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Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard

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Re: Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard

#91

Post by glimshe »

This is a great decision for the US game industry. Sony has a ton of exclusives, many from acquisitions, and strengthening XBOX will help maintain a competitive gaming market which should lead to even better exclusives in the long run. Some of the best rivalries in the history of gaming came from different sides with hard hitting exclusives (SNES vs Genesis for instance).

While Microsoft has promised to keep Call of Duty on the Playstation, I think it would be totally ok if they stopped doing that in the future, as any other Activision-Blizzard game; after all, Uncharted and Last of Us aren't available on the XBOX either.

Re: Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard

#92

Post by rafark »

mtsr wrote: post #87
_2z1p wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current status quo is on a path to being harmful to both. I love Nintendo but they compete more with Apple and Google than they do with Sony and Microsoft. If Microsoft exits game consoles next generation Sony won’t have any real competition and that will be very bad for consumers. Microsoft needs their own heavy hitting exclusives and they need them sooner than they can home grow them. This acquisition is one of…

An anti-competitive Microsoft conglomerate to compete with PS# is hardly going to better for consumers than a Nintendo-Sony duopoly. I’d rather we don’t allow bad M&As, even for good reasons.

PS Sharp? Is that a new language?

Re: Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard

#93

Post by AlexandrB »

zamalek wrote: post #80
AlexandrB wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given how Microsoft has managed Bethesda (giving them a large amount of autonomy and shipping the doomed Redfall) it's way too optimistic to expect any positive changes for Activision/Blizzard customers. It wouldn't surprise me is Bobby kept running the whole thing, just under Microsoft's ownership. Meanwhile I do expect more Xbox exclusives - which will ultimately harm consumers.

I'm hoping for more along the lines of what happened with Mojang. Whatever Microsoft did there really worked.

All I know about that is I tried to migrate my Mojang account to Microsoft - when Microsoft started "unifying logins" - and I still haven't heard back from them. So my experience has been negative. Hopefully they don't try to migrate Battle.net accounts in the future.

Re: Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard

#94

Post by abduhl »

NoRelToEmber wrote: post #69
abduhl wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The evidence presented at trial showed that this vertical (not horizontal) acquisition would increase competition in the market. If antitrust laws were based on the conception of monopolization you seem to be suggesting then any acquisition or merger would be a monopolist’s act, and that’s ridiculous.

> vertical (not horizontal) acquisition [..] any acquisition or merger would be a monopolist’s act Past a certain size, it absolutely is. E.g. a food producer will have a much harder time entering (or staying in) a vertically-integrated market (as an independent entity), where all the grocery chains privilege offerings by producers they own. Using other near-monopolies as argument for why new ones should be allowed t…

You’ve moved beyond this specific acquisition and are now talking in generalities. I don’t agree with your post; however, I would note that the situation at issue here in the Microsoft case is actually very similar to your hypothetical. Activision is the food producer. Sony is the grocery chain. Microsoft is also a grocery chain, one that is losing to Sony and is trying to buy Activision in order to compete.

The solution isn’t to sanction Sony because it’s not clear that Sony has done anything illegal to obtain its market position. It’s not illegal to have a monopoly. The solution is to let competition arise from the market and increase consumer choice either by driving down prices or providing more options for consumers. In the market for grocery stores, Microsoft buying Activision is anti-monopolist and pro-competition.

Re: Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard

#95

Post by xboxnolifes »

dnissley wrote: post #85
Larrikin wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're totally off base. Video games are not just kids stuff. The industry makes nearly three times more money than the film industry. This is exactly the kind of stakes that FTC should be getting involved in.

Both of these industries are entertainment though -- and to me at least it seems there's a pretty limited amount of consumer harm that could come from various IP exclusivity deals. Again -- am I thinking about this wrong? What is the consumer harm that could result from the moving of IP from one company to another? A truly dedicated fan has to buy a different console to play their favorite game? Non-truly dedicated f…

The point is to make sure there is always another console you could move to, and that there is a hundred other fps titles on the market.

Re: Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard

#96

Post by HWR_14 »

htrp wrote: post #29

>The court ruling even agrees with Microsoft in theory about the Nintendo Switch being part of the console market, but also accepts the FTC can reasonably claim it’s not. How is the Switch not a console?

According to the FTC:

> The FTC insists the Nintendo Switch’s pricing, performance, and content make it an improper substitute at least for purposes of its preliminary injunction motion

I have to kinda agree with the FTC. I consider the Switch to be a very different device than the XBox/PS with different uses as far as the gaming experience I expect. The XBox or PS, on the other hand, I expect to have similar experiences.

As I understand it, but the rest of this is based on skimming the ruling, the judge has to take into account whether the merger will help or hinder customers. MS said "Call of Duty isn't even on all the consoles now, it's just on Playstation and XBox. Let the merger go through and we will port it to the Switch. See how we don't play favorites for our console.". The FTC's response was "there isn't real market for console players of games like COD released on Switch, the Switch isn't a competitor to the XBox for this game"

Re: Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard

#97

Post by haunter »

Understandable. Nintendo is full of exclusives + it's the best selling console too (by the court's admission) and that's ok so as MS buying Actiblizz. Otherwise I don't know how would Nintendo get a pass lol, they are the worst with exclusives (and what ends up on mobile is p2w thrash)

>If the Court was the final decisionmaker on the merits, it would likely find Nintendo Switch part of the relevant market. But it is not. Instead, on a 13(b) preliminary injunction, the FTC need only make a “tenable showing that the relevant market” is Gen 9 consoles. Given the plethora of internal industry documents and the acknowledged differences, the FTC has met its preliminary injunction burden to show the Switch is not included in the relevant market.

>Nintendo made “technical decisions to enable an experience that they thought their customers would want to have, and it’s the best selling console right now in the market. So when I — when people try to tell me it’s not competition — competitive, for any number of reasons, I don’t believe that because I just look at what’s selling

Re: Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard

#99

Post by dmonitor »

unpopularopp wrote: post #82
nixass wrote: post #57

Very bad for end consumer in long term.

Can you expand up on that? I can't play Pokemon on my PC or Gran Turismo on my Xbox or WoW on my PS5. What will change "very bad for end consumer in long term"?

“can someone explain why microsoft is evil?”

Re: Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard

#100

Post by stale2002 »

dmonitor wrote: post #98
abduhl wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Microsoft failing to create a compelling product in two decades isnt Sony’s fault

Nobody said that it is Sony's fault. The fact remains though, that it is Sony, not Microsoft, for which there are monopoly concerns on the console market.

Given that Sony has an overwhelming lead, it really is not a problem for microsoft to do this acquisition.

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