231–240 of 590 posts
Normally I'm against such huge mergers - but Activision Blizzard is one of the most hostile companies against their users and employees I have ever seen. I can't imagine this being a bad thing for game fans.
Blizzard used to me my absolute favourite game company; its so sad how they have fallen off since they got bought by Activision.
So Basically only EA and Ubisoft remains as big publisher.
CD Projekt Red? 2 of the biggest games ever belongs to them (Witcher and Cyberpunk)
And arguably having two IPs, both which are not original IPs, is not that huge.
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What is the antitrust behavior here?
the antitrust behavior is two of the largest players in the gaming space combining. how is that going to promote competition? it's just going to make it easier for them to outspend and outlast and eventually ingest it's competition Sony's gaming revenue is ~26 B 8 % of MSFT's revenue is from gaming = ~15 B Nintendo 12 B ABK 8 B EA 7.5 B ( and that isn't including tencent and netease. i didn't bother trying to find fi…
Why not just merge all nasdaq 100 and be done with it?
The idea that there's a "fair" market left in the US is an abject joke. At BEST, there are a handful of companies divvying up a market collusively. At worst, and increasingly commonly, we have effective duopolies that juuuust skate the currently en vogue legal definitions to create 2 different walled gardens. Name for me a market (of financial significance) which isn't currently dominated by two mini-monopolies, and…
The only big national industries that are dominated by monopolies I would say are telecommunications, utilities, silicon, pharmaceuticals, rail, and even most of these have a few more companies than two. Granted, 3 telecoms is not much of an improvement over 2, but nevertheless your claim is broadly speaking false.
Are there private equity firms trying to consolidate? Sure, but in any of the above they haven't really met with much success.
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They haven’t owned Bethesda for very long so I think it’s fair that they haven’t released a F:NV successor yet. I do suspect that Microsoft may have been behind Starfield releasing in its half-baked, dumbed down state though a la “We need it on game pass by X, make it happen!” Regarding at least the Blizzard side of the acquisition, I feel like Microsoft ownership may end up being a good thing for their underused IP.…
> I do suspect that Microsoft may have been behind Starfield releasing in its half-baked, dumbed down state though a la “We need it on game pass by X, make it happen!” The rumor mill suggests the opposite is true. Bethesda intended to ship the game over a year ago and Microsoft delayed it to make sure it wasn't the next No Man's Sky or Cyberpunk.
I wish it was the next Cyberpunk. I've gone back and forth between Cyberpunk 2077 2.0 / Phantom Liberty and Starfield, and I like Cyberpunk 2077 so much better. It looks better, it has a way more captivating story, it has so much more interesting characters and it just plays much nicer.
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We're talking about game prices, which are indeed industry set (worked in the industry). The Xbox Series S has cheaper hardware, that's why it's cheaper. You might as well say video games are getting less expensive because the 3DS isn't $500. While GamePass is great value, it's just temporary to keep everybody on Microsoft store. You can't mod games, you can't open your game files even, and your progress in live serv…
> We're talking about game prices No we're not, we're talking about the total cost of console gaming, because that's what actually matters when you're discussing the effect on consumers. > It's hard not to acknowledge the fact that Microsoft is getting perfectly positioned to clamp everyone down into their ecosystem harder than ever No, it's hard to imagine where you're getting that from at all, if you're talking abo…
- Microsoft dwarfs Sony as a company, so I don't know why you're painting them as an underdog with their back against the wall.
- The amount of gaming IP Microsoft owns also dwarfs Sony. The concern is not that one or the other will make things exclusive but that the options of who game developers can work for will get smaller, which makes unionization harder, which makes our games shittier.
> No we're not, we're talking about the total cost of console gaming, because that's what actually matters when you're discussing the effect on consumers.
The poster you responded to was talking about gaming prices. That's great if you can save a hundred dollars buying a cheaper console though.
> No, it's hard to imagine where you're getting that from at all.
From all the things I said, and in addition, Microsoft pretty much having it's hand in every pot in the world (Even WHO).
> They're simply trying to compete against their more successful competitor Sony.
> I don't think the attitude of "let Sony's gaming business be as big as it already is
...How big do you think Sony is? You vastly overestimate how worried Microsoft is about Sony. Activision is as big a publisher as Sony and Microsoft just bought them.
Normally I'm against such huge mergers - but Activision Blizzard is one of the most hostile companies against their users and employees I have ever seen. I can't imagine this being a bad thing for game fans.
Blizzard used to me my absolute favourite game company; its so sad how they have fallen off since they got bought by Activision.
Making $60 desktop games is just a horrible business to be in, the development costs are too high, and the return is too low. Why would you make a AAA title when you can make Candy Crush? It only makes sense to divert resources where the ROI picture is prettier.
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> We're talking about game prices No we're not, we're talking about the total cost of console gaming, because that's what actually matters when you're discussing the effect on consumers. > It's hard not to acknowledge the fact that Microsoft is getting perfectly positioned to clamp everyone down into their ecosystem harder than ever No, it's hard to imagine where you're getting that from at all, if you're talking abo…
I don't like Sony either so it's a bit weird to find out you're turning this into a "console war" thing. I find that mentality really embarrassing. My beef is with Microsoft essentially owning the planet. - Microsoft dwarfs Sony as a company, so I don't know why you're painting them as an underdog with their back against the wall. - The amount of gaming IP Microsoft owns also dwarfs Sony. The concern is not that one…
Of course it's a console war thing, it's always been a console war thing. That's literally the definition of the market we're talking about here.
What the rest of Microsoft's business does, or the rest of Sony's business does, outside of gaming, has nothing to do with anything here. Buying Activision isn't helping Microsoft with Office 365, nor is Office going to bring people to Call of Duty. The same as having "The Last of Us" as a PS exclusive isn't helping Sony sell cameras or TV's.
Edit: I mean, if you think Microsoft ought to be forced to spin off its Xbox division as a totally separate company, as part of breaking up the tech giants into 50 different companies, then that's a totally different conversation, and Activision is neither here nor there.
But as long as we're accepting that Microsoft is allowed to compete in gaming in the first place, then purchasing Activision is simply what it needs to be allowed to do in order to compete fairly against Sony.
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The idea that there's a "fair" market left in the US is an abject joke. At BEST, there are a handful of companies divvying up a market collusively. At worst, and increasingly commonly, we have effective duopolies that juuuust skate the currently en vogue legal definitions to create 2 different walled gardens. Name for me a market (of financial significance) which isn't currently dominated by two mini-monopolies, and…
There are many such markets -- real estate, construction, financial services (banking, mortgages, credit cards, etc), agriculture, retail (no, walmart is not a monopoly), oil, automotive, air travel, I can name many more. The only big national industries that are dominated by monopolies I would say are telecommunications, utilities, silicon, pharmaceuticals, rail, and even most of these have a few more companies than…
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> MS just wants the profits. Are you sure about that? MS required Starfield to be exclusive after purchasing Bethesda
Well of course. They're spending a lot of money, why wouldn't they make the titles of anything they acquire be Xbox/Windows exclusive? That increases their profits. More people buy Xboxes, more people are on their platform, etc. They have some contractual obligations that prevent them from doing it for everything , but they'll do it for anything they can. That's just business sense.