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

[Deleted member 11852]

Why is twitch and amazon listed separately ? Is the CMA that inept that they don't understand its the same company ?

Because they are different legal entities in different markets? If it was about who ultimately owned the companies competing, the regulators may as well just talk to Chinese investors because they own great chunks of these companies.

I don't know who Tom Warren is, but does he genuinely think an interview with Phil Spencer on his website's podcast is an internationally legally binding legal commitment with actionable consequences? Is this guy an idiot or he is trolling? Somebody tell me, because I really don't know.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Because they are different legal entities in different markets? If it was about who ultimately owned the companies competing, the regulators may as well just talk to Chinese investors because they own great chunks of these companies.

I don't know who Tom Warren is, but does he genuinely think an interview with Phil Spencer on his website's podcast is an internationally legally binding legal commitment with actionable consequences? Is this guy an idiot or he is trolling? Somebody tell me, because I really don't know.

Regardless of where the interview happens, he's still talking about things as an official representative of Microsoft. As such there are actual legal ramifications involved if he can be shown to be lying about Microsoft's intentions, not just for himself but for Microsoft as well. I don't think he started off that interview by saying that anything he says is purely his own opinion and do not reflect the reality of what is being considered at MS. Even that would still not make him wholly unaccountable for anything he said WRT Microsoft.

Granted, he does have an out in that he only says they would consider it. But if Sony then shows that they made a significantly compelling offer to keep COD on PlayStation long term, and MS still refused then at the very least stockholders could force out anyone they felt was associated with said refusal after that statement by Phil.

Regards,
SB

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Regardless of where the interview happens, he's still talking about things as an official representative of Microsoft. As such there are actual legal ramifications involved if he can be shown to be lying about Microsoft's intentions, not just for himself but for Microsoft as well.

What are the legal ramifications?

Company spokespeople need to be careful about misleading investors but podcasts fall outsides because they are not considered by financial regulators as communications to investors. The contention with interviews as evidence or binding commitments is that statement are often couched with "I believe..", "we intend.." and "we have no plans.." and at the time of the statement, it's nearly impossible to disprove such a statement were false. And would it be fair to hold people to such soft commitment plans legitimately change?

Microsoft evolved from "Kinect is Essential" (February 2014) to "Kinect What?" (May 2014) in mere months, so was this misleading investors or just a change in the business position? This is the issue. Microsoft intending to support PlayStation indefinitely now, does not mean that three months after an acquisition is approved, that it's no longer in their business interest. If this was genuinely Microsoft's position, they could have been committed to that legally in the respective territories: in the US (first to proceed to 2nd stage investigation), UK (second) and EU (third).

But - as I'm increasingly exhausted of posting - this is not just about Call of Duty and PlayStation. That is Microsoft's narrative but is not only what UK and EU regulators are concerned with. The US process is opaque but something clearly concerned them.

 

[eastmen]

Because they are different legal entities in different markets? If it was about who ultimately owned the companies competing, the regulators may as well just talk to Chinese investors because they own great chunks of these companies.

I don't know who Tom Warren is, but does he genuinely think an interview with Phil Spencer on his website's podcast is an internationally legally binding legal commitment with actionable consequences? Is this guy an idiot or he is trolling? Somebody tell me, because I really don't know.

But twitch doesn't have any type of streaming service or any type of game service. They just allow people to broadcast their games. MS has no service like that anymore. Amazon has luma or whatever its called and their own game studios

 

[eastmen]

What are the legal ramifications?

Company spokespeople need to be careful about misleading investors but podcasts fall outsides because they are not considered by financial regulators as communications to investors. The contention with interviews as evidence or binding commitments is that statement are often couched with "I believe..", "we intend.." and "we have no plans.." and at the time of the statement, it's nearly impossible to disprove such a statement were false. And would it be fair to hold people to such soft commitment plans legitimately change?

Microsoft evolved from "Kinect is Essential" (February 2014) to "Kinect What?" (May 2014) in mere months, so was this misleading investors or just a change in the business position? This is the issue. Microsoft intending to support PlayStation indefinitely now, does not mean that three months after an acquisition is approved, that it's no longer in their business interest. If this was genuinely Microsoft's position, they could have been committed to that legally in the respective territories: in the US (first to proceed to 2nd stage investigation), UK (second) and EU (third).

But - as I'm increasingly exhausted of posting - this is not just about Call of Duty and PlayStation. That is Microsoft's narrative but is not only what UK and EU regulators are concerned with. The US process is opaque but something clearly concerned them.

