Microsoft buying Activision Blizzard for $69 Billion, NICE! Possibly Completes 2022-07 to 2023-06

Sony to lose $260 million a year if Call of Duty goes Xbox exclusive
https://www.tweaktown.com/news/8413...l-of-duty-goes-xbox-exclusive/index.html?s=09


And that does not include the all that revenue from PS+ subscribers that subscribed just to play COD.

 

But what would Activision/Microsoft lose if they didn't release on Playstation. Licensing fees are what, 20-30%, right? So 3x that amount of loss is potentially on the table. Would COD players all buy Xbox or move to PC, or would they simply move to other FPS games? PUBG just went free to play, didn't it? That would be a likely candidate for migration. Or maybe Sony does like they did with Killzone and rolls their own FPS again to combat the defacto genre leader that isn't on their platform.

 

If it were that easy, a lot of shooters game would find success and replaced COD. How often people flock to new games rather than go to where their favourite game is, really?

500m per year loss is nothing for MS (they make 60b per year basically) if it allows them to earn more from their own ecosystem. It is more important for Playstation that MS. And Warzone will for sure stay multiplatform (unfortuntely as nobody doubts that Sony would pull it out if they were to buy Activision) so Sony will just lose from main campaigns of COD (and MS won't pull out older games either).

It is a bargaining chip that MS can use against Sony. Before this acquisition, Sony was in much superior position and could dictate the terms, With this? Not that much anymore. And we saw it already with highest level calls from Sony (not just SIE, Sony).

When their contracts expires I see this

• Warzone remains
• COD main campaigns go away

Unless of course Sony offers something in return. Like Spider-man for example.

 

Warzone is the competition for PUGB and they're rather different demographic. Most of the warzone players wouldn't touch PUBG.

 

Just going through the exercise of it all. I was just curious to see what all they have to pull from and what is already known thus far as far as gaming IP. I put this together. Some liberties were taking as this isn't everything Microsoft owns, some like the sports games, will likely never been made, but who knows if they weren't to be recreated in an NBA Jam/NFL Blitz type way. Avowed is not here because it is part of the Pillars of Eternity franchise. We know many teams have unannounced IP and while I can safely assume someone like InXile's is an RPG, it's project name is not publicly known so I didn't include it. Other things where the original franchise has been split among multiple genres (Halo/Halo Wars or Gears of War/Gears Tactics) and same genre (Forza Horizon & Motorsport), I chose to include both. Anywho, this is what I've compiled. Am I missing anything? Note: Bolded means unreleased.

 

I think there's a bunch of titles they will get from Activision that get overlooked. Classic Activision IPs like Pitfall!, Kaboom!, River Raid and Activsion O2 games that are not Tony Hawk (Shaun Murry Wakeboarding, Matt Hoffman BMX, Kelly Slater surfing) assuming they own those names like they do Tony's. All of the Sierra properties (King's/Space/Police Quest, Phantasmagoria, Gabriel Knight, SWAT, and maybe some of the Starsiege games) and classic Dynamix stuff (Stellar 7 and it's spin offs, lots of tank games and pinball stuff), ZORK, Interstate 76/Vigilante 8, BLUR, the Krondor games, Gun, Soldier of Fortune, Rise of the Dragon, and Timeshift.

I'm not 100% sure if some of those properties were sold off or abandoned over the years, but many of them have be republished by Activision on GOG and Steam so they definitely own those. But there is some things, like the Cyberstorm games, they are in the Starsiege universe, that are published by Activision on GOG even though they sold the Starsiege IP to Hi-Rez Studios years ago. Activision might have the US rights to Sekiro also. And there's a bunch of licensed games like all that stuff Activision Value published, but the licenses for most of that has probably expired. Oh, and Jurassic:The Hunted.

 

Apart from the initial shock back in early 2020, Covid has been great for the tech stocks, for obvious reasons. Prolly too good and that they got overvalued a bit too much this is whats prolly driving the loss now.
Btw with the Netflix quote you missed the obvious bogus stuff the guy said. 700 million US households , maybe he meant 70, though Im guessing theres ~100 so I dont know why he said 700. perhaps its 700 in the world (discounting countries where netflix aint available)

edit: saw this today
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/artic...zzard-is-the-industrys-biggest-gamble-opinion

personally I think the harassment thing is not that big of an issue (terrible and all that yada yada), but in a years time it will be largely forgotten

 

I'd love to see a remake of Interstate '76 with a focus on keeping the same artistic tone with the game. Easily one of my Top 10 games of all time. Possibly even Top 5 of all time. I still go back and replay it from time to time, the game is just fantastic. Man, thinking of Interstate '76 set in the Forza Horizon 5 engine just makes me hard!

Would love to see remakes of Dynamix's Red baron games as well as Aces of the Pacific and Aces over Europe. Unfortunately, combat flight sims are such a niche market with little to no casual gamer pull that I can't see MS funding something along those lines.

Regards,
SB

 

Seems like Sony publishes Call Of Duty in Japan. I wonder what is in that contract?

