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Microsoft completes $69B deal to buy Activision Blizzard

theguardian.com

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Re: Microsoft completes $69B deal to buy Activision Blizzard

#281

Post by femiagbabiaka »

duped wrote: post #242
femiagbabiaka wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To put into context, he was a close associate of one Jeffery Epstein, and in his book of clients and close associates. Why? Hard to say, Epstein wasn’t really in the games industry. That’s really just the beginning of it, Kotick is quite a prolific pos himself: https://nypost.com/2021/11/16/activision-ceo-threatened-to-h... . And he’s alleged to have covered up sexual assault at the company, which given the Epstein c…

> he was a close associate of one Jeffery Epstein Might want to check your sources

Hmm you're right, I was basing that on the fact that he was in the contact book and the flight logs, but I can't find any official sources corroborating the flight logs. So an acquaintance.

Re: Microsoft completes $69B deal to buy Activision Blizzard

#282

Post by surgical_fire »

koromak wrote: post #275

I'm not even worked up about gaming specifically. I just think the FTC is failing horrifically at its job of protecting consumers from monopoly. The SEC is failing on its end too. Everything will just get slowly worse.

With Microsoft track record of poorly managing its acquisitions, I don't think anything will get meaningfully worse.

Re: Microsoft completes $69B deal to buy Activision Blizzard

#283

Post by [deleted] »

pjmlp wrote: post #33
manuelabeledo wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But Sony having some real competition is a good thing. Sony has a bad tendency of anti-consumer tendencies in their gaming space when they are the leader and they get cocky. They did it with the PS3 and they are repeating some of that with the PS5 generation. I'm curious about which "anti-consumer practices" Sony is responsible for, that Microsoft isn't. So far it seems to me that Sony did acquire some gaming studi…

PS2Linux, the way PS3 Linux was a downgrade to PS2Linux, and later removed via firmware update, for example.

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft completes $69B deal to buy Activision Blizzard

#284

Post by WorldMaker »

eigenket wrote: post #29
izzydata wrote: post #20

It's strange to see some gamers praise this acquisition as if it will have any positive effect on some of the games they enjoy. In no world will Microsoft decreasing the competition going to be a good thing for consumers.

Mostly its because Activision/Blizzard is such an obviously shitty terrible company that any deal that sees cool IPs taken out of their hands is seen as a positive thing.

One thing I see as an ancient PC Gamer is that Activision also sits on one of the largest hoards of IPs. Not just "cool" IPs from today's games (a lot of people are mentioning Activision's odd/bad stewardship of Blizzard, of course), but Activision bought a lot of the classic publishers in its history as a massive M&A shop. The legacies of Infocom, Sierra, Knowledge Adventure, Davidson, and many more both well known and almost forgotten to history developers and publishers have all been locked into Activision's forgetful vaults. It's such a huge swath of classic PC games. Some of that catalog Activision eventually allowed onto at least GOG (with GOG allegedly doing a lot of the preservation work to make them run), if not Steam, but there's still so much of gaming history that Activision has either claimed to have lost (No One Lives Forever, as one commonly discussed franchise) or just seems disinterested in the IP they own because they can't figure out how to build mobile games from it.

I don't know if Microsoft will be a better custodian of all that gaming history, but as the company most synonymous with the PC today, maybe they will. (If so, among other possibilities PC Game Pass could get very interestingly different from Xbox Game Pass.)

Re: Microsoft completes $69B deal to buy Activision Blizzard

#285

Post by wlesieutre »

WorldMaker wrote: post #253
w0m wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well, assuming there's actually a cloud gaming market. A fact that's still up for debate I think.

Right. Microsoft is just about the only player left in cloud gaming because Sony, Amazon and Google all tried and gave up in different ways, in part because none of them really found a market nor an audience. I heard Sony is trying again but leasing some cloud servers from Microsoft Azure's white box version of xCloud, ironically. That last part is also why I think the Ubisoft deal is probably funny. Rumors are Ubi i…

Nvidia still has GeForce NOW

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce-now/

Re: Microsoft completes $69B deal to buy Activision Blizzard

#286

Post by Sebguer »

koromak wrote: post #275

I'm not even worked up about gaming specifically. I just think the FTC is failing horrifically at its job of protecting consumers from monopoly. The SEC is failing on its end too. Everything will just get slowly worse.

I think this is a bit unfair, there's a real significant FTC upswell happening, but they're contending with decades of atrophy and an antitrust lobby that is extraordinarily powerful, not to mention the number of monopoly-friendly judges that are sitting in some of the most vital courts.

Re: Microsoft completes $69B deal to buy Activision Blizzard

#287

Post by waynesonfire »

mrweasel wrote: post #70

And what is Microsoft going to do with this purchase? Seriously, Microsoft is buy all these game studios and fail to utilize them probably. They own all the IP required to do a followup to Fallout New Vegas and NOTHING.

> And what is Microsoft going to do with this purchase?

MSFT will ensure that every possible MSFT product is adopted by the entire Activision organization.

Re: Microsoft completes $69B deal to buy Activision Blizzard

#288

Post by giancarlostoro »

WorldMaker wrote: post #253
w0m wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well, assuming there's actually a cloud gaming market. A fact that's still up for debate I think.

Right. Microsoft is just about the only player left in cloud gaming because Sony, Amazon and Google all tried and gave up in different ways, in part because none of them really found a market nor an audience. I heard Sony is trying again but leasing some cloud servers from Microsoft Azure's white box version of xCloud, ironically. That last part is also why I think the Ubisoft deal is probably funny. Rumors are Ubi i…

Doesn't EA still have theirs?

Re: Microsoft completes $69B deal to buy Activision Blizzard

#289

Post by bparsons »

w0m wrote: post #214
gardaani wrote: post #209

UK regulators were objecting the deal because they were concerned that the takeover would reduce competition in cloud gaming. Microsoft gave game streaming rights to Ubisoft, which made the Activision deal possible: https://techcrunch.com/2023/10/13/why-microsoft-had-to-relin... "For Ubisoft, this deal means it has full and exclusive cloud-streaming rights to all current commercially available Activision games, as we…

well, assuming there's actually a cloud gaming market. A fact that's still up for debate I think.

I think the technology is about 80% there. To my eye, the graphics and performance are the same as running the game locally.

Provided you have a good internet connection, if you could just run a AAA game off of your crummy computer or tv, why would you buy an expensive graphics card? It is definitely where things are going.

Re: Microsoft completes $69B deal to buy Activision Blizzard

#290

Post by WorldMaker »

SeenNotHeard wrote: post #130

As a side note, this means that Microsoft now owns the copyrights to all of Infocom's interactive fiction: Zork, Enchanter, Deadline, HHGttG, etc.

Also, Sierra (King's Quest, Space Quest, Gabriel Knight, etc), Knowledge Associates (lots of ancient Edutainment IP, including Mario Teaches Typing and Mario is Missing!), Davidson (Math Blaster and other Edutainment IP), and more. Activision was a massive M&A shop of classic PC games history.
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