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

[PSman1700]

If PSVR 2 takes off, MS will likely announce something. But if PSVR 2 sells similarly to PSVR, then MS likely won't bother. Hell, if PSVR 2 doubles the sales of PSVR, MS will likely not bother. IMO, it'd need to sell in Quest 2 numbers or greater and most importantly MS would need to see sales of VR titles start to take off before they commit to a VR release for Xbox. Basically it needs to move more software (games) than Quest 2 before MS would likely announce VR for Xbox.

Ive been wondering why Sony doubles down on VR so much, it seems a really hard market to expand upon. At the same time its good that someone is considering it for serious gaming atleast. Right now we only have HL Alyx thats a worthy VR game. If Sony can inspire others for more of that kind of games its nice. As said, someone has to start with it.

 

[cheapchips]

Ive been wondering why Sony doubles down on VR so much, it seems a really hard market to expand upon. At the same time its good that someone is considering it for serious gaming atleast. Right now we only have HL Alyx thats a worthy VR game. If Sony can inspire others for more of that kind of games its nice. As said, someone has to start with it.

Among the reasons is that they're a hardware company. They've always enjoyed selling bits and bobs.

 

[PSman1700]

Among the reasons is that they're a hardware company. They've always enjoyed selling bits and bobs.

Indeed their in the entertainment segment aswell, TV, audio, mobile devices etc.

 

[ChuckeRearmed]

That said, MS continues to invest in the development environment and software environment for VR. Both of which have seen recent activity with software updates in addition to MS stating their commitment to AR/VR mixed reality. Makes sense as AR/VR sees some profit in the business, corporate, educational and medical sectors. What is currently unknown is whether and how much they are investing into R&D for VR headsets. Will there be a future WMR-2 baseline?

But is their VR toolkit or Windows MR (don't remember how it is called) any good?
I mean I heard that WSA (subsystem for android) is not really great but I am not sure about their AR/VR API implementation.
I have always had the impression that anything that is not gaming related in Windows is not really performant. Like DirectX and Xbox are good, Game Pass App is bad (due to rumored infighting between Xbox and Windows division).

I personally believe that for them it would be easier just to add support of various headsets on the platform. Especially the wireless ones (not bound to Facebook).

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Ive been wondering why Sony doubles down on VR so much,...

I think they just believe in it. On paper, it has potential above any other hardware. Where others may look at the market as it presently is, I think Sony are chasing the vision as it might be with more conviction than most.

 

[Nesh]

I think they just believe in it. On paper, it has potential above any other hardware. Where others may look at the market as it presently is, I think Sony are chasing the vision as it might be with more conviction than most.

Metaverse is showing where interactive media are going. VR will be a big part of it. Sony is setting the foundations that will allow them to be ready to join

 

[JPT]

The game is afoot
iroboto vs dsoup

Current price
Microsoft 303.33 USD
Sony 13,135 JPY

edit: nintendo 54,780 JPY might as well add the dark horse

Lets check back in a month and see who made the better investment

I just took a screenshot of this and will sell the NFT's for that screenshoot, just hollar@me, betting on that it will make me more money than iroboto or dsoup will make on the stocks

 

[Silent_Buddha]

I just took a screenshot of this and will sell the NFT's for that screenshoot, just hollar@me, betting on that it will make me more money than iroboto or dsoup will make on the stocks

I'm waiting for you to put it up for sale. I'll then copy that by taking a screencap of it and thus sell an exact copy of your screenshot attached to an NFT.

Regards,
SB

 

[MrSpiggott]

$69 billion seems an awful lot to spend on something that has no real material value, somewhat like the worth given to bit coin. They've paid an extraordinary amount of money for some very successful franchise names, but have no real way of guaranteeing their future success, that's down to a few key developers, who are free to leave at any time; maybe forming another studio and creating a better product. A few bad games, a few missteps and the value of the studio could plummet.

 

[eastmen]

But is their VR toolkit or Windows MR (don't remember how it is called) any good?
I mean I heard that WSA (subsystem for android) is not really great but I am not sure about their AR/VR API implementation.
I have always had the impression that anything that is not gaming related in Windows is not really performant. Like DirectX and Xbox are good, Game Pass App is bad (due to rumored infighting between Xbox and Windows division).

I personally believe that for them it would be easier just to add support of various headsets on the platform. Especially the wireless ones (not bound to Facebook).

Windows Mixed reality is as good as any of the platforms. The downfall is they farmed out the building to oems and because of that headsets had varying levels of tech and build quality. HP makes great windows mixed reality headsets. MS also has some amazing vr and ar tech internally that I haven't seen else where. If Microsoft wanted to release a headset for the xbox series x they could do so easily. They have the tecnology , the only thing that may lack is controllers but even there the xbox team can do some great thing . The kinect azure tech is some of the best machine vision techology out there.

I think they just believe in it. On paper, it has potential above any other hardware. Where others may look at the market as it presently is, I think Sony are chasing the vision as it might be with more conviction than most.

They just don't want to be left out if vr starts to encroach on traditional gaming in major ways. It's a lot easier to counter if they already have support for it then to have to create stuff from scratch.

