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

[Lurkmass]

Steam Deck runs games without Windows, so we are we expecting that ten years from now cloud platforms will be locked into Windows VMs? If Valve actually released a desktop version of the Steam Deck OS, what might happen? They pretty much have a monopoly on the PC storefront.

My main point is basically that you can't predict the tech market, or pretty much anything ten years out. You just can't. Anyone that says they can is full of shit. Everyone thought Microsoft was going to have a browser monopoly and they did for a time ... until they didn't. Google just took it from them.

Steam Deck can only run a subset of games available to Windows. Many online games still rely on Windows to interface with their custom anti-cheat kernel drivers so Steam OS still isn't a true replacement to Windows ...

You honestly somehow think that game developers will move away from Windows ? Because regulators don't seem convinced otherwise ...

 

[orangpelupa]

What independent devs worth buying? Too big like ubisoft, maybe get blocked.

Smaller ones with fewer current IP like bungie, already bought by sony

 

[mr magoo]

I don't remember who the UK's PM is this month, but didn't he say that it was all fine?

Is situation in UK really that bad?

 

[Scott_Arm]

Steam Deck can only run a subset of games available to Windows. Many online games still rely on Windows to interface with their custom anti-cheat kernel drivers so Steam OS still isn't a true replacement to Windows ...

You honestly somehow think that game developers will move away from Windows ? Because regulators don't seem convinced otherwise ...

Did anyone expect Steam Deck would run games as well as it does? It's only been out for a year. Now predict ten years in the future accurately. I'm looking forward to your completely made up prediction. I'm sorry, but you can't predict the future.

Regulators are abosolutely shit at making predictions. They're just as shit as experts and just as shit as the layman.

 

[iroboto]

as a side remark, I guess that means more studios will be opening in Canada instead of the UK =p

 

[mr magoo]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1651187109200363521

I’ll get my dad you will see!

 

[BRiT]

as a side remark, I guess that means more studios will be opening in Canada instead of the UK =p

Or opening in the EU instead of the UK. That would be like just one province over in Canadian terms or one State over in US terms.

 

[Lurkmass]

Did anyone expect Steam Deck would run games as well as it does? It's only been out for a year. Now predict ten years in the future accurately. I'm looking forward to your completely made up prediction. I'm sorry, but you can't predict the future.

Regulators are abosolutely shit at making predictions. They're just as shit as experts and just as shit as the layman.

Unless online games stop designing their anti-cheat system around a tightly guarded black box like Windows, Steam OS will indefinitely remain as a second class citizen for game developers. Valve proponents are still waiting for Tim Sweeney of Epic Games to enable Linux kernel compatibility for EAC in Fortnite ...

Unless Microsoft are willing to move gaming away from Windows, the assessments by regulators aren't going to change ...

 

[Inuhanyou]

MS are clearly looking to have a majority position in the cloud gaming space. Their hw doesn't even seem to matter with their services line doing so well and offsetting hw declines based on their recent filings.

That should be enough without buying multiple publishers and arbitrarily locking content. Get their servers right, get their current first party studios in order and shipping games and they can have legitimate business relationships with other companies rather than swallowing them. I think that's good for everybody.

 

[iroboto]

Or opening in the EU instead of the UK. That would be like just one province over in Canadian terms or one State over in US terms.

I think the way studio openings happen is largely based on tax incentives. Curious to see what the EU will do now.

 

[Shortbread]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1651187109200363521

I’ll get my dad you will see!

Once all the kiddies are put to bed, the adults will step in again. Within a few months, MS will forget the deal and forge ahead and purchase a few studios that would still turn heads and make Xbox gamers happy.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Once all the kiddies are put to bed, the adults will step in again. Within a few months, MS will forget the deal and forge ahead and purchase a few studios that would still turn heads and make Xbox gamers happy.

If the deal falls through they have to pay Activision $3 billion or something. They'll probably keep fighting for a while.

 

[eastmen]

How so? MS is a trillion dollar company that has all the opportunity in the world on making great games by investing all that money into their studios. MS can money-hat just like Sony, if not more (MORE!). The problem that MS has: is managing those studios and IPs, not the lack of having [more] studios.

