted on top of the whole thing. The cinematic single-player campaigns are renowned for being interactive blockbusters, but the multiplayer mode are where the series dominates.

There are other benefits to buying the company. Microsoft could use King, the Activision Blizzard subsidiary that makes Candy Crush, to get a foothold in mobile gaming, or take the nine million players who still subscribe to World of Warcraft and bring them into the Game Pass ecosystem. But at its heart, the purchase is about Call of Duty – and, specifically, Game Pass.
...
But speaking to industry insiders, the fear on the part of Microsoft’s competitors – chiefly Sony, which makes the PlayStation – isn’t about exclusivity narrowly defined. Instead, it’s about what happens to the industry if Xbox becomes the best place to play Call of Duty, either because it’s developed for those platforms and ported to others half-heartedly, or simply because it’s available for free with Game Pass on Xbox and for a £70 price tag on PlayStation.

They worry that, the centre of gravity of online gaming would gradually shift to Xbox: first taking the Call of Duty players, then taking the people who play other games with them, and then taking anyone who plays games online at all.

 

[iroboto]

MS got the war chest to buy most companies I guess, especially in the gaming industry.

But, I see we are now at, MS must be allowed to buy ABK, if not the industry will be worse off because ABK are on the path to bankruptcy?

Technically yes, an agreement must be made or it’s considered a hostile takeover where another company is trying to take over share ownership greater than 50 to run it. This agreement with ABK and ABKs position on the merger would just imply mutual benefits.

But if you scale it back, it’s not a lot different from why we saw 2nd party developed exclusives. Take Tomb Raider, or SFV, or possibly any other 2nd party exclusive. The publisher which is typically multi platform was not confident enough in the return of the product. Platforms regularly meet with their partners and take a gander what did not make it beyond pre-production. If it’s something that would benefit the platform they go out and pay the fee to develop it.

And so if you think about how many games are the exception that become 2nd party exclusives and how many are just cut entirely, you can see ABK with its warchest of IPs is actually reducing significantly. They just are quickly becoming a studio that consists of CoD and WoW.

So consider this regular monthly or biMonthly meetings with platform holders and 3rd parties and someone says yea we could use help here but we would need to merge for this to work. and then that snow balls into this.

Bungie, who left MS. Went to ABK to leave them, chose to be acquired by Sony. It’s not like Bungie isn’t doing what’s best for them here and Sony strong armed them into the acquisition.

 

[iroboto]

Again this doesnt change from or contribute anything to the discussion that was taking hold before.
Previous arguments and the investigation are still valid. The point was never whether it was a hostile take over or not. We knew from beforehand that the two businesses agreed to an acquisition

The point of regulation is to ensure competition isn’t destroyed and therefore harming consumer choice. regulation doesn’t exist to be a referee of what is fair and what is not. Provided everyone in the industry is playing within the laws, these actions are eligible moves to take despite how people feel about them.

There is no “should MS buy ABK”, there needs no reason to be provided, they buy it because they see benefit in doing so, it’s on regulators to ensure the market doesn’t crash because of it. That’s all there is to this

 

[eastmen]

TechScape: With a $67bn takeover in the works, is it finally game on for Microsoft?

With the acquisition of Activision Blizzard in the works, the company is facing investigations by trade commissions the world over. If the deal goes through, could it help the forgotten tech giant gain new relevance?

www.theguardian.com

Yes for Sony what if COD is no longer best on Playstation because of exclusive content / open betas but instead its better on xbox. Well last time that happened MS and Sony sold roughly the same amount of consoles +/- 5m consoles.

Seems like that be a pretty good thing to everyone that isn't Sony or Sony fan boys.


Shouldn't sony's response be to dust off their old multiplayer games like Socom , resistance , killzone and mag along with newely purchased companies like bungine the makers of destiny ? I mean wouldn't that be great for gamers if sony came out with a bunch of first person multiplayer content ? Be even better day and date on steam too

 

[Nesh]

The point of regulation is to ensure competition isn’t destroyed and therefore harming consumer choice. regulation doesn’t exist to be a referee of what is fair and what is not. Provided everyone in the industry is playing within the laws, these actions are eligible moves to take despite how people feel about them.

There is no “should MS buy ABK”, there needs no reason to be provided, they buy it because they see benefit in doing so, it’s on regulators to ensure the market doesn’t crash because of it. That’s all there is to this

Yes and thats exactly why there IS a "should MS buy ABK" and why it is irrelevant that ABK was interested in MS buying them. You are repeating my arguments

 

[iceberg187]

From MLex via Idas from Resetera

The report from MLex about the pre-hearing has a few interesting bits of info that are new:

- Any potential remedy entered into with the EC and CMA will also be offered to the FTC: "The deal is undergoing review over in Europe and the UK and we are hoping that they will be resolved and if there are remedies that are appropriate we can come back to ... the FTC to talk about a resolution," said Beth Wilkinson (MS' lead counsel).

- James Weingarten, deputy chief trial counsel at the FTC, said that staff (he clarified that when he used the word "staff" he meant himself) is always open to a remedy or settlement proposal during or before litigation, although "There are no substantive conversations happening at this time."

- MS/ABK and the FTC agreed to an expedited discovery schedule (so they can start requesting and inspecting documents in a shortened time period).

- Beth Wilkinson told Chappell (the administrative judge) that if a resolution isn't reached with the FTC, the deal will go forward and close after a remedy is reached in all pending jurisdictions. But that the companies assume the FTC would go to federal court in that case.

- She also said that's why they wanted to front-load the discovery, just in case the FTC went to federal court because MS/ABK have a termination date of July 18, 2023. "We are preparing for all options", said Wilkinson.

MS sounds quite confident:

- They are still expecting to close the deal in the original termination date
- They sound positive about the review process in Europe and UK
- If they get the go ahead from the CMA and EC, and the FTC doesn't settle, they'll go forward and close the deal in the US (expecting the FTC to go to court)

Very interesting! Now let's see what the CMA brings to the table this month.

Good, Microsoft can acquire ABK and move on to the next thing they have planned.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Correction, MS wasn't late to tablets. I had a Windows Tablet (2002) years before Apple released the iPad (2010). It was based on Windows XP Tablet PC Edition which was released to the public in 2002 along with Tablets using said OS. It did well enough among professionals that an updated version was released in 2005 with the creatively named Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005.

The post you attributed to me was written by iRoboto. I also responded to it say Microsoft were early to tablets and smartphones!

The point of regulation is to ensure competition isn’t destroyed and therefore harming consumer choice. regulation doesn’t exist to be a referee of what is fair and what is not. Provided everyone in the industry is playing within the laws, these actions are eligible moves to take despite how people feel about them.

It's not that competition "isn't destroyed", it's that competition isn't "significantly lessened". That's different and the significance of 'significantly' is itself significant. Arguably any acquisition of an industry player to a sizeable player means less independent parties which is less competitions but the test is more subjective.

It would not be surprising if there are different outcomes across the UK, EU, US and China because, and this is important, the regulators are only assessing the impact to their jurisdiction. Few companies operate in all four remaining territories under scrutiny so individual assessments will vary. China may not even be a big issue any more, not since the Blizzard Netease deal didn't get renewed and Call of Duty got shut down.