Facebook says that they have a
small presence in the video game environment:
1) FB Gaming, a hosting platform to play games and watch other people live's streams
2) Virtual reality headsets through
Meta.
According to them, in FB Gaming and Meta Quest the majority of games are from third party.
FB doesn't believe that the games market should be
segmented by platform/hardware due to the intense competition of titles between platforms (I mean, they are the first ones not interested in that segmentation
). They also consider that a
segmentation by type of distribution channel (digital, physical or subscription) is not justified either given the intense competition for titles between the channels (the CMA from UK disagrees with that because the report from last week talked about the subscription service as a relevant market).
They think that platforms compete for user time and engagement, that the boundaries between platforms are disappearing and that players want to play via multiple platforms thanks to cross play, a trend that they see growing.
They think that
barriers to market entry are generally low thanks to innovations such as app stores, APIs, SDKs, cloud computing or new business models that give developers more options to monetize. Apple Arcade, Amazon Luna, Netflix Games, Google Stadia or the Epic Games Store are examples of recent entries in the distribution of games.
The main developers and publishers that they see competing with Microsoft and ABK are, among others: Bandai Namco, Capcom, EA, Embracer, Epic, Konami, NetEase, Nintendo, Riot, Sega, Sony, Square Enix, Take-Two, Tencent, Ubisoft, Valve, Warner Bros or Valve. They also mention Zynga (owned by Take-Two) and Xbox Games Studios
xD.
All of them should be able to produce AAA games.
In relation to the
catalogue of ABK and if they publish games hard to replicate, compite with or that cannot be replaced, there are a few redacted paragraphs but they say that the electronic game industry is highly dynamic and competitive, with an abundance of content produced by several developers and with constant entries from new players.
The say that
Meta 's first-party software services include
Crayta, an in the cloud service for the development of electronic games and universes (first time hearing about it). They also offer some first party games such as Beat Saber in Steam or the PS Store.
When asked about the positive or negative aspects of this transaction... we've got a full page of redacted content. :S
They talk about
G2A.com, Gamers Gate and SideQuest as examples of digital distributions platforms for video games that have been successful without prior video game experience in the market.
In relation to the importance of exclusive titles, FB says that while unique titles provide some upfront marketing value (for example, interest in a platform and can promote early adoption) exclusivity is often limited in time and developers tend to switch to a wider distribution.
Regarding the advertising market, they believe that any segmentation is pointless because there is a single global market for it (MS believes that the ABK acquisition will also affect the advertising market in the videogame industry).
In the end, it seems like they really believe in the idea that the relationship of a device with the gaming experience is going to lose importance.
