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

[Deleted member 11852]

I’m not sure what is there to confuse. Is 70B price tag of ABK the majority of it cod? Or is it King and WoW and all the IPs put together?

I don't understand your question. It is Microsoft that values Activision-Blizzard at $70bn, but nowhere has Microsoft stated how it views the values of individual studios or IPs, although they have said repeatedly that 'Call of Duty isn't important.' Activision-Blizzard reports show that their revenue/profit is driven by three collections of IP in this order by value: 1) Call of Duty, then 2) everything produced by King, and finally 3)World of Warcraft.

You keep flip-flopping between comparing platforms (what is and isn't on PlayStation) and IPs in a way they simply aren't comparable. For example, there is no breakdown of how Call of Duty compared platform by platform, it simply cannot be accurately determined based on what annual report data shows.

I genuinely not understanding what it is you are trying to demonstrate but every time you respond to me, it feels like you throw in whole bunch of things that aren't relevant to the points I'm responding to. I'm puzzled.

 

[troyan]

So, it isnt enough that PC gamers need Windows, they have to buy their games from the MS store, too? Sorry, but no.

Microsoft bought Bungie 2021 and made Halo Xbos exclusive. So yes, i think everyone knows how MS works.

 

[BRiT]

So, it isnt enough that PC gamers need Windows, they have to buy their games from the MS store, too? Sorry, but no.

Microsoft bought Bungie 2021 and made Halo Xbos exclusive. So yes, i think everyone knows how MS works.

Uhm no. Microsoft has put their titles on Steam.

 

[troyan]

Yes, more reasons why this argument doesnt hold. From a PC perspective it doesnt make sense to buy AB. Every game is available on the PC...

 

[mr magoo]

Yes, more reasons why this argument doesnt hold. From a PC perspective it doesnt make sense to buy AB. Every game is available on the PC...

I have no idea what you are trying to say

 

[troyan]

I have no idea what you are trying to say

My point is that nobody on the PC uses the MS store to buy PC Games:

MS is trying to position itself as a leader of at least one of the major stores out there. It intends to do so through games. They get their pay day if they can act as a store on any piece of hardware. The challenge is that they have to fight to get onto that piece of hardware. But that’s a different battle for now.

 

[iroboto]

My point is that nobody on the PC uses the MS store to buy PC Games:

Because the market they want to engage in is mobile.

Porting is a massive issue to get games onto increasingly smaller and weaker devices.

You’re only strategy if things continue to shrink is to do cloud streaming.

That is their goal. They’ve stated it multiple times over. They would rather exist as their own store front on android and iOS and any future mobile hardware, than just be an app.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Uhm no. Microsoft has put their titles on Steam.

The concerns about store fronts would be the EU and UK regulators wondering if Microsoft will discontinue this practice once large enough.

Like Epic, or any new store, Microsoft's big challenge is getting people to use the store in the first place and one way to do this is to put certainly content exclusively in your store. The "if you build it, they will come" thinking has never worked in the digital space because you need the customer to invest a little effort (setting up accounts, linking payment details etc) before they can buy anything. It doesn't seem like much, but apparently it is and is why Epic give away a lot of stuff in their store.

But if Microsoft were to put something really popular exclusively in their stores, they may well drive acceptance to using it. The idea being, once folks are used to it and see any benefits (like UWP, if that's still a thing) then people may buy more from there where Microsoft take the 30% retainer cut. That's the objective after all, taking 30% of everything you sell, even when it requires next to no effort.

 

[iroboto]

I don't understand your question. It is Microsoft that values Activision-Blizzard at $70bn, but nowhere has Microsoft stated how it views the values of individual studios or IPs, although they have said repeatedly that 'Call of Duty isn't important.' Activision-Blizzard reports show that their revenue/profit is driven by three collections of IP in this order by value: 1) Call of Duty, then 2) everything produced by King, and finally 3)World of Warcraft.

You keep flip-flopping between comparing platforms (what is and isn't on PlayStation) and IPs in a way they simply aren't comparable. For example, there is no breakdown of how Call of Duty compared platform by platform, it simply cannot be accurately determined based on what annual report data shows.

I genuinely not understanding what it is you are trying to demonstrate but every time you respond to me, it feels like you throw in whole bunch of things that aren't relevant to the points I'm responding to. I'm puzzled.

I addressed this comment:

The OP in question:

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

Sony is concerned about one game on one platform. It's clearly not the main reason for scrutiny as both the EU and UK regulators have provided a list of four markets in which competitors have expressed concerns. Please stop listening only to Microsoft's PR statements. If you wish to enlighten...

forum.beyond3d.com

MS is not taking away $69B worth of content away from Sony! Because the few titles that Sony actually has on PS5 from
AB does not represent 100% of that value. In fact, it represents less than 50%.

Context is critical if you’re going to jump in and try to own someone.

 

[troyan]

Because the market they want to engage in is mobile.