Ultimately regardless of what we argue here I don't ever see a company saying to a regulating body that they will always provide x service to another company. It makes little sense because it puts all the power into the hands of the other country. At the end of the day Sony can simply say well we want cod exlcusive to play station and want 90% of the profits. MS's hands will be tied if they agreed to always have the titles on the playstation.

What will more likely happen is that MS will agree to good faith negotiations with sony to keep COD on the platform. If either side asks for something outrageous they will likely go to the regulators and complain.

The main question I'd be asking the CMA and EU regulators is that if COD was so important to the success of a cloud gaming service why did sony not get the rights for their streaming service. COD has had exclusive marketing contracts and content contracts with Activision for COD and I don't recall any of that with their streaming service.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

But twitch doesn't have any type of streaming service or any type of game service. They just allow people to broadcast their games. MS has no service like that anymore. Amazon has luma or whatever its called and their own game studios

I don't use Twitch, but you've made an interesting point. Microsoft bought Beam, then killed it when it didn't work out.
What about all of the other companies mentioned?

 

[eastmen]

I don't use Twitch, but you've made an interesting point. Microsoft bought Beam, then killed it when it didn't work out.
What about all of the other companies mentioned?

Well lets look

Let's just remind ourselves of the main competitors listed by the CMA, it was: Amazon, Apple, EA, Epic, Facebook, Google Netflix, Nintendo, Nvidia, Sony, Twitch, Ubisoft, Utomik and Valve.

This is quoted from your post that I originally replied to

Amazon has Luna its cloud streaming , it has aws , it has amazon music / video / audible . It has its amazon game studios , it has its own engine that it liscenses out to third parties. It also has a pc program where you can buy games

Apple has the app store , apple music , apple tv , I believe its own audio books / book store. It has apple arcade which is I believe around a 100m users which is more than Xcloud and psn combined.

EA has origin / ea launcher and have EA access as a sub service that you also get a free tier of if you pay for game pass ultimate.

Epic has the most popular engine used by 3rd parties and first parties , it has its epic store on windows pc which pays for exclusives and gives them away for free.

Facebook has its own game video streaming called facebook.com/gaming you can also stream games to play but i think its jsut phone type games. Facebook also owns oculus now and is called meta and is pushing its way into VR with its own gaming platform there

Google has youtube and the now defunct stadia. It has its google cloud service that competes with azure and aws

Nintendo of course has its extremely popular Switch platform which is both a handheld and dedicated console. I believe it has now moved past ps4 in terms of install base doing it in way less time too. They have their nintendo online subscription which includes game streaming of n64 games I believe

Sony has well the second most popular or the most popular console depending on what you consider the switch. They have thier own online sub and their own online game streaming sub which they got from buying gakki and onlive.

Twitch is part of amazon.

Ubbisoft as far as I know just has the Ubisoft launcher on pc.

Utomik seems to have a large selection of cell phone games and pc games to play. it's not really streaming per say , from wht I understand of it you need a computer and what it does is downloads a bit of the game , lets you start to play and downloads the rest as you play. So if you wanted to play a high end pc game you need a high end pc

Valve of course has steam which is the most popular pc gaming platform I think it just broke the record of concurrent users at 27.9m users and there are a a 120m monthly active users which puts its install base above the ps4 and just under the switch I believe . They also allow you to stream yourself playing video games on the platform

They forgot geforce now which uses Nvidia's high end gpus to give you cutting edge pc performance through a stream


If they want to account for twitch , sure its big but look at all these sites like it

All video game streaming sites & platforms | Esports Charts

Full list of all streaming websites and platforms where you can stream your gaming. Find best alternatives to Twitch and Youtube

escharts.com

Then for xcloud like services there are also Shadow , Jump , Loudplay ,blacknut , Boosteroid and vortex

 

[Cyan]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1592493424493875202

he also made it clear something that I wanted to mention some time ago but never wrote about it, and it's the fact that the move is not because of CoD but King, which makes LOADS of money in the mobile space, much much more than CoD.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

he also made it clear something that I wanted to mention some time ago but never wrote about it, and it's the fact that the move is not because of CoD but King, which makes LOADS of money in the mobile space, much much more than CoD.

If you read the Activision-Blizzard 2021 annual report it sates that 40% of revenue comes from mobile and stats what the top franchises are: "For the years ended December 31, 2021, 2020, and 2019, our top three franchises—Call of Duty, Candy Crush, and Warcraft—collectively accounted for 82%, 79%, and 72%, respectively, of our net revenues. No other franchise comprised 10% or more of our net revenues in those periods."

