Which would be absolutely bonkers. If that is what sony wants then MS should just abandon the purchase and go ahead and just buy up 70 billion worth of small developers and then turn around whenever Sony buys a company and try and force sony into parity in terms of releases .
Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard King for $69 Billion on 2023-10-13
- Thread starter Rangers
- Start date
We will know soon. I was just putting out a hypothetical. I don’t actually know. If you prop call of duty up high enough like it’s the Jesus of video games, then yes I guess you could demand it.
The ftc has gone bonkers sure but i don't see how you can demand another company give you marketing rights over a product they will now own .
I know people aren't going to like it, but this deal is in another league. Microsoft likely made back the money for the Bethesda deal on the Xbox division alone. The ABK deal would take multiple years to recover that 69 Billion under the Xbox division, which is why there is a difference here. It is why letting Sony put COD on their games service didn't make sense to me. The gamers from the other ecosystems would make recovering that 69 billion easier.
This was one argument of the EU about Bethesda.
This is a Microsoft deal, not an Xbox deal. The whole of Microsoft. Xbox will benefit from it, but that much money signals that this deal is from the very top. In other words, making a profit from it as soon as possible is in Microsoft's best interest.
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Silent_Buddha
Legend
The logic set out in message 3/4 is nonsense. The premise being that why would Microsoft hold back games from other platforms because that means giving up profits. Yet Microsoft have already said that will not release Starfield and Elder Scrolls VI on PlayStation (and presumably any Nintendo hardware capable of running these games) so they are very content to give up profits to make their platform more appealing through exclusivity.
I've seen arguments that Call of Duty is different because it is multiplayer and you need a big player base, but to believe this you have to ignore that Call of Duty's multiplayer has only been cross-platform since 2019, prior to that it wasn't and it sold great on individual platforms which demonstrates Microsoft don't need Sony's platform at all; Xbox and Windows vastly outnumbers Sony's platform numbers.
Call of Duty is no more popular after 2019 than it was a decade ago. Black Ops (2010) and Modern Warfare 3 (2011) both sold 30m, and Modern Warfare Reboot (2019) and Black Ops Cold War (2020) also sold 30m. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
I am baffled why people swallow this logic.
That's overly simplistic. Take a look from another angle, let's bracket it starting with COD: BO in 2010 and ending with COD: BOCW in 2020 with the cross-platform starting in 2019.
- 2010 - COD: BO - 30.72 million units.
- 2011 - COD: MW3 - 30.71 million units.
- 2012 - COD: BO2 - 29.59 million units
- 2013 - COD: Ghosts - 28.98 million units
- 2014 - COD: AW - 21.76 million units
- 2015 - COD: BO3 - 26.72 million units
- 2016 - COD: IW - 13.6 million units
- 2017 - COD: WWII - 19.82 million units
- 2018 - COD: BO4 - 14.3 million units sold
- 2019 - COD: MW - 30 million (using your number for this)
- 2020 - COD: BOCW - 30 million (using your number for this)
So, the series was in serious decline as it faced increasing competition in the marketplace that was (IMO) exacerbated by a split player base. Obviously it helps if you also release a remake of a nostalgic release, but that's still an extremely impressive jump in sales that coincides with crossplay being enabled. 2017's COD: WWII was also a much loved nostalgic release for the series and while it lead to a temporary bump in sales it was nowhere near the effect that was seen with the cross-play enabled 2019 release.
A large part of that is that the PC scene was basically dead by that point due to the isolated PC multiplayer player base. PC sales and engagement have been greatly revived due to cross-play being enabled.
Without players from all platforms being to play with each other I highly doubt COD would be selling as well as it is now based on pre-cross-play sales trends.
Regards,
SB
D
Deleted member 11852
Guest
You are absolutely right, and I think this is the first time in a long while that I've seen somebody acknowledge that the EU (and UK) concerns are not solely about PlayStation or Call of Duty. There are other, bigger concerns at play than ~20m PS5 owners.
It's not going to be these because there is no parity now, and you cannot have parity on exclusivity clauses because.. parity.
Right, this are the numbers I presented. I looked at the sales of the other games in the franchise and there were some missteps which is basically anything that drifted from the contemporary modern setting that did not appeal (WW II, near future, advanced future) so I focussed on the high points before cross-platform multiplayer was a thing and the high points since.
Parity could be about whether it arrives on PSNow+ same day and date as Gamepass.
But you are right; I believe MS is going to PR about parity. But Sony strategically doesn’t want them to have it.
It may have less to do with how COD affects the business and how COD affects the industry. Perhaps if there was no COD, the landscape would be very different, some of these other shooters would have room to breathe and succeed and maybe that is not in the best interest of Sony.
Academically you can. Parity is the state of being equal. It requires something to reference against. If what Sony wants is parity to their current status (marketing rights, exclusive DLC, etc.), then I would expect they aren't going to get that. But having the same set of features, game modes, performance modes, input options, 3d sound options, crossplay, or things like that, then that too could be considered parity.
It gets complicated when you advance to a new generation.