Porting is a massive issue to get games onto increasingly smaller and weaker devices.

You’re only strategy if things continue to shrink is to do cloud streaming.

That is their goal. They’ve stated it multiple times over. They would rather exist as their own store front on android and iOS and any future mobile hardware, than just be an app.

Microsoft's goal is to produce and sell mobile games on the iOS and Android appstore and giving Apple and Google a 30% cut?

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Context is critical if you’re going to jump in and try to own someone.

Ignoring the childish "trying to own" attitude, because this has never been what B3D has been about, you have seemingly overlooked that the only point of yours that I was addressing is this one. I'll repeat the whole post, but to be clear I don't want to go down your weird rabbit-hole again.

Correct. So what does this have to do with moving people towards Xbox? The majority of profits come from King alone

That happened in one year only, and as the Activision-Blizzard's 2021 report makes clear - a lot of anomalous trends that emerged over lockdown may be short lived. Prior to reporting year 2021, console gaming had been the biggest profit driver for five years - which was a far as I was inclined to reference AB's published reports.

TL;DR. You claimed most profits came from King, that was Activsion-Blizzard's covid-blip year. Console has traditionally been the higher profit producer, but wasn't in 2021 because as the report notes, everybody hated the CoD return to WWII, nobody could buy a next gen console and PC gamers struggled to get GPUs.

 

[iroboto]

Ignoring the childish "trying to own" attitude, because this has never been what B3D has been about, you have seemingly overlooked that the only point of yours that I was addressing is this one. I'll repeat the whole post, but to be clear I don't want to go down your weird rabbit-hole again.


That happened in one year only, and as the Activision-Blizzard's 2021 report makes clear - a lot of anomalous trends that emerged over lockdown may be short lived. Prior to reporting year 2021, console gaming had been the biggest profit driver for five years - which was a far as I was inclined to reference AB's published reports.

And that’s fine. But that still doesn’t represent the segment breakdown of Activision, Blizzard and King.

Activision alone still represents less than 50% of the total revenue each year when segmented across the 3 companies.

 

[iroboto]

Microsoft's goal is to produce and sell mobile games on the iOS and Android appstore and giving Apple and Google a 30% cut?

No. They have to start allowing 3rd party stores soon. Still more work to be done here.

Apple is reportedly preparing to allow third-party app stores on the iPhone

You might be able to have more than one app store.

www.theverge.com

 

[chris1515]

And that’s fine. But that still doesn’t represent the segment breakdown of Activision, Blizzard and King.

Activision alone still represents less than 50% of the total revenue each year when segmented across the 3 companies.

Why don't the accept the CMA proposal? They can keep Bizzard and King and Activision without COD.

 

[iroboto]

Why don't the accept the CMA proposal? They can keep Bizzard and King and Activision without COD.

Because they want more content not less. They want to own big IPs to profit from them, not to make them exclusive.

The Gamepass app right now is just a browser. It’s not a native app due to App Store policies. The same type of thing on android. If 3rd party stores are allowed, this will allow better integration on the mobile side. They want call of duty on cloud, but ABK will not put call of duty on cloud because they will lose profits, and MS is willing to lose profits in exchange for the chance to become a bigger player of all things in the mobile space that (the hardware) continues to shrink making remote compute an ever more important factor.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

And that’s fine. But that still doesn’t represent the segment breakdown of Activision, Blizzard and King.

I don't see the relevance to what I posted. None of it has. It feels like you're still arguing with the other guy but responding to me. To be clear, none of what your posted corroborates what you wrote and that was most profits come from King - except inl the covid blip 2021 - which Activision's own reports notes the reasons why.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

There’s a lot more you can do with 70B than just stick it to Sony.

Like securing a few European titles and actually marketing in Europe. That'd probably solve the 80:20 split they are moaning about. I bet the ratio of European Marketing spend over the past 20 years PlayStation to Xbox is something very like that 80:20! MS just never really tried here. Original XBox was an English console. XB360 had limited regionalisation. Sony OTOH supported lots more languages etc. for all its PS's. They took Europe seriously from the beginning and won it over by investing and giving Europeans what they wanted, notably a console that provided content in their language , and continue to market here. It also factors in previous generations and not just the current one where they are competing better.

 

[see colon]

None of these companies have put their content behind a hardware lock. Microsoft doesnt want you to play CoD, they want you to buy a XBox to play CoD or Warcraft, or Diablo...

If this were true why can you subscribe to Gamepass right now and play nearly all of the first party Xbox games on an Android phone, Apple computer, or any plethora of non-Microsoft devices?

Of all of the console makes, Microsoft is the one least interested in you purchasing their hardware.

 

[troyan]

Only through cloud gaming. Why isnt Microsoft publishing their games on the PS5, too?

 

[fehu]

Xbox features will be used

It's funny because you think that microsoft cares about using microsoft's features

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