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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

#151

Post by developerDan »

solardev wrote: post #143
worrycue wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Playstation is doing well. Switch is doing great. For now. Fortunes change pretty quick in the console world. One generation you are on top, the next you are struggling for second place. MS buying Activision is bad. This gives MS a long term advantage. It signals to companies like Sony and Nintendo that they shouldn’t bother competing since they can never counter the buying out of huge publishers as they aren’t wor…

That just isn't true though. Sony and Nintendo have no problem competing at all by the quality of their first-party and exclusive games. For every Call of Duty there is a Horizons or a God of War or Zelda or whatever. Xbox is the worst of all the platforms in terms of that. Even PC and mobile have more (good) games that aren't available on Xbox. Has Microsoft has any major successes since Halo and Fable, years and ye…

The huge concern here is not that Microsoft can’t compete, because they can as they have far more studios than Sony does. The issue is their strategy overall which is top earning multi-platform companies, like Bethesda and ActiBlizz, to cut off revenue from competitors. Meanwhile Sony’s biggest acquisitions were studios that mainly focused on their platform to begin with.

Re: Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard

#152

Post by JohnFen »

solardev wrote: post #145
bob1029 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now if someone acquired Valve, that would be a tragedy... Honestly I would cherish the moment. It would be the most likely path to actually seeing HL3 released. The one time the filthy capitalists manage to do a good thing... Valve to me has become a pathetic, rent-seeking platform owner. No clue why the gaming community still holds them in such regard. Linux support and not being publicly traded must be a massive…

I don't think it's fair to understate the impact Steam has had on indie game dev. We went from "maybe hearing about this shareware on the PC Gamer floppy if you're lucky" to spamware sites like Tucows to a huge centralized marketplace of phenomenal games because the devs had a way to let people discover their one-hit wonder, get great reviews, etc. Yes, I want HL3 as much as anyone, but Alyx was pretty cool (still on…

I hear what you're saying, and don't disagree. But Steam has become something I dislike enough that I stopped using it years ago. For me, it's GOG, unless I can get the game directly from the publisher.

Re: Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard

#153

Post by [deleted] »

donmcronald wrote: post #147
bob1029 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Game streaming is a lousy solution I feel like it's only bad because it's still mostly a half-way house. Slapping existing AAA titles onto networked GPUs and calling it a day streaming gaming in my view. Streaming gaming is actually a thing for me when someone builds a game using it that would absolutely not be possible using traditional technology. For example, an MMO so massive that the average player's network s…

And the thing is, latency can be "good enough" for some games. I tried out the top end tier of GeForce NOW for a month just to see what it was like since I've always been skeptical of game streaming. I picked Last Epoch as a game since it has (had?) a reputation for being hard to run at 4k. Even at 4k, I could play it and my views on game streaming have changed a bit. This was last year and I was using an i7 4770k ba…

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard

#154

Post by solardev »

developerDan wrote: post #151
solardev wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That just isn't true though. Sony and Nintendo have no problem competing at all by the quality of their first-party and exclusive games. For every Call of Duty there is a Horizons or a God of War or Zelda or whatever. Xbox is the worst of all the platforms in terms of that. Even PC and mobile have more (good) games that aren't available on Xbox. Has Microsoft has any major successes since Halo and Fable, years and ye…

The huge concern here is not that Microsoft can’t compete, because they can as they have far more studios than Sony does. The issue is their strategy overall which is top earning multi-platform companies, like Bethesda and ActiBlizz, to cut off revenue from competitors. Meanwhile Sony’s biggest acquisitions were studios that mainly focused on their platform to begin with.

I see. That's fair. They offered a 10-year license for Call of Duty, at least, not sure about the other franchises.

Re: Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard

#155

Post by Accujack »

from wrote: post #135

The FTC's incredibly low win rate in federal court should be a source of agency-wide embarrassment. The only place they reliably win is their kangaroo "administrative courts" in which they act as the judge, jury and executioner but those are probably on their way out. But it doesn't even matter anyways because the new strategy is going to be outsourcing enforcement to Europe.

