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

Shortbread said:
It is, but this is expected. Remember how Microsoft, Google, Qualcomm, and a few others were asking the FTC and other foreign regulators to block the Nvidia and Arm acquisition, as it would stifle competition and create a monopoly? Now that it is the other way around, the FTC and CMA are monsters and can't be trusted. All companies do this gaslighting bit, it's the corporate loving fanboys and shills who can't see beyond their noses on how these matters work. Regardless of the CAT appeal outcome, it still boils down to CMA's finial decision. So...
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Do you seriously wanna compare this MS/Activision game market merger with the Nvidia/ARM deal? WTF..
 
SmooTh said:
ec.europa.eu

EVP Vestager keynote speech at the International Forum of the Studienvereinigung Kartellrecht:

Good morning, Thank you to the Studienvereinigung Kartellrecht for bringing this event to Brussels. You asked me to open today's event with remarks on “current issues in European competition policy”.
ec.europa.eu ec.europa.eu
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The key to their acceptance...

Consider the pre-merger situation, where Activision does not license its games to cloud services. So, in this case, the remedy opens the door for smaller cloud services in the EU to offer big games on their platforms, widening choice for gamers. The merits of this remedy was recognised across the spectrum - by developers, by cloud gaming providers, by distributors and of course also by consumer groups. And that is because it unlocked the potential of the cloud market.
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Basically the merger and the remedy represent the best chance for smaller market players to be able to compete with larger market players in the cloud market and thus potentially establish themselves as the defacto cloud gaming provider.

10 years is an extremely long time for a nascent market (as cloud gaming potentially is) to both attempt to establish itself as well as attempt to figure out which competitor(s) will provide a compelling service to consumers (assuming it ever happens). In 10 years Microsoft went from controlling the nascent tablet market to being a distant 3rd place also ran. In 10 years S3 went from being one of the largest Video card makers in the world with one of the first and most dominant 3D accelerator products line to irrelevancy in the market. In 10 years Matrox went from from controlling the high end 3D consumer accelerator market to irrelevancy in the market. In 10 years 3dfx went from dominating high end sales (after taking it away from other established players) to no longer existing. 10 years is a long freaking time.

While one could argue that for the right price at some point in the future ABK "might" allow their games to be streamed over the cloud, it's highly probable that not a single smaller cloud gaming service would be able to afford to license it assuming ABK even allowed 3rd party companies to stream it rather than only streaming it themselves.

Regards,
SB
 
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Silent_Buddha said:
The key to their acceptance...



Basically the merger and the remedy represent the best chance for smaller market players to be able to compete with larger market players in the cloud market and thus potentially establish themselves as the defacto cloud gaming provider.

10 years is an extremely long time for a nascent market (as cloud gaming potentially is) to both attempt to establish itself as well as attempt to figure out which competitor(s) will provide a compelling service to consumers (assuming it ever happens). In 10 years Microsoft went from controlling the nascent tablet market to being a distant 3rd place also ran. In 10 years S3 went from being one of the largest Video card makers in the world with one of the first and most dominant 3D accelerator products line to irrelevancy in the market. In 10 years Matrox went from from controlling the high end 3D consumer accelerator market to irrelevancy in the market. In 10 years 3dfx went from dominating high end sales (after taking it away from other established players) to no longer existing. 10 years is a long freaking time.

While one could argue that for the right price at some point in the future ABK "might" allow their games to be streamed over the cloud, it's highly probable that not a single smaller cloud gaming service would be able to afford to license it assuming ABK even allowed 3rd party companies to stream it rather than only streaming it themselves.

Regards,
SB
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The other likely scenario is that if the deal goes through MS just offers up a larger amount of money than sony for the marketing deal and as part of the marketing deal brings ABK games only xcloud. That would be more devastating than MS purchasing them
 
MS is abundant in money. They are abundant enough to keep going for far longer. If Sony ever repeats a mistake like they did with PS3 and lose the market, with MS owning Zenimax and ABK, and considering Sony's lack of liquidity, they will be harder to even impossible to recover. Because MS can clearly still have support from these big publishers even as third parties, whereas Sony can lose support fully. MS supports PS only because it has a substantial market share and it will make zero business sense to fully remove support. If ever Sony's market share shrinks, and MS can tap into it, MS can easilly block releases to absorb it, their will be no way for Sony to gain support because MS calls the shots and it will be even harder for Sony to buy or pay for any deal.
 
