None of these companies have put their content behind a hardware lock. Microsoft doesnt want you to play CoD, they want you to buy a XBox to play CoD or Warcraft, or Diablo...
Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard King for $69 Billion on 2023-10-13
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I was referring to Microsoft making tangible efforts regarding continued support of acquired properties on non-Microsoft platforms. As you said, Brad Smith here is just saying that want to keep Activision-Blizzard properties on PlayStation and maybe bring it to Nintendo. As the Microsoft evidence disclosed by the CMA shows, Microsoft did nothing on this until September, after the phase 2 processes began to kick-in. If they had been sincere about this, why do nothing for most of the year?
I think that they don't care until you pay
The console market is severely limited and doesn’t make enough cash to warrant the spend.
They did not offer to sign 10 year deals with Nvidia, Steam, Nintendo, Sony and others only to take it away after 10 years. The investment and growth of your IP on those platforms are massive returns that Xbox could never obtain on its own.
They will support it after 10 years.
There are some obvious caveats:
Xbox will be the lead console
Xbox features will be used
After 10 years the direction of COD will very much be where MS wants to take the series
Xbox will now own battle.net and King which if properly integrated into their own store should bolster them significantly compared to where they are today.
IE: they are buying users, a bit equivalent to what epic is trying to do with their store by handing out free games, they are trying to move licenses to Microsoft store
Correct. So what does this have to do with moving people towards Xbox? The majority of profits come from King alone
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That happened in one year only, and as the Activision-Blizzard's 2021 report makes clear - a lot of anomalous trends that emerged over lockdown may be short lived. Prior to reporting year 2021, console gaming had been the biggest profit driver for five years - which was a far as I was inclined to reference AB's published reports.
the difference is that Activision had internal issues, and you know how fickle gamers are, it could well disappear or gain a bad reputation. The deal kinda broke that trend. MS just wants to obtain some relevance in the mobile gaming and desktop gaming market. This deal is nowhere to be closed yet, that's how important it is.
Sony got comfortable after Nintendo stopped trying for the power struggle, when Wii came out and they didn't feel like pushing power anymore. The X360 was the true competition to them, but Xbox didn't do much besides the X360, and they are used to having that market power and mindshare, that anything menacing that could feel to them as if they are drowning them to the deep end.
If that is true, would it not be ok for MS to buy just the mobile bits? To pass regulatory issues?
Even if we’re splitting hairs on which piece of content is the majority. The 70B is the evaluation of the whole company and IPs and not COD alone. That’s largely the point here. Sony has very limited access to ABK properties. Most of them are still on mobile and PC and the rest are discontinued.
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it's an all or nothing thing, because of IPs and so on. MS is trying to level the playing field. In the end they have been in this "power" battle for a long time (a friend of mine used to say "I prefer Nintendo, the other 2 just want to create spectacular games, but not fun games"), just mutually picking on the rich kid, and that's why the current situation.
Inherently, MS is not a hardware company. Given the preference, they would rather be Disney+ than Sony.
They want to have a significant important library of IPs and profit off that content and keep relevant in gaming as it continues to evolve as they expect gaming to expand and their investment with it.
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I assume this this reply was meant form somebody else? My post was only to flag that Activision-Blizzard's profits for years have come from console games, then PC games, then mobiles games in that order of value. It blipped heavily towards mobile for reporting year 2021 but as all companies operating through lockdown observed, lockdown trends were often ephemeral because they were driven by the weirdness of that 18 months period like the difficulty in getting new console hardware or key PC desktop components.
Yes, it was directed towards Troyan. He indicated that they were pay 70B to take ABK away from PS. I was just correcting him that 70B is not for cod alone, and that most of that 70B is not offered on PlayStation today.
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Referring to the same 2021 Activison-Blizzard report, it states that Call of Duty was the IP that drove most revenue, and Call of Duty is on PlayStation. I'm really confused. Activision-Blizzard are not deriving significant revenue from versions of Call of Duty that don't run on PS4 or PS5.
I’m not sure what is there to confuse. Is 70B price tag of ABK the majority of it cod? Or is it King and WoW and all the IPs put together?Referring to the same 2021 Activison-Blizzard report, it states that Call of Duty was the IP that drove most revenue, and Call of Duty is on PlayStation. I'm really confused. Activision-Blizzard are not deriving significant revenue from versions of Call of Duty that don't run on PS4 or PS5.
There’s a lot more you can do with 70B than just stick it to Sony. Investors would like a lot more than just that.
I’m don’t agree that It’s as personal as you think it is, 70B to own the console market is just too small. Just reverse the positions of Sony and MS and that is the most they could do. It’s not enough.
MS is trying to position itself as a leader of at least one of the major stores out there. It intends to do so through games. They get their pay day if they can act as a store on any piece of hardware. The challenge is that they have to fight to get onto that piece of hardware. But that’s a different battle for now.
It has no reason to block Sony or any other company it just recently signed with from having COD, it just doesn’t make any sense.
Most of the commentary in particular as to what MS could do, does not line up with what MS has done. It’s like making commentary during a chess game and talking about every single move that a player could do except to talk about the move that the player actually takes.
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