 

Isn't it's split between Sony and square Enix?

 

Looking at Amazon Japan and while I don't see the publisher on the box for Vangard, Sony has been the publisher from at least 2016. All of the Call of Duty titles before that have Square-Enix as the publisher. I'm assuming Sony published Vangard as well.

 

Sony took over from Square back in 2015

 

@AlphaWolf

Thanks for correcting my earlier number. If Activision Blizzard makes $6B annually, then MS did very well to get them for only $69B.

 

Revenue. Net income (profits) is generally less than 1/3 of that. For example, in FY ending Dec. 31, 2020 they had over 8 billion in revenue with a bit less than 2.2 billion in net income. If they made that every year, then it would take MS over 30 years to make back that money. That was also a particularly good year. Most years prior to that, they didn't generate as much revenue or profits.

So, MS obviously have other reasons than what revenue or profits Activision have been pulling in for them to pull the trigger on this acquisition.

Regards,
SB

 

The link I posted was not revenue. It was gross profit. That's revenue minus cost of production. Not really sure how that washes out in filing at atvi, but their revenue was over $8b.

 

The numbers I posted are directly from the Fiscal Year report ending Dec. 31, 2020. Gross income was ~2.7 billion USD on slightly more than 8 billion USD revenue. Net income was slightly less than 2.2 billion USD.

Those numbers are more representative than gross profit as they also include cost of operations, taxes, advertising and all other cash outflows from the company.

It shouldn't be too long before Activision-Blizzard posts their FY ending Dec. 31, 2021 report.

Regards,
SB

 

I wouldn't get too tied up in any end number being particularly useful once the entity is absorbed into MS. Revenue and active users will probably the most useful numbers at that point.

 

I dont know whos saying $6 billion profit activsion aint in their financial statements

https://investor.activision.com/annual-reports
These guys summed it up https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/ATVI/activision-blizzard/operating-income

I think their results for 2021 will be coming out soon
20/21 have been good for them like most of the tech sector because of the pandemic, it remains to be seen is this the new normal or will it revert more to the mean onwards

 

Considering that MS uses the big tech is coming card to justify acquisitions and position themselves as tech gaming company, I wonder what big tech companies could acquire? Like if we look at Apple, Amazon, Google and we can probably add Netflix and Tencent.

• With the all the publishers it is difficult to say where would for example Facebook go. Like they are into VR space mainly, creating VR into their platofrm. What could they acquire that would their VR platform more attractive? I feel like for them it is easier to pay various publishers to produce VR games rather than grabbing a publisher who produces games on various platforms. (I am not sure if MS will try developing VR, but personally it would be cool to have something like Guitar Hero VR)
• Google? As rumored in the past they was shocked by Bethesda acquisition and decided not to invest in gaming that much anymore and use Stadia as a whitelabel service.
• Amazon? I am not sure if Amazon is really that interested in anything not online based. Even their Lumia service is kinda in a limbo or something. They could grab some MMO publisher like Nexon though.
• Tencent is kinda odd. It is difficult to understand what they are doing. They are quite often buy something that either Sony is interested in or Microsoft (especially support studios for some reason)
  
• Apple is also odd and I am not sure if they are really into a core market, rather than mobile and online market
• Netflix? No idea what they are gonna do. Will try to compete with Apple Arcade?

Also we can see emerging of VR as a separate platform so we have consoles, PC, mobile, VR as separate (essentially) platforms. Then we have single player games, online subscription-based games, f2p games, multiplayer games. Then we have subscription services like (EA Play, Ubisoft+, Game Pass and rumored Spartacus) and digital sales...

P.S. I also forgot about Nvidia with their Geforce Now service. It would be fascinating if Valve were to partner with Nvidia for example.

 

MS have positioned themselves to jump in on VR games if/when it finally starts to take off. Currently it's barely above water WRT being a potentially profitable business. VR is worse off now than it was 3-4 years ago. There's still some software developers investing in making games for VR, but it's far fewer than 3-4 years ago.

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?

I'd be very surprised if MS doesn't already have VR working on Xbox consoles. MS spends a LOT of R&D (20.36 billion USD in 2020) with most of that never seeing commercial release. The only tech company that spends more on R&D? Alphabet (parent company of Google). In terms of their R&D budget, having VR working and potentially ready to go for Xbox would be a drop in the bucket.

However, I'd also be extremely surprised if MS makes any mention of VR for Xbox unless VR shows signs of potentially taking off. I'm sure they are watching what happens with PSVR 2 as well as what Apple is doing. They can see what Facebook is doing and nothing there is currently sending them any encouraging signals that VR gaming is something to jump into. The only other company that MS views as a major competitor, Alphabet, appears to have mostly abandoned VR.

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.

Personally, I hope PSVR 2 sells well and more importantly VR games sales for it take off. Unfortunately, I'm skeptical and have serious doubts that it will happen. Now, if the PSVR 2 headset ends up being only slightly larger than a bulky pair of eye glasses? I might then be more inclined to believe that VR might finally take off.

Regards,
SB