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

Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

451–460 of 490 posts

Re: Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard

#451

Post by johnnyanmac »

lemoncookiechip wrote: post #390

I like how everyone forgets that it wasn't Sony, Nintendo or even the PC market that put the XBOX division in the position they are, it was themselves. At the start of last generation, XBOX decided to shot themselves [1] and announce that the XBOX One would be an always online media (not gaming) machine that would require itself to phone home frequently or it wouldn't even work at all offline during vacations. They s…

>I like how everyone forgets that it wasn't Sony, Nintendo or even the PC market that put the XBOX division in the position they are, it was themselves.

I don't think anyone forgot, it's simply irrelevant. For one reason or another, they are 3rd place so these arguments against being a monopoly falls flat. As well as all the "company bad" arguments being made. If "company bad" was a sufficient argument no acquisition would be made ever.

But these aren't up to public opinion, it's up to courts.

> a media brick with features no was or is asking for to this day

nah, people really wanted those features... but MS was beat to the punch by much cheapter set top boxes. Then the rise of smart Tv's sealed the deal (even if the hardware for those absolutely suck). Bad foresight there, especially since they were promising a cable TV show for Halo in 2013, around the time Netflix was establishing itself as a major force.

>does anyone even remember how bad GoW5 was?

No, not really. GOW5 jumped off the Lootbox train extremely fast (<2 months after release or something). So EA/Activision/Epic was in the forefront there. Probably one of the smarter moves MS made. MS may have been bad, but they either had good PR or the competition was simply that much worse.

Re: Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard

#452

Post by refracture »

zimpenfish wrote: post #414
refracture wrote: post #413

Sporadic thoughts: I'm not impressed with Sony's tantrums over this, they've been throwing money around for exclusivity for years, ranging from exclusive content in major titles (Destiny and CoD have often been 'definitive' on PlayStation) to outright title exclusivity. I'm probably not a good source of opinion on this, Acti-Blizz has become a toxic company that doesn't really make games I like anymore, and I resent…

> I don't see how Microsoft could possibly make things worse, so I'm slightly optimistic I'd look at what they've done with the Minecraft IP since buying it - main game gets no love, infrequent updates, etc., whilst they churn out side-projects like Dungeons and load up Bedrock with monetisation. For sure, it's not "worse" but it's a million miles away from what should have been under good ownership.

I'm not a Minecraft player so I probably can't speak to this but sometimes all I want in an existing product is infrequent updates.. little quality of life improvements, patches that keep the game running properly on modern OS/hardware, that kind of thing.

It's all we wanted from Warcraft III. They shut down the existing game and replaced it with the remaster, which had a significant number of previously present features absent or broken. Even now years later it's a zombie product that has essentially been left to die.

Again I'm not in the loop on Minecraft but I would be very surprised if Microsoft has mistreated it anywhere near as badly as Blizzard has Warcraft III.

Re: Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard

#453

Post by krolden »

cman1444 wrote: post #312
KingMachiavelli wrote: post #297

The real issue is Sony has many exclusives which gives Microsoft a better case (despite the judge saying it's NOT about Sony). It certainly harms consumers, so I don't see how the court still approved this especially with the judge's comment against the comparison to Sony. Almost all mergers of this size harm consumers, the fact that it's allowed by default is the crucial issue. If the FTC still had a spine they woul…

I disagree with the opinion that it harms consumers. The economist has an article it recently published that argues that this deal actually helps consumers by speeding up the transition to "streaming" games and cloud gaming as an option. I tend to agree. Just because one large company is buying another large company doesn't mean the deal should be blocked.

Cloud gaming is only good if the cloud is your computer.

Re: Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard

#454

Post by mustacheemperor »

ScoobleDoodle wrote: post #176
tnel77 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Activision’s portfolio of games aren’t that great. I think we’ll be fine.

Activision / Blizzard / King includes: Candy Crush, World of Warcraft, and Diablo which are all heavy hitters.

And their gigantic IP portfolio includes Arcanum, creator of which Tim Cain is now under MS' employ.

Tim has recently said he has the full source code to the original and the design doc to the planned sequel...

Re: Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard

#456

Post by Jochim »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #412
Jochim wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Game streaming is a great option to have but it incentivises the same behaviour we've seen from companies that move to a SAAS model: Charge a monthly fee and remove the option to own the product. Not actually owning the games is a problem. Nvidia's service, GeForce Now, originally allowed you to play any game you had purchased on Steam, under the theory that you were using your license to play it. Their library was d…

too bad the choice isnt ours and we've long seen how other audiences in other media have chosen. People simply don't care about those things as a majority

I hesitate to blame the audience when vendors are all too keen to force the transition themselves. See Adobe, Microsoft, and Atlassian's discontinuing/restriction of on premises licenses for their products.

