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

[eastmen]

Doubled?! Wow, they were stock limited.

Silly to look at growth instead of install-base.

Xbox Series X|S Fighting To Become The Best-Selling UK Console Of 2022

It's going to be extremely close

www.purexbox.com

UK games sales dropped 6% in 2022 and console sales plunged 29%

LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga beat Elden Ring

www.gamesindustry.biz

Sales ranking was NSW, PS54, XBX, and...


Furthermore, what are the factors contributing to XB's position? Are MS selling it as hard as their rivals, for example? I know those on one side of the fence feel it's all Sony's back-room exclusives, but I reckon the average gamer is less interested in a unique skin or even DLC mission for a game (which MS could also finance if they choose) than they are influenced by media and advertising etc. Just checking commercials, Sony has plenty more TV presence (on YouTube) than XB. Similarly more content. How much sales lead (minimal in UK where CMA is operating) is due to Sony's dodgy exploitation of a market-leadership position and how much is due to MS just not being that great at console businessing, creating the product and marketing it well?

Growth is an extremely important metric esp when one is reporting over 200% growth and the other is reporting decline and its the market leader reporting that growth. There is obviously much greater demand for one console over the other

Also Ms had deep sales on the series s during dec.

 

[see colon]

Doubled?! Wow, they were stock limited.

Silly to look at growth instead of install-base.

Xbox Series X|S Fighting To Become The Best-Selling UK Console Of 2022

It's going to be extremely close

www.purexbox.com

UK games sales dropped 6% in 2022 and console sales plunged 29%

LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga beat Elden Ring

www.gamesindustry.biz

Sales ranking was NSW, PS54, XBX, and...


Furthermore, what are the factors contributing to XB's position? Are MS selling it as hard as their rivals, for example? I know those on one side of the fence feel it's all Sony's back-room exclusives, but I reckon the average gamer is less interested in a unique skin or even DLC mission for a game (which MS could also finance if they choose) than they are influenced by media and advertising etc. Just checking commercials, Sony has plenty more TV presence (on YouTube) than XB. Similarly more content. How much sales lead (minimal in UK where CMA is operating) is due to Sony's dodgy exploitation of a market-leadership position and how much is due to MS just not being that great at console businessing, creating the product and marketing it well?

@eastmen had a quote about European sales, your response is about UK sales.

 

[Nesh]

Growth is an extremely important metric esp when one is reporting over 200% growth and the other is reporting decline and its the market leader reporting that growth. There is obviously much greater demand for one console over the other

Also Ms had deep sales on the series s during dec.

And why does it bother you so much, and why does that necessarilly mean bad for the market?
If it is MS's mistakes that prevent it from competing as well as Sony and Nintendo, thats purely on them, not executing their business well. The regulators arent obliged to take MS by the hand and do them special favors for MS's own mistakes to make them more "competitive". And the regulators arent obliged to punish either Nintendo or Sony for executing well their business unless they are outrightly sabotaging competition.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Growth is an extremely important metric esp when one is reporting over 200% growth and the other is reporting decline and its the market leader reporting that growth. There is obviously much greater demand for one console over the other

Growth is very unclear and poor data-science. You could have a situation where sales in Jan 2022 were:

PS5 120,000
XBS 500,000

And in Jan 2023:

PS5 360,000
XBS 340,000

Resulting in the relative metrics of 200% growth for PS5, 32% shrinkage for XBS, and PS5 being the top selling platform, while the market situation would be 24:35 in XB's favour. Of course we know it's not like that as MS does poorly in Europe, always does, but also apparently doesn't market hard there either having effectively given up.

@eastmen had a quote about European sales, your response is about UK sales.

Fair point on the general sales, although the issue of correct data-sceince still stands.

 

[iroboto]

And why does it bother you so much, and why does that necessarilly mean bad for the market?
If it is MS's mistakes that prevent it from competing as well as Sony and Nintendo, thats purely on them, not executing their business well. The regulators arent obliged to take MS by the hand and do them special favors for MS's own mistakes to make them more "competitive". And the regulators arent obliged to punish either Nintendo or Sony for executing well their business unless they are outrightly sabotaging competition.

