Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

news.microsoft.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 1001 posts

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#311

Post by Duralias »

user-the-name wrote: post #104
zamalek wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft tries to have an inclusive culture, and generally succeeds far more than their peers. Once Kotick is out I may well end my Blizzard boycott.

"Bobby Kotick will continue to serve as CEO of Activision Blizzard, and he and his team will maintain their focus on driving efforts to further strengthen the company’s culture and accelerate business growth."

If they fire him after taking over can't they give him less in severance for the many reasons why he is hated?

However, they could also be withholding that until next week so they can get more news out of this acquisition, saying that he (and hopefully a lot of management) is stepping down would make a lot of news on its own, doing it now would muddle it.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#312

Post by jtmetcalfe »

enkid wrote: post #81
madeofpalk wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there should be more (gaming) companies, and (gaming) companies should not be owned by the platforms, so I see this as a pretty big negative for the industry and customers. Congrats to Phil on his resume bump I guess.

There actually are a ton of gaming companies right now. The indie game space seems to be much healthier and accessible than say, the indie movie business. I hardly buy AAA titles anymore because you can get so many good games for under $20 dollars made by independent studios. Of course, this is based on mostly staying on PC and Steam. I would suspect consoles are not as indie friendly, but it does seem like they have…

I love indie games but I also wish there was a middle ground between the current generation of AAA titles (not typically my cup of tea) and the indie community

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#313

Post by parkingrift »

MangoCoffee wrote: post #289
parkingrift wrote: post #196

No acquisition of this size should ever be allowed. This is way too much consolidation. Microsoft is buying their way to becoming the #2 or #3 gaming company in the world. They should have to innovate and compete their way to the #2 or #3 gaming company in the world. Who is going to be able to compete with Xbox Game Pass?

Disney? it own all the media and franchise IPs like Star Wars, Marvel...etc.

I don’t consider past regulatory failures as a reasonable counter argument to regulating current transactions. I would wholeheartedly supported forcing Disney to divest much of their portfolio.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#315

Post by curiousllama »

It's wild how Microsoft has been able to vertically integrate gaming.

They now own the distribution (Xbox Cloud Gaming, Xbox Game Pass), the games (Call of Duty, WoW, Starcraft + what they owned before), the OS (Windows, Xbox), the hardware (Xbox, many PCs), and the back end compute (Azure). The only thing they're missing, the network bandwidth, is mostly a commodity anyway.

That's a heck of a moat.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#316

Post by MangoCoffee »

atlasunshrugged wrote: post #34

I wonder if this will trigger any antitrust lawsuits. I know Microsoft isn't that of the 90's but it seems like the political situation is ripe for politicians to go after "big tech" and this is a pretty major acquisition that will help Xbox be the dominant player in terms of content.

the article say Microsoft will be the third largest gaming company behind Tenecent and Sony. how antitrust going to trigger if Microsoft doesn't have the entire market. if antitrust didn't take down Apple just force Apple to allows third party payment option. i don't see how this will trigger antitrust

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#317

Post by cestith »

sto11z wrote: post #143
MrJagil wrote: post #63

The old Blizzard always seemed much closer to Apple than Microsoft in culture. An incredible attention to detail and the onboarding experience, clean, fun and friendly design and a slightly rebellious attitude expressed through their willingness to enter new markets. The "new" Microsoft though, really is different than the old and might actually do quite well in stewarding this supposedly sinking ship into fairer wat…

Apple doesn't have a gaming division. Why would they be interested in acquiring Blizzard?

To start a gaming division with widely known titles already onboard.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#318

Post by overcast »

1_player wrote: post #2

The most important question I have is: will they replace Bobby Kotick? EDIT: "Bobby Kotick will continue to serve as CEO of Activision Blizzard. [...] he and his team will maintain their focus on driving efforts to further strengthen the company’s culture." Shame on you, Microsoft.

Bobby "Culture" Kotick

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#319

Post by sofixa »

fourseventy wrote: post #253
drannex wrote: post #50

My god I hate monopolies, MS has been on a buying spree and someone needs to stop them, but it will likely never happen.

This acquisition makes Microsoft the third biggest gaming company in the world... Not even the biggest, and far from a monopoly...

Don't get hung up on "monopoly". Their games are only available on their own vertically integrated platforms. They're abusing their dominant market position and should be slapped hard ( full break up and multi billion fines).

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#320

Post by johannes1234321 »

lvass wrote: post #116
bitwize wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft owns CoD, Doom, Quake, Minecraft, Fallout, Elder Scrolls, and soon Warcraft, Starcraft, and Overwatch. They're becoming the Disney of gaming, which is scary, but hey, Microsoft gonna Microsoft.

Haven't you heard? They <3 Linux now, they'll never use their position to lock people into their platforms again. They even promised they'll be good.

they <3 people running Linux on Azure. But the Windows Server PMs certainly don't like Linux. A large corporation isn't fully uniform.
Post reply on HN