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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

#431

Post by johnnyanmac »

pjmlp wrote: post #336
manuelabeledo wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A more accurate comparison would be to force Sony to release their exclusive titles on Xbox. Sony does not own Square-Enix.

They are the ones making the deals with the game devs anyway, doesn't matter if the studio isn't an internal one.

It's not illegal to make publishing deals in any way. And Square isn't beholden to anyone in particular. They have made deals with Nintendo and even Microsoft for various games, promotional material, etc.

And that's not even getting into their game-adjacent deals (AMD, various cloud services) and the dozens of crossovers with the stragest companies (remember when Final Fantasy 13 released some Louis Vuitton fashion line?)

Re: Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard

#432

Post by lelanthran »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #386
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…

Maybe people consider that eventually they die and that everything is rented in a sense...

> Maybe people consider that eventually they die and that everything is rented in a sense...

Nope. If you own something you can leave it to your kids.

If you rent it, you can't.

Re: Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard

#433

Post by johnnyanmac »

madeofpalk wrote: post #187
tnel77 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t like any of those games, but their sales numbers obviously show that others do haha.

I don’t think US competition law should be based on your personal taste for video games!

Too bad that's how half the arguments go here. People were more upset about the Zenimax aquisition than this one.

Re: Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard

#434

Post by johnnyanmac »

tremorscript wrote: post #327
doikor wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FTC knew the judges son works at Microsoft and this court/judge was pretty much their choice (Microsoft wanted a different judge in a different jurisdiction)

Sorry https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/06/29/watchdog-... The FTC will never ask for a recursal. I know I would not. You cannot blatantly call a judge corrupt especially when you are a participant in that case. If you are in the judiciary, your standards must be higher. From the article:- “Nothing antagonizes a judge with whom you might have litigation in the future like calling them recklessly biased,” h…

>The FTC will never ask for a recursal. I know I would not. You cannot blatantly call a judge corrupt especially when you are a participant in that case.

of course not. Law has much prettier words for that that the FTC could have used. The same words the article uses (they never use "corrupt" in the watchdog quotes).

Besides, I agree with the professor's arguments:

>“A rank-and-file employee at Microsoft would probably not have an interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome of this case. … She's right to look at [the fact that] the division that would be affected by the litigation is not where her son is employed,” he said.

It's the equivalent of some Wal-Mart lawsuit where a judge's grandson is working part time at Wal-Mart.

Re: Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard

#435

Post by johnnyanmac »

madeofpalk wrote: post #198
glimshe wrote: post #91

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…

Maybe we can put aside the superficial sports-team rivalries for a moment. Maybe both Microsoft and Sony could develop good products that consumers and publishers want to pay money for, rather than make unrelated, restrictive business deals!

>rather than make unrelated, restrictive business deals!

I thought you wanted to put aside the superficial sports-team rivalries?

No casual consumer cares about the deals, they care about the games. If this makes better games, cool. If not, not cool. We'll see how history goes this time around.

Re: Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard

#436

Post by johnnyanmac »

kiwijamo wrote: post #210
addisonl wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A portable console.

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

If they got the same games, sure. Activision doesn't publish for Switch that much, but most major studios will at least consider a Switch port.

Re: Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard

#437

Post by johnnyanmac »

tonymet wrote: post #266

As much as i want Blizzard games included in Game Pass, this will end up resulting in lower quality games titles . Fewer studios are going to be able to compete

>Fewer studios are going to be able to compete

But there already is competition? FPSs and aren't exactly a dead genre.

Re: Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard

#438

Post by wesapien »

stale2002 wrote: post #100
dmonitor wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think the overarching concern is giving tech giant like Microsoft a hand when it's already entrenched in consumer, enterprise and government markets.

We don't need to inflate an already bighead corporate oligarch.

Re: Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard

#439

Post by johnnyanmac »

lelanthran wrote: post #430
johnnyanmac wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the players have fun, that's all that really matters. Remember that many of these aren't people who would magically jump in and play Skyrim if the mobile industry suddenly disappeared, even if Skyrim was given to them. It's a completely different audience. Once again, this is deluxe entertainment, and the overall impact of spending more money on a hobby isn't the end of the world. I'm not going to judge how others…

> If the players have fun, that's all that really matters. That wasn't your argument. If you wanted to argue that, you should have done so from the beginning. Your argument was that it is more beneficial for players to pay many times the price of any game they play often.

>Your argument was that it is more beneficial for players to pay many times the price of any game they play often.

No it wasn't. My arugment is that this is what players are doing already. I don't care about how you feel about gaming habits. My only point in replying to you is to say that

>The majority of gamers don't play more than a handful of games in a year. There's just no time. You find a game you're into, your pour most of your hours into that game.

is wrong. You asked for proof against that and I gave you a link for gaming trends. You countered with "That's not a good thing", and I don't care. Because that's not my argument. Whever you inferred that I applied personal judgement to these statistics is wrong until you made your comment about that judgement.

So there you have it. If you want to shift your argument to "this isn't good for the consumer"... well, I gave you my take. Take it or leave it, I have nothing more to add to that discussion. If you want to go back to talking about what and how people consume games, feel free to respond to that.

Yes, people do play multiple games a month, so they are also fine renting games to consume more. Even in console games, there are so many accounts to how Gamepass has reinvigorated some people to playing more games than before.

Re: Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard

#440

Post by madeofpalk »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #435
madeofpalk wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe we can put aside the superficial sports-team rivalries for a moment. Maybe both Microsoft and Sony could develop good products that consumers and publishers want to pay money for, rather than make unrelated, restrictive business deals!

>rather than make unrelated, restrictive business deals! I thought you wanted to put aside the superficial sports-team rivalries? No casual consumer cares about the deals, they care about the games. If this makes better games, cool. If not, not cool. We'll see how history goes this time around.

They are impacted because they bought a Playstation and they can't play Halo.
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