Sony bought Gaikai in 2012 and bought various assets of onlive when they went bankrupt. Sony has been in the cloud gaming market for over a decade now and has utterly failed at it.

I don't want to keep repeating myself because someone will come and throw a hissy fit again directly targeting me. However Sony has purchased 14 video game companies in the last 3 as well as stakes in epic and from software. Sony had all the opportinuty in the world on making great games by investing all that money into their studios , however they didn't. They went out and bought studios. What is good for the goos is good for the gander.

I am sure the same people here and other places bitching about MS buying activision would be bitching if MS went out and spent 70b on a bunch of other studios too.

 

[Shortbread]

If the deal falls through they have to pay Activision $3 billion or something. They'll probably keep fighting for a while.

They may, but they could accept their 'L' sooner rather than later, similar to Nvidia and Softbank/Arm deal (see below), and just move on. Plus, a great majority of that will be eaten up by corporate write-offs and other money loss saving loopholes.

The Financial Times reported earlier that the transaction collapsed on Monday. Last month, Bloomberg reported that Nvidia was preparing to wind down the deal. SoftBank and Arm are entitled to keep $2 billion that Nvidia paid at signing, including a $1.25 billion breakup fee.

 

[eastmen]

Microsoft seems completely incapable of making games, so if they get out of making console hardware, they're pretty much leaving the gaming market. All they'd have is a game store on PC that nobody likes and a Game Pass that probably couldn't survive without game consoles.

MS has made quite a lot of games. Just from the start of this generation they have made age of empires , as dusk falls , battletoads , forza horizon 5 , geears 5 , gears tactics , grounded , halo infinite , minecraft dungeons , minecraft legends , pentiment , psychonaughts and more.

MS can continue to releasing titles to their windows platform and its cloud service. Xbox requires large amounts of its own R&d and a large investment of building hardware before seeing a penny on that investment.

 

[eastmen]

Did anyone expect Steam Deck would run games as well as it does? It's only been out for a year. Now predict ten years in the future accurately. I'm looking forward to your completely made up prediction. I'm sorry, but you can't predict the future.

Regulators are abosolutely shit at making predictions. They're just as shit as experts and just as shit as the layman.

I am assuming you mean future steam decks if valve continues working on compatibility ? Because the current steam deck is only going to run new games worse as time goes on. Its only a quad core zen 2 with a what 8cu rdna 2.

In regards to steam os and its future it really depends on how direct x evolves. IF MS comes out with dx 13 and it changes something enough steam os / proton may not be able to work properly with newer titles and then we'd have to assume how long it would take for them to get newer titles to work right .

It be really hard to predict.

 

[Scott_Arm]

I am assuming you mean future steam decks if valve continues working on compatibility ? Because the current steam deck is only going to run new games worse as time goes on. Its only a quad core zen 2 with a what 8cu rdna 2.

In regards to steam os and its future it really depends on how direct x evolves. IF MS comes out with dx 13 and it changes something enough steam os / proton may not be able to work properly with newer titles and then we'd have to assume how long it would take for them to get newer titles to work right .

It be really hard to predict.

I don't actually care about the Steam Deck specifically. The Steam Deck has just proved that you can run Windows games very well even on linux and with limited hardware. There are a lot of compatibility problems with launchers, drm and anti-cheat ... but try to extrapolate out to ten years from now. Who the fuck knows? If Valve can do this, there's nothing stopping Amazon, Google or pretty much anybody from doing the same. Proton is out there. It can be used freely except for the steam api portion which is proprietary.

Could someone make an arch linux vm for cloud with a fork of Proton. Sure, they could. Will they? No one knows. Is it impossible to run a cloud gaming business without Windows vms? Nope. Windows has been losing market share in the desktop space for more than ten years, but in ten more years they could be back at 90+% or they could be down to 60%, depending on how bad they fuck up, or how well their competitors do.