I suspect there is some concern if cod stops coming out annually. Then MS line of first party shooters begins to take on significantly more value. Right now their value is diminished with an annual cod.
Activision makes between 3-9B a year depending on what they release. If we just take 6b as the average it will take 11.5 years. Of course MS can go in and cut the fat reducing redundant postions in hr and marketing and the like and draw out more profit. This only counts direct income but if there are a bunch of A/B games that come out exclusive to the xbox eccosystem and pc it could drive more sales of xbox for MS and that could increase sales of other software for ms. Also King continues to grow at a really quick clip so the payback of A/B could be less than 10 years
Silent_Buddha
Legend
My interpretation of that was that MS was willing to forgo any exclusive content in COD in order to get the deal done as soon as possible.
Sure, I get that. However, WW2 was a popular setting that was in huge demand by the playerbase. They'd been clammoring for a return to the origins of the series for many years which is why Activision greenlit another WW2 entry into the series. You can see that it also briefly disrupted the trend of declining sales for the series.
As well, COD:BO4 was a return to the "modern" setting that you mentioned. It was critically well received, so it wasn't that it was a bad entry in the series. But a couple things killed it.
- No single player campaign. This in itself would have reduced sales slightly but not enough to tank the game since the largest draw for COD has been the multiplayer for over a decade now.
- No cross-play. That was the big killer in a modern FPS landscape where there is more and more competition for people's time in multiplayer games (Fortnite, Apex Legends, Valorant, Battlefield before they destroyed the IP with BF: 2042 etc.).
Without cross-play, COD: MW (2019), again IMO, would possibly have sold between 19-24 million units on nostalgia alone but wouldn't have gotten close to 30 million. I could even see it potentially selling under 20 million units without cross-play.
Regards,
SB
That's revenue, right? Net income is $2 billion a year. That's 35 years to recover investment value from profits given no changes.
There has to be a fair amount of redundancy in upper management, marketing, HR and the like, not to mention the ability of idle teams within Microsoft proper/Xbox to work on dormant Activision IPs. Microsoft has also shown to be fairly aggressive with licensing. The amount of Minecraft merch that hit shelves not long after MS closed that deal is telling. Hell, they make an officially licensed Xbox Series branded mini fridge. I know there is some COD stuff, plus Spyro and Crash, but I would imagine Microsoft really hitting the road with some licensing deals to help recoup the costs of the acquisition.
I am not the best with all the terms
I believe that 2022 was worse for them which is why I went with 6b as a quick and dirty average amount they should bring in over the long term.
Anyway, the real question isn't how long it takes MS to pay for Activision. They already have the money sitting in the bank doing almost nothing. So the question is what makes them more money. Buying activision or letting the money sit there?
D
Deleted member 11852
Guest
Microsoft were talking about this a year ago [IGN].
This begs the question is what do you with the four Call of Duty dev teams (Infinity Ward, Treyarch, Sledgehammer Games and Raven Software) who are alternating effort on single-player and multiplayer games if you reduce output. Move them to non-Call of Duty projects? Microsoft probably aren't going to have the same amount of resource devoted to releasing less games.
Would Call of Duty's multiplayer appeal (and therefore your base MTX revenue stream) last 24 rather over 12 months? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Or spending it elsewhere. But in terms of recuperating costs, MS may be richer in 20 years time just leaving the money in the bank! This looks like a really long term investment, or they have crazy, crazy monetisation plans. ActiBlizzard theme park, anyone?? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
MS's cash position has been over $100 billion for a decade. I expect if this merger gets shot down they will probably just pay off shareholders with a dividend or buyback.
I don't see a realistic plan B for a $70billion investment.
You could have cod alternate years of release if you wanted too. Keep 2 teams dedicated , split the other 2 teams in half. Those split teams can then work on content for the two yearly releases and then pick up some classic IP from MS/Bethesda/A/B and start making it.
You might loose out on new copy sales in the off year but that can be off set by not having to develop a new game every year and can be suplemented by having battlepasses , map pack dlc and the like
Sure you can spend it else where but where ? MS is buying a company that makes 2-9B a year. It's not like those grow on trees. I know a lot of talk is on COD , however there is a lot of IP that Ms will likely make exclusive. Adding wow to gamepass and putting it on xbox series would be a huge boon to MS. Activision also has new games in development. Putting that content all on xbox and game pass helps fill out release schedules.
So it would be hard to really see what profit increases ms is seeing because of ab. I would assume that bringing in more content for the system , esp exclusive would result in more sales and more software sold on the xbox.
Remember too with COD if they do drop to every other year releases that frees up 2 teams that could end up making exclusive content for MS instead of a title tied to every other platform. Then you can do say COD 2025 , Doom 2026 , COD 2027, Quake 2028 and so on and so forth.
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Microsoft (MSFT) Board Approves $60B Share Repurchase Program
Microsoft's (MSFT) share buyback program has no timetable and comes on the heels of a Democrat-led bill to impose a 2% excise tax on buybacks.
they already do it lol
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