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Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

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Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#271

Post by brightball »

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.

Oddly, the way things had been going with Blizzard over the last few years makes me feel a lot better about MS taking them over.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#272

Post by keewee7 »

maweki wrote: post #184
mercy_dude wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or May be the whole woke uprising thing was to drive the market cap down so Microsoft could get a better deal. As usual the media doing the bidding for the big tech.

Dismay over Kotick actively hiding sexual abuse and protecting the abusers is a "woke uprising"? That's a shitty take.

I'm not American but on this side of the pond we expect more proof than twitter allegations before firing people.

Hopefully woke culture will take more of a toll on US tech and we will see more US companies opening up in Europe. The US tech centralization is bad for the world (and US consumers).

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#273

Post by ethbr0 »

echelon wrote: post #140
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…

> [...] if Satya and the Board spin off gaming into an independent company at some point. I certainly think this should happen. The trillion dollar giants should not span multiple industries. They have absurd monopoly power and can make growing your own niche impossible. Why does a cloud computing / operating system vendor / hardware manufacturer / business software / developer tooling company also own the third bigg…

400 - 1400 (Feudal economics)

1850 - 1920 (Railroad + oil/steel trusts)

1880 - 1982 (ATT)

1950 - 1975 (IBM)

1985 - 2000 (Intel/Microsoft)

2008 - current (Google/Apple/Amazon)

2014 - current (Meta)

It's the nature of technology to produce consolidation, before the next breakthrough occurs and incumbents are typically swept away.

On the plus side, the length of dominant periods seems to be decreasing.

And realistically, data portability standards and pricing for cloud & ability to use independent app stores are the biggest tweaks I'd make.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#274

Post by animanoir »

MrJagil wrote: post #63

The old Blizzard always seemed much closer to Apple than Microsoft in culture. An incredible attention to detail and the onboarding experience, clean, fun and friendly design and a slightly rebellious attitude expressed through their willingness to enter new markets. The "new" Microsoft though, really is different than the old and might actually do quite well in stewarding this supposedly sinking ship into fairer wat…

The Apple of gaming is Rockstar Games.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#275

Post by cableshaft »

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.

Stephen Totilo shared this back in June of last year. Apparently Bobby's got an agreement signed that if he gets terminated he makes $292 million off of it, double what he made last year.

So that might be part of it.

https://twitter.com/stephentotilo/status/1407658278893592579

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#276

Post by raldi »

duckmysick wrote: post #262

I always wondered, what are the exact steps between announcing to acquire and actually acquiring. Especially this: > Microsoft will acquire Activision Blizzard for $95.00 per share, in an all-cash transaction valued at $68.7 billion, inclusive of Activision Blizzard’s net cash. When the transaction closes, Microsoft will become the world’s third-largest gaming company by revenue, behind Tencent and Sony. What exactly…

The main one is that the shareholders get to review the terms, and if more than 50% of either company’s don’t like them, the deal is off.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#277

Post by elaus »

arketyp wrote: post #5
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.

Can you supply some context to this denounciation?

As a developer I have a strong dislike against CEOs that say things like...

> The goal that I had (...) was to take all the fun out of making video games.

> The executive said that he has tried to instill into the company culture "skepticism, pessimism, and fear" of the global economic downturn

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/activision-games-to-bypass...

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#278

Post by sofixa »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #54
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?

Why wouldn't they be allowed to? Companies acquire smaller companies and competitors all the time, it's called consolidation. One party want to sell, the other wants to buy. As long as the deal doesn't breach any anti-trust laws, it's good to go.

If this type of deal ( vertical consolidation through acquisition of competitors, and then removing those former competitors' content from competing platforms) isn't illegal, antitrust laws need to be adapted so it becomes so. It's impossible to deny it's purely in detriment to the market, competitors, and consumers.
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