This is my main problem. Everyone thinks they can predict the future, but they can't. You just have to look back over the last ten years of technology and see all of the things that happened that no one could have predicted. And if they say they predicted all of them, they're lying.

 

[eastmen]

I don't actually care about the Steam Deck specifically. The Steam Deck has just proved that you can run Windows games very well even on linux and with limited hardware. There are a lot of compatibility problems with launchers, drm and anti-cheat ... but try to extrapolate out to ten years from now. Who the fuck knows? If Valve can do this, there's nothing stopping Amazon, Google or pretty much anybody from doing the same. Proton is out there. It can be used freely except for the steam api portion which is proprietary.

Could someone make an arch linux vm for cloud with a fork of Proton. Sure, they could. Will they? No one knows. Is it impossible to run a cloud gaming business without Windows vms? Nope. Windows has been losing market share in the desktop space for more than ten years, but in ten more years they could be back at 90+% or they could be down to 60%, depending on how bad they fuck up, or how well their competitors do.

This is my main problem. Everyone thinks they can predict the future, but they can't. You just have to look back over the last ten years of technology and see all of the things that happened that no one could have predicted. And if they say they predicted all of them, they're lying.

I think what Steam deck shows is that with a fixed hardware that doesn't change you can run windows current windows games very well. But we don't know how that translates to linux at large and over large differences in hardware. We don't even know if going into the future they can run new games. We'd have to see

I agree that other companies don't need windows , they just need to do the work themselves like MS did. I find it laughable that the UK is blocking this because of cloud a market that only exists because MS is investing in it. It sounds like once the sony provided reasons got out that sony provided the data they had to figure out something else to call this on.

We will see what the future brings. I for one will laugh if Ms just goes and buys exclusivity for console and streaming of all AB software going forward. They certainly have the money.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

This is my main problem. Everyone thinks they can predict the future, but they can't. You just have to look back over the last ten years of technology and see all of the things that happened that no one could have predicted. And if they say they predicted all of them, they're lying.

Yup, remember when Blackberry was on top of the mobile phone market? Or Nokia? Now, in 2005, how many would have predicted that one of those or both of them would dominate the phone market in 2015? How many would have predicted that neither of them would be relevant in the phone market in 2015?

Regards,
SB

 

[eastmen]

Yup, remember when Blackberry was on top of the mobile phone market? Or Nokia? Now, in 2005, how many would have predicted that one of those or both of them would dominate the phone market in 2015? How many would have predicted that neither of them would be relevant in the phone market in 2015?

Regards,
SB

They issue with then vs now is lock in. There was nothing on Nokia or Blackberry that couldn't be copied and included in a rival product. Now with ios and android people have a lot of money tied into apps and content on the platforms. The iphone was a failure before a $200-$300 price cut and the introduction of the app store which was fully compatible with all of itunes music so people who already owned their music on apples platform made the no brainer switch to ios.

The same thing is starting to happen now in the video game market. It's very hard to get someone who has been buying video games on steam for 20 years to suddenly go to another platform. Epic is burning through free games right now trying to do it off teh back of on of the most popular ip's of the last decade. With consoles we are also starting to see it happen as software backwards compatibility is becoming more of a thing. People with hundreds or thousands of dollars worth of ps4 games are more likely to buy ps5 vs switching to xbox. If they have ps4 /ps5 games and then the ps6 comes out they are even more likely to move to the ps6. It would be the same on xbox. If people have thousands of dollars of games purchased on the xbox platform they are more likely to move over to the next xbox. The more you get the harder it is to switch over.

So not only would a company have to come out of no where in the video game world but be able to either take linux and make it viable and then get all the third party companies out there to release on their platform but they would at least have to offer parity with first party content vs ms and sony and nintendo to get them to leave. After all who would buy a console that just has all the third party titles when you can buy an xbox and get all that plus the ms titles or a playstation and get all the third party content plus all of sony's stuff ? Oh yea and you know what if you buy the ps6 you can also stream or purchase games all the way back to the ps1. If you buy an xbox next you can buy and play games all the way back to the xbox original.

The console market is very different than phones from 15 years ago or even consoles from 15 years ago