Ah, feeling some nostalgia here

That’s the point of regulation. If an entity can perform no mistakes and still lose that’s why regulation exists, to open an opportunity for new entrants to be able to have a chance.

 

[iroboto]

Growth is very unclear and poor data-science. You could have a situation where sales in Jan 2022 were:

PS5 120,000
XBS 500,000

And in Jan 2023:

PS5 360,000
XBS 340,000

Resulting in the relative metrics of 200% growth for PS5, 32% shrinkage for XBS, and PS5 being the top selling platform, while the market situation would be 24:35 in XB's favour. Of course we know it's not like that as MS does poorly in Europe, always does, but also apparently doesn't market hard there either having effectively given up.

Fair point on the general sales, although the issue of correct data-sceince still stands.

Thank you.

Percentages without context no one wins.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

But for other devs, Sony's fees are already high. An additional Sony Tax on sales outside of the Sony ecosystem is tough to bear where it's not really paying for anything from Sony, especailly if all the platform holders followed suit. What's that, you bought a Virtual Haircut on iOS? Please pay MS, and Sony, and Nintendo, and Steam, and Epic, and Google, a cut of all the money you didn't spend on their respective stores...

I would be really interested to see the numbers behind why Sony charge this. For over a decade, there was no cross-play and multiplayer games did well. I can see how cross-play can reduce costs for the publisher because you no longer need dedicated PC, Nintendo, PlayStation, Xbox online servers, but I curious why PlayStation is so important that publishers agree to this.

That’s the point of regulation. If an entity can perform no mistakes and still lose that’s why regulation exists, to open an opportunity for new entrants to be able to have a chance.

Unless I misunderstand you, that is not the point of regulation. If it was then Microsoft would be under heavy measures so that other desktop operating systems could compete with Windows for market share. The point of regulation is to ensure companies with market influence don't abuse that power, it is not about trying to compensate or correcting the buying behaviour of the public.

 

[Nesh]

Ah, feeling some nostalgia here

That’s the point of regulation. If an entity can perform no mistakes and still lose that’s why regulation exists, to open an opportunity for new entrants to be able to have a chance.

Er...be more specific and accurate because I feel you your statement is missing a lot there about what regulators actually do.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

And the regulators arent obliged to punish either Nintendo or Sony for executing well their business unless they are outrightly sabotaging competition.

And in the cases where they are, surely they should be controlled rather than rivals given room to compete unfairly also. If a club has a rule 'no weapons' and people are bringing in knives, the solution isn't to let other people bring in guns...

 

[mr magoo]

Unless I misunderstand you, that is not the point of regulation. If it was then Microsoft would be under heavy measures so that other desktop operating systems could compete with Windows for market share. The point of regulation is to ensure companies with market influence don't abuse that power, it is not about trying to compensate or correcting the buying behaviour of the public.

Yes but the action can only happen if the other actions happens, if that make sense. So in other words how do you regulate something if no other actions take place? If there is no major move from other OS manufacturer what they should do?

"The point of regulation is to ensure companies with market influence don't abuse that power,"

True

"When competition works well, everyone benefits. Our ambition is to promote an environment where people can be confident they are getting great choices and fair deals, competitive, fair-dealing businesses can innovate and thrive and the whole UK economy can grow productively and sustainably."

"
We help people, businesses and the UK economy by promoting competitive markets and tackling unfair behaviour in a number of ways:

• we investigate mergers that have the potential to lead to a substantial lessening of competition. If a merger is likely to reduce competition substantially, the CMA can block it or impose remedies to address those concerns
• we take action against businesses and individuals that take part in cartels or anti-competitive behaviour"

About us - Competition and Markets Authority - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

So going back to what iroboto said wich was in reponse to this

"If it is MS's mistakes that prevent it from competing as well as Sony and Nintendo, thats purely on them, not executing their business well. The regulators arent obliged to take MS by the hand and do them special favors for MS's own mistakes to make them more "competitive". And the regulators arent obliged to punish either Nintendo or Sony for executing well their business unless they are outrightly sabotaging competition."

