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Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

news.microsoft.com

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Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#421

Post by zymhan »

aeortiz wrote: post #358
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.

They still don't own the graphics cards and displays (monitors &/or googles)

Those are very much a commodity.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#422

Post by JAlexoid »

ThunderSizzle wrote: post #246
echelon wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [...] if Satya and the Board spin off gaming into an independent company at some point. I certainly think this should happen. The trillion dollar giants should not span multiple industries. They have absurd monopoly power and can make growing your own niche impossible. Why does a cloud computing / operating system vendor / hardware manufacturer / business software / developer tooling company also own the third bigg…

What's funny is that when EPB of Chattanooga decided they wanted a Fiber Network to build their smart power grid around, Comcast said no. So they built their own, and Comcast started suing them. A lot of stupid lobby fights later, and EPB Fiber Optics became a separate company with a loan from EPB (power company). Both wholly owned by the City of Chattanooga. EPB had to keep all power monies and all internet monies c…

I sell some nick-nacks on Amazon and eBay.

Considering how much eBay charges for less - Amazon's eCom is not going to fold, if AWS was separated.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#423

Post by ecf »

sbarre wrote: post #83
Kelteseth wrote: post #31

Can somebody please explain to me, why is it allowed for a company like MS to buy all of their (indirect) competitors?

Even after this purchase, Microsoft's gaming division is still smaller than Sony by revenue.. There are still lots of other large publishers out there.. EA, Take Two, Embracer, Tencent, Epic, etc... I'm sure I'm forgetting some big obvious ones even. They are definitely not "buying all their competitors" as you put it.

> Microsoft’s gaming division

Isn’t that the point? Why can something as large as MS have a “division” that can go into mergers and acquisitions as if they were a separate entity?

> There are stills lots of other large publishers

…goes on to name 5.

> They are definitely not “buying all their competit

Sure, you can be as pedantic as you want and jump through hoops to come to that rationalization.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#424

Post by lgessler »

apatters wrote: post #412
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?

Old Blizzard is dead and has been for almost a decade--the name's the same but their job now is not to make great games that push the envelope in game design but rather to manage cash-printing franchises. It's hard not to think this when so many of the people behind the original groundbreaking games (StarCraft, WC3, D2) have left the company and in some cases disavowed it.

Be happy that old Blizzard happened, I say, and look on with eagerness to new indie studios, many of which are being run by the same Blizzard vets.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#425

Post by neogodless »

agd wrote: post #53

With these kind of acquisitions, other companies are going to find it very hard to compete with Game Pass. I think we'll look back in 10 years and wonder why antitrust regulators did nothing, but it may be too late by then.

> other companies are going to find it very hard to compete with Game Pass

I haven't really ever used it. I used to buy everything Blizzard made (OK that's an exaggeration, but I was all about WarCraft/StarCraft/Diablo...). Before Steam, I bought lots of games on disk. Now I buy most things on Steam. And I haven't bought anything Blizzard since Diablo III.

Why wouldn't Steam continue to be competitive against Game Pass?

(I'm just one person, but among the people I know that play PC games, I don't hear about Game Pass much. One person mentioned he's on a 14 day $1 trial - that was the extent of it.)

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#427

Post by bob1029 »

rytill wrote: post #397

I’m excited for what this could mean for undervalued IP like StarCraft and Diablo.

I feel like the larger a developer/publisher becomes, the more mundane their titles are (because they are trying to saturate more global markets).

Diablo 4 being pushed back until Microsoft could oversee its development and release is pretty much a death sentence in my book.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#428

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

me_me_mu_mu wrote: post #383
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.

No way. The politicians are also bagholders now.

They always were. Worth noting the bags are larger now and there are fewer options to hold.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#430

Post by ethbr0 »

ekianjo wrote: post #380
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…

> 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 You forgot to mention he started with billions of dollars backing him up. It was not like a small startup or something.

> billions of dollars

How big were Sony and Nintendo at the time? Even with Microsoft's war chest, it was an uphill battle.

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