Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#411

Post by hooby » Tue, Jan 18, 2022, 3:27 PM UTC

akmarinov wrote: post #38

sabertoothed wrote: post #4

The name Blizzard is still magical to me. As the maybe 15-year old playing Warcraft II and drawing strategies on a piece of paper. I don't play computer games anymore. But it was magical.

They've now fallen so low, it's like it's a completely different company.

Not just "like" - they are a completely different company.

It's well known that in the wake of the huge success of WoW they had to completely re-organize the company in order to be able to properly support a game with an active audience of that size. Their size, their structure, their culture, everything changed.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#412

Post by apatters » Tue, Jan 18, 2022, 3:27 PM UTC

s3r3nity wrote: post #16

Congratulations to Phil Spencer, who started out leading an upstart team at Microsoft for a new game console called "Xbox" and is now "CEO of Microsoft Gaming" - a Microsoft Senior Leadership position. Oh, and he now leads the third biggest gaming company on the planet: > When the transaction closes, Microsoft will become the world’s third-largest gaming company by revenue, behind Tencent and Sony. It will be interes…

Sounds lovely for the suits.

As a longtime Blizzard fan and a former Microsoft employee, maybe I'm just getting too old for this shit, but there's really only one thing I care about:

Will they finally start getting the fucking games right again?

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#413

Post by PascLeRasc » Tue, Jan 18, 2022, 3:27 PM UTC

apocalyptic0n3 wrote: post #222

palijer wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I looked around for a while, a d I can't actually find a list of any mergers that antitrust regulations actually prevented. I'm assuming some survivor bias is involved here and we don't hear about the ones that stopped early, but it seems that what I and most folks assume antitrust regulations do is different than what actually happens. I remember the Sirius/XM merge and how those were the only two players in the mar…

AT&T's acquisition of T-Mobile was aborted due to anti-trust complaints if I recall correctly. The original purchase of Rite Aid by Walgreens was aborted due to similar concerns, although that one ended in a revised partial acquisition anyway. The Staples acquisition of Office Depot/Office Max was stopped as well on anti-trust grounds. They also blocked a merger of Nasdaq and NYSE. Those are all since 2010. I'm sure…

Intuit was blocked from buying Credit Karma Tax just recently. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-requires-d...

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#414

Post by smileybarry » Tue, Jan 18, 2022, 3:27 PM UTC

jpablo wrote: post #402

curiousllama wrote: post #315

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.

Isn't that basically the same Nintendo and Sony? Save for the cloud platform.

Sony practically owns their cloud platform too, with their Gaikai purchase a decade ago[1] and PS Now being "PS3/PS4s in the cloud".

[1] https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-07-03-sony-acqui...

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#415

Post by me_me_mu_mu » Tue, Jan 18, 2022, 3:28 PM UTC

nemacol wrote: post #260

I dread the day they switch the Blizzard app launcher to a MS account. You just know it is going to be a nightmare to sort out. Beyond petty nonsense - Sure wish we had some antitrust laws in this country. The consolidation of every industry gross.

Maybe it actually works

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#416

Post by wodenokoto » Tue, Jan 18, 2022, 3:29 PM UTC

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 play almost exclusively Nintendo and indie games on my switch.

There is quite a Nintendo tax on indie games though.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#417

Post by WillPostForFood » Tue, Jan 18, 2022, 3:29 PM UTC

sascha_sl wrote: post #377

4e530344963049 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does CoD become an Xbox/Windows exclusive?

Console exclusivity is no longer the driving force for revenue, that's GamePass. Selling full versions everywhere else is good business, we saw that from both Microsoft and Sony making more PC ports - and for Xbox it is yet another driver into their subscription model.

Until GamePass is on Playstation, putting Microsoft games on Playstation doesn't drive subscription revenue. We already see future Bethesda titles being withdrawn from PS5, I don't see why this would be different.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#418

Post by KaoruAoiShiho » Tue, Jan 18, 2022, 3:29 PM UTC

How does the exclusive game work now? It's okay to have exclusives to compete with the big boys but surely the rules are different once you get to this scale. When you get close to a monopolistic position using exclusives to lock out competitors is abusive. Though MS is still not quite in a monopolistic position yet... they're getting close.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#419

Post by joshstrange » Tue, Jan 18, 2022, 3:29 PM UTC

After the initial promo Game Pass price (and using the Xbox Gold -> Game Pass "hack") I got my first bill for $45 for the quarter. I started to go cancel it as I play my xbox in fits and spurts but I've got to say $15/mo for the massive catalogue available (and this was before Bethesda or today's news obviously) is a really good deal for me. I easily get at least 1 game a quarter of play out of it and that would normally cost $60 and require a lot of though/research before purchasing, instead I can try games with reckless abandon and only play the ones I like. That said, I couldn't care less about cloud gaming, the controls feel "soft" and/or laggy to me still (I'm on fiber symmetrical and I've tried on Mac, Xbox One/Series X, iPhone, and iPad, all with an official Xbox controller and wired for all but the iPhone/iPad).

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#420

Post by WHA8m » Tue, Jan 18, 2022, 3:30 PM UTC

ryathal wrote: post #370

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.

Hopefully they can start to force Sony into a world where cross console play is a thing if they have enough of the marquee franchises.

Seems somewhat imaginable, since they'll try to do that with Windows and Xbox obviously. At some point with enough games to support that, PlayStation owners will feel left out and Sony might follow. Who knows...