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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

#401

Post by LegitShady »

onion2k wrote: post #309
Aeolun wrote: post #172

This is weird. The judge says that because there won’t be any anticompetitive effects in the next 10 years (because MS made a pinky promise), this merger is fine? What about after those 10 years? What about anything not Call of Duty?

Microsoft don't need to make Call of Duty an exclusive. They only need to put new CoD games on Gamepass and Sony are screwed. It'll make Sony's platform look much more expensive.

I hear what you're saying but also understand that putting games on gamepass costs money to microsoft in lost sales. It's like Disney - if all their movies go directly to disney+ they're training customers to not spend $60-80 on buying new games and instead wait for them to come to the cheaper monthly subscription. That isn't free - they still have to develop the game, and the return on the game is lower.

Re: Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard

#402

Post by LegitShady »

chrisoverzero wrote: post #39
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?

It’s portable.

it can also be docked and work on your tv.

Re: Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard

#403

Post by Etherlord87 »

KingMachiavelli wrote: post #297

The real issue is Sony has many exclusives which gives Microsoft a better case (despite the judge saying it's NOT about Sony). It certainly harms consumers, so I don't see how the court still approved this especially with the judge's comment against the comparison to Sony. Almost all mergers of this size harm consumers, the fact that it's allowed by default is the crucial issue. If the FTC still had a spine they woul…

> At the end of the day this only strengthens the trend to PC gaming which only benefits Microsoft and can only hurt Sony.

Microsoft and Sony aren't the only companies making video games.

Windows isn't the only PC operating system.

In large part thanks to Steam, a lot of video games work on Linux nowadays.

Sony is free to implement their OS in such a way that you can play PC games on Playstation. Of course Sony doesn't want that, because it is Sony's strategy to wall off their ecosystem.

SONY IS THE BAD GUY HERE.

Strengthening PC market is a good news for consumers. Strengthening Microsoft - not necessarily…

Re: Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard

#404

Post by kmeisthax »

robertlagrant wrote: post #56
lesuorac wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How does this make anyone feel any better? What happens after 10 years? What happens in less than 10 years if they don't abide by it? Does Activision get split back out? I doubt it. We're long past the point where you can just set rules/laws and companies will abide by it. We need to be at the point where we also list the punishment ahead of time.

> We're long past the point where you can just set rules/laws and companies will abide by it. We're not, but this is pretty nebulous stuff. The state blocking freely agreed transactions because it can foresee some damage is not exactly a clear cut good, other than for people who are reassured by the idea of the state as a benevolent, all-knowing mom and pop, and for the lawyers who get paid a fortune to debate past a…

The state blocking freely agreed transactions because it would allow someone to create something larger and more coercive than the state seems like a good minimum.

We don't have to debate past and future hypotheticals - that's an invention of the "consumer welfare" theory of antitrust. The one that said it's entirely fine for, say, Apple to have a monopoly on iOS software as long as they have a prosocial justification for it. Apple's specific argument is that their monopoly protects from malware... or, in other words, they're big enough that they can make and enforce their own laws.

A better and simpler rule is this: being big is illegal, period. That's how antitrust used to work. If a business deal would give you the capability of becoming your own sovereign state, you don't get to execute that deal. If you knock out all your competition, we break you up into competing companies.

This is the sort of thing that triggers free market types, I know. My argument is specifically that large businesses get to write their own rules, and the only way to prevent them from doing that is to make them small enough that they cannot execute political power equivalent to that of a monarch. Right now, we live in this comedic parody of free market liberalism where the business owners have centralized power to themselves, turning themselves into de-facto states, and gotten the de-jure state drunk on surveillance tech to avoid scrutiny.

Re: Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard

#405

Post by johnnyanmac »

lelanthran wrote: post #371
cman1444 wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the Boogeyman you think it is. You used to have to buy a game for $60 and if you didn't like it? Well too bad, that's $60 down the drain. Now you can just move on to the next one. I get that for enthusiasts owning a physical game may be more desirable, but for the majority of gamers (casual gamers) a subscription based service is a better option.

> It's not the Boogeyman you think it is. You used to have to buy a game for $60 and if you didn't like it? Well too bad, that's $60 down the drain. Now you can just move on to the next one. I get that for enthusiasts owning a physical game may be more desirable, but for the majority of gamers (casual gamers) a subscription based service is a better option. Moving from an ownership model to a rental model is very ant…

>Moving from an ownership model to a rental model is very anti-consumer.

In that case the consumers have worked against their best interests for decades in other mediums. You can even argue as such in the PC market where physical media has also lost.

>some people prefer to rent their couch. That's fine. You're effectively arguing that couch ownership should be forbidden.

in the same way in that you can still buy a CD or even record of a recent song, I'm sure you'll have physical media for quite a while.

But we should also face reality and realize that most people are fine renting media, so it should be no surprise if companies start to tailor towards the majority.

>You are going to have to provide a more compelling argument

sure: https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/11/mobile-games-now-account-f...

>In the U.S., users generally have eight games installed per device; globally, we play an average of two to five games per month.

we should never discount the mobile market in these discussions. nor teenagers.