Metaverse is showing where interactive media are going. VR will be a big part of it. Sony is setting the foundations that will allow them to be ready to join

Sony finally has the hardware that makes it worth while. There are years of content on the pc side that would never have worked properly on a ps4 , move controllers and a single camera. Now they have all the pieces and hte ps5 should easily stay ahead of the quest for the next few iterations. Now the vr hardware will age badly but that is all vr

 

[Silent_Buddha]

$69 billion seems an awful lot to spend on something that has no real material value, somewhat like the worth given to bit coin. They've paid an extraordinary amount of money for some very successful franchise names, but have no real way of guaranteeing their future success, that's down to a few key developers, who are free to leave at any time; maybe forming another studio and creating a better product. A few bad games, a few missteps and the value of the studio could plummet.

You could say that about any gaming related corporate entity. Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, EA, whoever. You could also say the same thing about every motion picture corporation, music production corporation or video production corporation.

It seems odd that you'd equate corporate entities like that to bitcoin. Sure, a game much like a book or a music artist has no intrinsic value associated with it other than what people are willing to pay for it, but those are generally much less ephemeral with much more legal protection than say bit coin.

Any tech corporation in the world that you can think of ... the engineers and employees can choose to leave at any time and form another company if they wanted. The same goes for any media corporation (books, video or music). Heck, what worth is an automobile company if all the engineers decide to leave?

Regards,
SB

 

[MrSpiggott]

I think numbers can be so large sometimes that we don't realise how big they are.
So I think it's with saying again.
69 BILLION dollars!

You wouldn't pay $69 billion for a book or some of the other examples you gave.
I'm not arguing against buying Activision, just the value its been given.
Taking a look at a list of companies with market capitalizations of about this value there are plenty with more stable guaranteed income streams.

 

[eastmen]

I think numbers can be so large sometimes that we don't realise how big they are.
So I think it's with saying again.
69 BILLION dollars!

You wouldn't pay $69 billion for a book or some of the other examples you gave.
I'm not arguing against buying Activision, just the value its been given.
Taking a look at a list of companies with market capitalizations of about this value there are plenty with more stable guaranteed income streams.

Call of duty has been a huge seller since the launch year of the xbox 360 which was 2005. WOW has had millions of subscribers since 2004. Diablo has always sold extremely well also. So you have franchises that have lasted decades and still sell well year in and year out.

This isn't like buying a book this is like buying harry potter franchies.

 

[MrSpiggott]

If you spent $69B on a successful, profitable car company and some of it's top people left, you'd still be able to build cars, you'd still be making money. The factory wouldn't have prised itself from it's foundations, wandered up the road and started building cars for someone else. My argument is that Microsoft has just bought some names, the value of which can be extremely volatile, which is why I used the possibly ill thought out bitcoin analogy.

 

[eastmen]

If you spent $69B on a successful, profitable car company and some of it's top people left, you'd still be able to build cars, you'd still be making money. The factory wouldn't have prised itself from it's foundations, wandered up the road and started building cars for someone else. My argument is that Microsoft has just bought some names, the value of which can be extremely volatile, which is why I used the possibly ill thought out bitcoin analogy.

This isn't really the 80s or 90s when one person was responsible for a game or at least the majority of a game. So if some people leave after a purchase it shouldn't affect anything. Also you keep saying the properties are volatile but as I pointed out these are decade long franchises that are still pulling in lots of money. Sure tastes can change but they really haven't changed enough to affect them over the decades.

 

[MrSpiggott]

I don't think your Harry Potter book example is a fair one.
Those old books are going to keep selling every year. New kids are produced all the time that'll want to read them, it's a guaranteed income stream for little to no investment. The same can't be said about the early CODs. Who's going to buy COD1?
Only the latest couple of releases are going to be bringing in any money and gamers are fickle.
Again, I'm not criticising buying Amazon, just the extraordinary value given to it.

 

[MrSpiggott]

Oops. I meant Activision, not Amazon. Damn muscle memory!

 

[eastmen]

I don't think your Harry Potter book example is a fair one.
Those old books are going to keep selling every year. New kids are produced all the time that'll want to read them, it's a guaranteed income stream for little to no investment. The same can't be said about the early CODs. Who's going to buy COD1?
Only the latest couple of releases are going to be bringing in any money and gamers are fickle.
Again, I'm not criticising buying Amazon, just the extraordinary value given to it.

Not sure how many people would buy COD1 but I am sure many people would try them and engage with them via a subscription service. My nephews and nieces get a kick of playing older games with me. But the past titles are just a bonus. It's really the fact that the next COD will move millions of copies and I am one of those who thing as soon as MS can they will move it to be exclusive to xbox / pc. WOW will continue to have millions of subscribers , Overwatch will have millions of players and so on and so forth. That brings more money into Microsoft.

Remember this is a cash deal and this cash sits in banks not making MS much money . Just a quick bing search shows FY 22 Q1 Net income for microsoft was 20.5B GAAP and 17B non-GAAP.

 

[zed]

I just took a screenshot of this and will sell the NFT's for that screenshoot, just hollar@me, betting on that it will make me more money than iroboto or dsoup will make on the stocks

I was looking at this news site just now and they were talking about trumps new company thats gonna launch his twitter rival, 'truth news' or something hilarious and they said its on the stockmarket so I was curious.
You wouldnt believe it when I looked, the shares were valued at $66.66 each. Had to quickly take a screenshot

nothing to see here folks, just a man doing gods work

EDIT: Actually I see DWAC is the ones in the partnership with trump
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_Media_&_Technology_Group

 

[BRiT]

Friendly reminder, let's not delve into RPSC topics, so keep this about Microsoft's Acquisition of Activision. Larger discussions about the concept of money or ownership or implied values are RPSC topics (Socio-economic) .