While mobile generates a lot of revenue, it's remains behind Call of Duty, despite mobile being an absolutely massive market in terms of number of engaged consumers. Collectively they spend a disproportionately low amount of money.

 

[Cyan]

If you read the Activision-Blizzard 2021 annual report it sates that 40% of revenue comes from mobile and stats what the top franchises are: "For the years ended December 31, 2021, 2020, and 2019, our top three franchises—Call of Duty, Candy Crush, and Warcraft—collectively accounted for 82%, 79%, and 72%, respectively, of our net revenues. No other franchise comprised 10% or more of our net revenues in those periods."

While mobile generates a lot of revenue, it's remains behind Call of Duty, despite mobile being an absolutely massive market in terms of number of engaged consumers. Collectively they spend a disproportionately low amount of money.

hmmmmm interesting, that's something I hadn't read before. The importance I attributed to mobile gaming wasn't backed up by numbers, ok, although my point was that I thought mobile gaming is the main reason behind this acquisition. Reading yesterday's news, Spencer kinda confirms something similar, although money isn't mentioned. He wants to stay relevant in gaming. Maybe it's more like competing with Apple and Amazon too rather than just the desktop space where Sony is the main competitor.

https://www.vgchartz.com/article/45...-more-about-growing-mobile-than-call-of-duty/

"The number that’s not in the Candy Crush/King number is Call of Duty: Mobile and Diablo mobile, which are big franchises that exist in that Activision and Blizzard bucket that are also major players on phones," said Spencer. "Yes, the idea that Activision is all about Call of Duty on console is a construct that might get created by our console competitor and maybe some players out there."

He admitted that Microsoft is irrelevant in the mobile gaming market right now and even after five or six years of increasing their presence on the PC market they still have work to do.

Lots of work to be done in the PC space, indeed, the PC gamepass app even after improving a lot over time, continues to be quite mediocre as an app.

 

[orangpelupa]

mediocre

That's an understatement...

 

[see colon]

Lots of work to be done in the PC space, indeed, the PC gamepass app even after improving a lot over time, continues to be quite mediocre as an app.

I will say, gamebar is pretty good, though. But I do have a soft spot for widgets in general.

 

[Cyan]

I will say, gamebar is pretty good, though. But I do have a soft spot for widgets in general.

the feature I like the most now is that you can enable/disable HDR directly from the gamebar without having to go to Settings. Also it shows the DirectX version you are using.

 

[orangpelupa]

I will say, gamebar is pretty good, though. But I do have a soft spot for widgets in general.

yeah gamebar is good but thats not part of gamepass app and has been good for years

gamepass app tho... (or its xbox app?)

maybe they would rebrand blizzard app as gamepass app.

 

[see colon]

yeah gamebar is good but thats not part of gamepass app and has been good for years

Yeah, I know. But it is part of Microsoft's push to make PC gaming better. Gamebar is the unsung hero of Microsoft's PC support. Quick settings, screen capture, recording, calculator widget, you name it. I even sometimes have a browser open with steam chat open because UWP apps don't support steam overlay.

Honestly nothing compares to the good they did with Games for Windows. People remember it as a complete failure, but it brought Xbox achievements for PC, tried to standardize system requirements and packaging, and most importantly, make controller support on PC good. Every Games for Windows game had to support the Xbox 360 controller and have a default configuration. This sounds like a simple and obvious thing, but this was an uncommon thing when GFW launched. Previously games would launch with controller support but you would have to assign buttons for every game. Plus, developers had no idea how many buttons or sticks your controller might have.

 

[orangpelupa]

maybe microsoft should just revamp windows store app to make it good for games and non games. currently tge games tab in windows store app is full of trash. to find AAA, AA, A games need to go to xbox app.

but xbox app is buggy and downloads are still beingh handled by windows store app.

 

[Nisaaru]

That they removed LFG from the xbox.app on consoles which was its only meaningful function 2 years ago makes the whole app completely useless to me.

 

[SmooTh]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1593656924154712064

 

[BRiT]

Everyone waiting for someone else to turn their report in so they can copy the answers...

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Alternatively not enough companies offering compelling arguments against the acquisition and the EU Commission is hoping more companies will offer something that they can use to rule against the acquisition.

If they already had enough evidence that supports ruling against it, it's very unlikely that the date would have been extended.

Regards,
SB