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Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

news.microsoft.com

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Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#81

Post by enkid »

madeofpalk wrote: post #36
s3r3nity wrote: post #16

Congratulations to Phil Spencer, who started out leading an upstart team at Microsoft for a new game console called "Xbox" and is now "CEO of Microsoft Gaming" - a Microsoft Senior Leadership position. Oh, and he now leads the third biggest gaming company on the planet: > When the transaction closes, Microsoft will become the world’s third-largest gaming company by revenue, behind Tencent and Sony. It will be interes…

I think there should be more (gaming) companies, and (gaming) companies should not be owned by the platforms, so I see this as a pretty big negative for the industry and customers. Congrats to Phil on his resume bump I guess.

There actually are a ton of gaming companies right now. The indie game space seems to be much healthier and accessible than say, the indie movie business. I hardly buy AAA titles anymore because you can get so many good games for under $20 dollars made by independent studios. Of course, this is based on mostly staying on PC and Steam. I would suspect consoles are not as indie friendly, but it does seem like they have some market access

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#83

Post by sbarre »

Kelteseth wrote: post #31

Can somebody please explain to me, why is it allowed for a company like MS to buy all of their (indirect) competitors?

Even after this purchase, Microsoft's gaming division is still smaller than Sony by revenue..

There are still lots of other large publishers out there.. EA, Take Two, Embracer, Tencent, Epic, etc... I'm sure I'm forgetting some big obvious ones even.

They are definitely not "buying all their competitors" as you put it.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#84

Post by palijer »

agd wrote: post #53

With these kind of acquisitions, other companies are going to find it very hard to compete with Game Pass. I think we'll look back in 10 years and wonder why antitrust regulators did nothing, but it may be too late by then.

I looked around for a while, a d I can't actually find a list of any mergers that antitrust regulations actually prevented.

I'm assuming some survivor bias is involved here and we don't hear about the ones that stopped early, but it seems that what I and most folks assume antitrust regulations do is different than what actually happens.

I remember the Sirius/XM merge and how those were the only two players in the market, and it was wild to me how that was allowed to happen.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#85

Post by Someone1234 »

nobodyofnote wrote: post #33
1_player wrote: post #2

The most important question I have is: will they replace Bobby Kotick? EDIT: "Bobby Kotick will continue to serve as CEO of Activision Blizzard. [...] he and his team will maintain their focus on driving efforts to further strengthen the company’s culture." Shame on you, Microsoft.

I share your dismay. Even if you're someone who doesn't care about the issues that have come to light over the past year, the blatant mismanagement (dare I say running into the ground) of the once golden Blizzard portfolio has been painful as a long-time Starcraft 2 fan. For a moment, I was truly hopeful that we might see some reinvigoration for blundered projects like the Warcraft III reforged. Perhaps even some hop…

Everything under Blizzard's portfolio feels like it has been left to rot. The only thing they seem to put effort into is their Pay-To-Win card game, Hearthstone.

Unfortunately even under new management I don't see Starcraft getting much love, the focus is now on cross-platform games and RTS games are PC only (which is a small niche compared to the overall market).

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#86

Post by Kelteseth »

sbarre wrote: post #83
Kelteseth wrote: post #31

Can somebody please explain to me, why is it allowed for a company like MS to buy all of their (indirect) competitors?

Even after this purchase, Microsoft's gaming division is still smaller than Sony by revenue.. There are still lots of other large publishers out there.. EA, Take Two, Embracer, Tencent, Epic, etc... I'm sure I'm forgetting some big obvious ones even. They are definitely not "buying all their competitors" as you put it.

Valve/Steam would be the biggest competitor on desktop, with nearly 30 million active users.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#87

Post by zuppy »

geerlingguy wrote: post #72
bitwize wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft owns CoD, Doom, Quake, Minecraft, Fallout, Elder Scrolls, and soon Warcraft, Starcraft, and Overwatch. They're becoming the Disney of gaming, which is scary, but hey, Microsoft gonna Microsoft.

And Halo, if we're counting seminal console franchises.

And Diablo. I'm worried for this.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#88

Post by user-the-name »

zadjii wrote: post #14
1_player wrote: post #2

The most important question I have is: will they replace Bobby Kotick? EDIT: "Bobby Kotick will continue to serve as CEO of Activision Blizzard. [...] he and his team will maintain their focus on driving efforts to further strengthen the company’s culture." Shame on you, Microsoft.

Literally the next sentence: > Once the deal closes, the Activision Blizzard business will report to Phil Spencer, CEO, Microsoft Gaming. So no, they aren't keeping him around. Good call.

I do not see that saying that at all.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#89

Post by tempest_ »

enkid wrote: post #81
madeofpalk wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there should be more (gaming) companies, and (gaming) companies should not be owned by the platforms, so I see this as a pretty big negative for the industry and customers. Congrats to Phil on his resume bump I guess.

There actually are a ton of gaming companies right now. The indie game space seems to be much healthier and accessible than say, the indie movie business. I hardly buy AAA titles anymore because you can get so many good games for under $20 dollars made by independent studios. Of course, this is based on mostly staying on PC and Steam. I would suspect consoles are not as indie friendly, but it does seem like they have…

The Nintendo Switch has a pretty healthy indie offering.

Though there is the switch tax where games that are 10$ on steam are 30 on switch.

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