I dont think this is entirely true. Because if you gained position of market leader CMA should not stand in the way of the company who tries to be more competitive to marked leader. After all

"When competition works well, everyone benefits. "

So it dosent really matter how MSFT got there, the point is they are not market leader and are trying to stay more competitive. This is not about punishing Sony. People think that they earned this leader position and should not be unchallenged because they deserve it. Its not about favours either, its about creating environment which is good for competition.

 

[Nesh]

And in the cases where they are, surely they should be controlled rather than rivals given room to compete unfairly also. If a club has a rule 'no weapons' and people are bringing in knives, the solution isn't to let other people bring in guns...

Exactly

 

[Nesh]

I dont think this is entirely true. Because if you gained position of market leader CMA should not stand in the way of the company who tries to be more competitive to marked leader. After all

CMA isnt standing in the way of a company being competitive. CMA is regulating unfair practices or practices that may hinder the ability to compete or destroy competition.
The fact that MS comes third doesnt change the nature of the practices automatically. Hence why MS was not stopped from merging/acquiring other studios. Actually the opposite, I would say that the regulators were very lax considering how easily they acquired other big players.

 

[stu11]

I read an interesting article on Tweaktown.com that seems to indicate that the CMA believes that Activision will be willing to place part of their library on MS's Game Pass, even if MS's attempt to acquire Activision falls through. It also does not show that Sony is blocking Activision games from appearing on Game Pass. It does seem to indicate that Activision is unwilling to place new COD games on the service on the day and date of release as it will cannibalize new game sales too much, which is ironically the reason Sony will not release their new games on their service on the day and date of release.

Quote: "
The CMA's provisional conclusions indicate that, based on the information provided by the parties, Activision "would likely place increasingly valuable parts of its gaming catalogue on multi-game subscription services as these services continue to grow." There are multiple redacted pages that seem to indicate that Activision had at least talked about subscriptions on an internal basis, and possibly did so with Microsoft as well.

Regulators don't think Activision would add the newest Call of Duty to a subscription. The publisher is very much afraid of subscription access significantly impacting premium game sales. We've outlined how Microsoft's plan to add Call of Duty day and date releases onto Game Pass could significantly affect Activision's core business."

Read more: https://www.tweaktown.com/news/9031...ng-games-subscriptions-sans-merger/index.html

 

[chris1515]

Activision ticks higher amid speculation it hired bank for activism defense

Activision (ATVI) ticked up 0.3% amid speculation that the company may have hired Morgan Stanley for activism defense.Morgan Stanley went restricted on Activision (ATVI) last week and...

seekingalpha.com

From Idas about the seeking alpha article:

There are different reasons to hire an activism defense team on M&A, among others: 1) because you are going to change the terms of a deal already announced 2) because you are going to divest assets to a third company or 3) because you are going to “de-merge” a previously announced deal.

When something like that happens you are going to get a lot of unhappy shareholders. So, you need to defend from different legal tactics that they’ll use to abort the change that you are making to the original plan.

 

[Inuhanyou]

They must be pretty desperate

 

[chris1515]

Berkshire dumps shares in TSMC, banks; increases Apple stake

Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc slashed its stake in Taiwanese contract chipmaker TSMC , as well as in some banks in the fourth quarter, while bolstering its holdings in Apple Inc .

www.reuters.com

Warren Buffet sold some Activision Blizarrd share.

 

[JPT]

Berkshire dumps shares in TSMC, banks; increases Apple stake

Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc slashed its stake in Taiwanese contract chipmaker TSMC , as well as in some banks in the fourth quarter, while bolstering its holdings in Apple Inc .

www.reuters.com

Warren Buffet sold some Activision Blizarrd share.

Crap, should i sell then....

 

[AlphaWolf]

Crap, should i sell then....

He's still in for over 5%...

 

[chris1515]

Warren Buffet sold share where he is winning money, He bought this share at a lower price than the current one but he keep the share where he lose money if he sold now.

 

[fehu]

You must put a billboard on this thread and get rich