Significantly more discussion on the dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32605949
We'll merge it hither. Thanks!
Amazon is not going to make a bid for Electronic Arts – sources
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Re: Amazon is not going to make a bid for Electronic Arts – sources
#242EA managing to shift its annual sports titles to a single game with updates on a subscription model would at least be more honest than asking people to buy a whole new game each year at least.
John Carmack disagrees with your rationale: "As long as people are buying it, it means they’re enjoying it" [0] [0] https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/07/id-softwares-john-car...
You could use the same argument to advocate for recreational drugs. Both they and lootboxes hijack the reward loop in our brains. For actual, buy-it-once games, I see his point, but it doesn't apply to the slot machines disguised as games nowadays.
Re: Amazon is not going to make a bid for Electronic Arts – sources
#243EA managing to shift its annual sports titles to a single game with updates on a subscription model would at least be more honest than asking people to buy a whole new game each year at least.
John Carmack disagrees with your rationale: "As long as people are buying it, it means they’re enjoying it" [0] [0] https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/07/id-softwares-john-car...
No ones arguing that they aren't enjoying the game.
Re: Amazon is not going to make a bid for Electronic Arts – sources
#244Earlier quoted context omitted.
A million dollar startup can buy EA?
This seems like, at best, intentionally misunderstanding the GP to try to make some political point that isn't even grounded in reality. It's fairly well established that vertical integration is not only not anti-competitive, but benefits both corporations and consumers.
By which standard or understanding?
I'm going to need some more details before it being accepted as a fact...
Re: Amazon is not going to make a bid for Electronic Arts – sources
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's vertical integration and is mostly orthogonal to anti-competitive behavior. A million dollar startup could do those things too.
A million dollar startup could compete with these platforms all owned by Amazon?
A million dollar startup could own their servers, run a social platform, develop games, sell merch and license some IP on the side. I didn't say they would actually compete significantly with Amazon. Just that you didn't have to operate at a monopoly scale to control a significant portion of your business stack.
Re: Amazon is not going to make a bid for Electronic Arts – sources
#246EA managing to shift its annual sports titles to a single game with updates on a subscription model would at least be more honest than asking people to buy a whole new game each year at least.
This is why I think Disney should buy EA. ESPN is feeling a ton of competition from other streaming/entertainment companies bidding for sports streaming rights. Making it unappealing to buy an ESPN+ subscription.
If they buy EA and bundle their sports games with ESPN+ and ESPN branding. They might have more strength in the bidding wars. It would make subbing to ESPN+ worth it because they now would include the games.
EA also works on Star Wars games. They get popular games like Sims and Apex Legends.
They would also get access to the Frostbite engine, and game engines rendering on a large LED screen seem to the better than green screens in visual effects.
Re: Amazon is not going to make a bid for Electronic Arts – sources
#247Amazon, Googl, and the likes need to thread carefully from now on. We don't want an Oligopoly where 5 companies control every facet of human life (food, entertainment, medicine, to name a few). This is where the line gets trickier: - Less government on things that matter; - Enough government to avoid big corps from creating monopolies. Finding this middle ground is proven to be really, I mean really difficult, to say…
We risk Buy-N-Large from Wall-E becoming a real thing at this rate
Re: Amazon is not going to make a bid for Electronic Arts – sources
#248Amazon appears to be putting out offers to tons of companies right now. Forays into health care and now a large gaming vendor.
Jeff: "I need to to acquire everyone." Amazon: "What do you mean everyone?" Jeff: "EVEEERRRYYYOONNEEE"
TIL that Gary Oldman improvised his delivery of that line -- in this short clip[0], he says he was fooling around, doing it that way as a joke, and the director kept it:
Re: Amazon is not going to make a bid for Electronic Arts – sources
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
Simple. Revenue. Tax a company's revenue progressively. (Of course it's complicated to implement this with companies owning companies, but you get the gist.)
In the US at least, corporate taxes are progressive. Taxes are on earnings though, not revenues (you could be unprofitable and as such, pay no taxes). Question: so are you suggesting then that just because a company's revenues (I think you mean "earnings") have exceeded X, that they should be completely broken up as a company?
> so are you suggesting then that just because a company's revenues (I think you mean "earnings") have exceeded X, that they should be completely broken up as a company?
Yes. But I meant revenues. If we want companies to become smaller, taxing their revenue progressively would compell their owners to split them up into independent entities. Think about it as a progressive VAT.
Re: Amazon is not going to make a bid for Electronic Arts – sources
#250EA managing to shift its annual sports titles to a single game with updates on a subscription model would at least be more honest than asking people to buy a whole new game each year at least.
John Carmack disagrees with your rationale: "As long as people are buying it, it means they’re enjoying it" [0] [0] https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/07/id-softwares-john-car...
carmack is a brilliant engineer, but he's not really known for empathy or even being a good game designer. supply and demand is not really the best indicator of a positive vs predatory experience