Silent_Buddha said:
Basically the merger and the remedy represent the best chance for smaller market players to be able to compete with larger market players in the cloud market and thus potentially establish themselves as the defacto cloud gaming provider.
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How? Just how? How would a smaller market player become the defector cloud gaming provider when the infrastructure costs number in the tens-to-hundreds of billions of dollars? How is that ever going to happen? Who are these smaller players, the King of Saudi Arabia?
 
DSoup said:
How? Just how? How would a smaller market player become the defector cloud gaming provider when the infrastructure costs number in the tens-to-hundreds of billions of dollars? How is that ever going to happen? Who are these smaller players, the King of Saudi Arabia?
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"Saudi" just bought 30% share in one of the larger ISP's in Norway, of course just a very none related anecdote, but it made me chuckle :)
 
Shifty Geezer said:
I *really* dislike discussions about personalities. And frickin' Twitter conversations held by other people. Unless these people are executives at MS, AB, Sony, the CMA, or some meaningful player in the acquisition, debating their credentials is just noise. Washwoman, gossipy type noise.
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Typically, I would agree with you on this, however, when someone interjects themself as an expert and has the gaming audience ear, they should be called out on any purposeful disinformation and bad faith arguments. Just my opinion anyhow...
 
Shifty Geezer said:
Are they being relied on in this thread for key info?
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No. Florian has been just as wrong as anyone else. And he started as someone that was biased but had a reason to be, and just became overtly biased in which I think overrides his ability to predict on what will actually transgress. His information is no longer as useful, as it were last year when this proceeding started.

My general viewpoint is that this particular merger is not like any other, there's not really a precedent for this to follow and say this particular merger will follow this path or that path. We are all really just waiting around to see what happens. As it stands, it's blocked in UK and that they seem pretty confident they can override US. What that actually means going forward, no one really knows.
 
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Shortbread said:
Well, yes! There are plenty of his twitter-post within this thread used as information.
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A moderator quoted Florian Müeller expressing what I assume is intended to be an independent view on the situation. Moderators have the power to end/delete conversations and opinions that they don't agree with or think relevant, so introducing a source that is seemingly relevant is fair game for comment on that individual's actual independence. Particularly when the individual has been, and tried to conceal, their connection to one of the relevant parties.
 
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DSoup said:
How? Just how? How would a smaller market player become the defector cloud gaming provider when the infrastructure costs number in the tens-to-hundreds of billions of dollars? How is that ever going to happen? Who are these smaller players, the King of Saudi Arabia?
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Anyone who can get venture capitalists on board. That's like saying what smaller search provider is going to take down Yahoo, Alta Vista, etc.? And they were dominating in a market segment that was much larger and more established than cloud gaming is today. Alternatively, any corporation entering a new market. People from the 80's and 90's raise your hand if you predicted back in 1993 that Apple would make Sony almost completely irrelvant in portable music players by 2003?

Or what smaller phone maker is going to take down Nokia or Blackberry? Or what smaller market player is going to take on RCA (basically defunct) or General Electric (now a minor player in consumer Electronics). Or what smaller market player with a non-existent audio player division is going to make Sony (who was absolutely dominant in the portable audio player market) mostly irrelevant in the portable audio player market in less than 10 years time?

History is littered with smaller market players supplanting market players who were dominant in a market for a decade or multiple decades.

Smaller market player just means small in that market. It doesn't have to be a startup (like Google was), it could be an established but financially troubled company (like when Apple pushed Sony out of the portable media player market) or it could be a large profitable company entering a market for the first time (like Apple and Google pushing out Nokia and Blackberry) or Japanese TV makers ending US dominance in Autos, Televisions, etc. to then have their dominance in Televisions ended by the S. Korean companies.

And in a lot (I'd argue the majority) of cases where a larger dominant market player is pushed out, in the span of less than 10 years they became either a minor player or just a footnote in the history of that market. 10 years is a LONG freaking time.

Regards,
SB
 
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