The FTC is still spooling anti trust enforcement back up from a nonexistent state. A lot of the rules governing mergers and acquisitions haven't been enforced since the 1980s due to regulatory capture.

Read up on developments in anti-trust in the last couple of years here:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/

Re: Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard

#156

Post by worrycue »

solardev wrote: post #154
developerDan wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The huge concern here is not that Microsoft can’t compete, because they can as they have far more studios than Sony does. The issue is their strategy overall which is top earning multi-platform companies, like Bethesda and ActiBlizz, to cut off revenue from competitors. Meanwhile Sony’s biggest acquisitions were studios that mainly focused on their platform to begin with.

I see. That's fair. They offered a 10-year license for Call of Duty, at least, not sure about the other franchises.

The 10 year guarantee means nothing as I can see Microsoft crippling non-Xbox versions of CoD - e.g. it has poorer performance on PS5.

Re: Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard

#157

Post by goosedragons »

bob1029 wrote: post #138
solardev wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? How does this lessen competition? The PC gaming market is thriving thanks to Steam and indies. Playstation is doing well. Switch is doing great. Microsoft? Aside from providing Windows and DirectX, they're basically invisible. Xbox is just a cheap wannabe PC with no great games. It's a wonder they've supported it for this long. Maybe this acquisition gives them a fighting chance against Sony and Nintendo. It's…

> Now if someone acquired Valve, that would be a tragedy... Honestly I would cherish the moment. It would be the most likely path to actually seeing HL3 released. The one time the filthy capitalists manage to do a good thing... Valve to me has become a pathetic, rent-seeking platform owner. No clue why the gaming community still holds them in such regard. Linux support and not being publicly traded must be a massive…

The Steam Deck is pretty great. Probably the biggest leap in PC gaming for me in the past 15 years.

Re: Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard

#159

Post by HWR_14 »

from wrote: post #135

The FTC's incredibly low win rate in federal court should be a source of agency-wide embarrassment. The only place they reliably win is their kangaroo "administrative courts" in which they act as the judge, jury and executioner but those are probably on their way out. But it doesn't even matter anyways because the new strategy is going to be outsourcing enforcement to Europe.

I would expect the FTC to have a low win rate. Let's leave aside how atrophied enforcement of antitrust has been over the last 40 years, and the subsequent implications for case law, regulations and human skill of litigators.

This is a 75 billion dollar event between two giant companies. They can pay for legal advice. That legal advice is well incentivized to predict how the case will go, and signed off on it. I assume MS has to pay a hefty fee if the acquisition is blocked for antitrust reasons, in addition to the time and embarrassment for all involved.

Therefore, the only cases the FTC should expect to see are ones where highly paid lawyers said "we will probably win this case". They might be wrong (and the FTC does seem unable to stop too many cases), but no matter how tough the enforcement gets, I would expect the FTC to usually lose at trial. The standards will just be applied pre-merger announcement (or probably pre-offer).

It might be an exciting couple of years when the FTC regrows its backbone and the lawyers assessing mergers have not caught up yet.

Re: Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard

#160

Post by HWR_14 »

worrycue wrote: post #137
solardev wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? How does this lessen competition? The PC gaming market is thriving thanks to Steam and indies. Playstation is doing well. Switch is doing great. Microsoft? Aside from providing Windows and DirectX, they're basically invisible. Xbox is just a cheap wannabe PC with no great games. It's a wonder they've supported it for this long. Maybe this acquisition gives them a fighting chance against Sony and Nintendo. It's…

> Playstation is doing well. Switch is doing great. For now. Fortunes change pretty quick in the console world. One generation you are on top, the next you are struggling for second place. MS buying Activision is bad. This gives MS a long term advantage. It signals to companies like Sony and Nintendo that they shouldn’t bother competing since they can never counter the buying out of huge publishers as they aren’t wor…

Does Activision have any major titles on the Switch right now? Nintendo seems happy to be doing their own thing. It's not like they need to buy huge publishers, since they own all the important IP (Mario, Zelda, 1/3 or 1/2 of Pokemon, etc)
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