People often seem to have a general sense of helplessness when it comes to large businesses, why get upset about it when there's nothing you can do?

I don't see anything unless people find the motivation to make it a political issue.

A personal anecdote that I think exemplifies the problem:

I was once double invoiced for custom charges by FedEx. The phone number on the invoice lead to a phone tree where every option simply hung up. Depending on where I looked there were three different email addresses, and an online form; only one provided an automated response and my first three emails were ignored entirely. Their customer support line was unable to connect to that department.

At one point I was given an individual's work email and received no response either. Despite this, I continued to receive past due, and final notice letters from them.

It took months and hours of my time to resolve a problem they created, had I not persisted, I would have had to deal with collections and credit agencies.

Why should we allow companies behave this way without repercussions?

Re: Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard

#457

Post by zimpenfish »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #450
zimpenfish wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't see how Microsoft could possibly make things worse, so I'm slightly optimistic I'd look at what they've done with the Minecraft IP since buying it - main game gets no love, infrequent updates, etc., whilst they churn out side-projects like Dungeons and load up Bedrock with monetisation. For sure, it's not "worse" but it's a million miles away from what should have been under good ownership.

Does the main game need love? I feel like MS could die tomorrow and fans would still maintain Minecraft servers until the heat death of the universe. >it's a million miles away from what should have been under good ownership. Notch didn't exactly age well in the last 12 years or so, so I'm not sure if that's a good example of "it couldn't be worse".

> Does the main game need love?

Definitely. It is an unoptimised shambles of a mess - mods can improve the performance by sometimes multiple orders of magnitude.

A simple(ish) block game should not chug at sub-60fps rates on a gaming PC when I can run something like Just Cause 2 at a solid 4K60 with all the graphics turned up.

> Notch didn't exactly age well in the last 12 years or so

True and fair.

Re: Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard

#458

Post by Dylan16807 »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #407
kmeisthax wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because tomorrow , they'll take away the option to buy the game. Everyone in the games industry is excited about streaming specifically because making everyone rent their games is long-term more lucrative. We've done this dance with streaming video in the past. First renting was cheaper and easier. Then renting was the only option, and it stopped being cheaper or easier.

>Then renting was the only option, and it stopped being cheaper or easier. 1. you can still buy the blu-ray for any given recent movie. For non-movies, the alternative was cable, which you did not own. And hoping that they'd release a collection on DVD/BD 2. Despite all the price hikes, streaming is still more bang for your buck unless you only watch 1-2 movies a month. And still much more convinent. We;re not at thi…

You didn't own cable but you could certainly record it. So we've taken a big step back there.

Re: Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard

#459

Post by swift532 »

midoridensha wrote: post #232
majormajor wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does it matter that it's entertainment? If at some point consumers have to pay more than they would in a more competitive market, how is that not harm? If you believe that this is a move that will result in less consumer choice and more possibility for MS to extract more $$$$, then you don't like it.

>If at some point consumers have to pay more than they would in a more competitive market, how is that not harm? No one HAS to pay for entertainment. It's a pure luxury. There's tons of things you can do with your free time besides playing video games (let alone brand-new AAA console titles): go outside, take a hike, play an instrument, take up a hobby, socialize, learn to cook, write your own software, I could go on…

Well if you take it to the point of absurdity, then we only have to maintain a competitive market for grain and water.

Re: Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard

#460

Post by autoexec »

PretzelPirate wrote: post #388
autoexec wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I get that for enthusiasts owning a physical game may be more desirable It is more desirable. So is not having to be connected to the internet to play your games. So is not paying for something that can be taken from you at any time for any reason without reimbursement. So is having a copy of your game that can't be edited or censored at any time (including silently) and which can always be played in its original f…

I certainly like all those features, but would rather have them in a digital form. I want to download the media to my hard drive, store it on my NAS, back it up in any way, and be able to install it from those sources whenever I want. I also want licenses to be maintained outside of walled gardens using digital signatures, which I can also maintain my own copy of. As long as I present my license file along with signe…

I don't mind digital if it's done right. I like GOG because you don't need their client, you can just download all the installers and manuals directly.
Post reply on HN