Re: Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard

#406

Post by johnnyanmac »

fxtentacle wrote: post #381
lelanthran wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not the Boogeyman you think it is. You used to have to buy a game for $60 and if you didn't like it? Well too bad, that's $60 down the drain. Now you can just move on to the next one. I get that for enthusiasts owning a physical game may be more desirable, but for the majority of gamers (casual gamers) a subscription based service is a better option. Moving from an ownership model to a rental model is very ant…

"You'll own nothing and be happy" It described life in an unnamed city in which the narrator does not own a car, a house, any appliances, or any clothes, and instead relies on shared services for all of his daily needs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You%27ll_own_nothing_and_be_ha...

seems a bit hyperbolic to compare not owning the software on a disc to not owning clothes. Fact is that deluxe entertainment isn't some crucial necessity for most people. So of course they don't mind the lack of ownership.

Re: Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard

#407

Post by johnnyanmac »

kmeisthax wrote: post #399
maroonblazer wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the new model, consumers have two options now, instead of just one. They can rent the game or they can buy it. How is that not better?

Because tomorrow , they'll take away the option to buy the game. Everyone in the games industry is excited about streaming specifically because making everyone rent their games is long-term more lucrative. We've done this dance with streaming video in the past. First renting was cheaper and easier. Then renting was the only option, and it stopped being cheaper or easier.

>Then renting was the only option, and it stopped being cheaper or easier.

1. you can still buy the blu-ray for any given recent movie. For non-movies, the alternative was cable, which you did not own. And hoping that they'd release a collection on DVD/BD

2. Despite all the price hikes, streaming is still more bang for your buck unless you only watch 1-2 movies a month. And still much more convinent. We;re not at this point in time in video, so i'm not worried about games in the next 20 years hitting that.

Re: Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard

#408

Post by johnnyanmac »

autoexec wrote: post #375
cman1444 wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the Boogeyman you think it is. You used to have to buy a game for $60 and if you didn't like it? Well too bad, that's $60 down the drain. Now you can just move on to the next one. I get that for enthusiasts owning a physical game may be more desirable, but for the majority of gamers (casual gamers) a subscription based service is a better option.

> I get that for enthusiasts owning a physical game may be more desirable It is more desirable. So is not having to be connected to the internet to play your games. So is not paying for something that can be taken from you at any time for any reason without reimbursement. So is having a copy of your game that can't be edited or censored at any time (including silently) and which can always be played in its original f…

>I don't care how "casual" a gamer someone is, they will never be better off giving up so much in exchange for so little,

maybe you should care more, then. Because you clearly haven't considered the POV of the casual gamer. They want to see a game, download it, tinker for a few hours, and move on. They don't care about data or ads and they sure won't stick around long for subscriptions.

You can't understand an audience if you dismiss them like that.

Re: Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard

#409

Post by kipchak »

addisonl wrote: post #397
kiwijamo wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you'd put the Gameboy for example on par with the PlayStation? Despite one being portable and the other not?

Strawman (gameboy hasn’t been a thing for a decade) but looking past your fallacy I sure do: plenty of kids only get one or the other for Christmas.

Plenty of kids might have also got either a bicycle or a Gameboy for Christmas but I'm not sure this makes them comparable categories.

Re: Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard

#410

Post by vlozko »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #364
elefanten wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All market segments have subsets and supersets. Why should the line be drawn where you imply? Is Sony monopolizing the God of War market because God of War fans understand how those games are differentiated to appeal to their preferences? The FTC's case that PS and Xbox exist in their own "high-performance console" market is the contrived argument. Honestly, it's dated to even consider consoles their own market. Prod…

I didn’t invent this segment, the market did when Nintendo had the insight to gamble on there being demand for lower-powered consoles (and more recently with an added focus on portability) to play less graphically demanding games on. A decision consumers subsequently validated by buying over 100,000,000 of them. Granted it wasn’t that much of a gamble, as by the time they made the Switch, this had already become Nint…

>The Switch simple can’t do the same things that an Xbox or PlayStation can do. Many of those consoles top selling games would not be playable on a Switch, because they’re high performance games that require high performance hardware, and the Switch simply isn’t a viable substitute for that. Even for the most graphically demanding games that can run on a Switch, they can only do so with comparatively low resolution and frame rate, which in case you didn’t know, are major selling points for the segments that Microsoft/Sony are competing in.

Absolutely no one is arguing this and it's not the point. You should give the commentators on this forum more credit than thinking we aren't aware of the power/capabilities differences.

The "high-end console gaming market" is what is what people are taking issue with. It's such a limiting segmentation and is arguably not a very good definition. There's a console gaming market as a whole, with a subset of it being high-end, that competes on user's gaming time. In my view, that's how it should be defined. There's also the mobile gaming market. Are we to now say the Switch shouldn't belong in the mobile gaming market because of screen size and power capabilities? It doesn't make sense to define the Switch in its own, standalone market. What would it be? Mid-tier portable gaming market? One that has no competitors and it has a monopoly in? That's not practical nor reflective of gaming purchasing habits.

Segregating the market based on capabilities breaks down in many ways. The argument shouldn't be that the Switch should belong in its own category because many people who own an Xbox or a Playstation also happen to own a Switch. Nearly half of Xbox owners also happen to own Playstation console (myself included) so does the fact that there's an overlap now mean that Xbox and PlayStation should be somehow in their own category? Of course not. Nor should the argument be about how it's played. One can that the Switch can be played in a portable manner but I just as easily play on my Playstation or Xbox through my iPad locally or even the cloud. Yes, it's not a popular option but the capabilities are there. All that's left is arguing about whether or not something can play AAA games in higher fidelity. If fidelity is something a gamer is truly after, they'd be buying a PC.

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