Microsoft completes $69B deal to buy Activision Blizzard • Hacker News Board

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

#471

Post by bavell » Sat, Oct 14, 2023, 5:15 AM UTC

EstesPark wrote: post #470

MobileVet wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RTS is such a great genre. I know everyone loved StarCraft but I enjoyed Warcraft II and 3 more… along with C&C, Red Alert and Age of Empires. Not sure why. Warcraft 3 was a great balance between micro and macro management due to the Hero concept. SC always just felt like a game of numbers… but I am sure I just wasn’t as experienced. Regardless I would love it if the genre stayed alive and I am glad Age is continuall…

Wow, I completely forgot about Red Alert. That game was a blast!

Chew on this!!

Awaiting orders.

Affirmative!

What a gem.

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

#472

Post by keithalewis » Sat, Oct 14, 2023, 5:21 AM UTC

Flashing lights on a screen and noise from a speaker have never been so valuable. Who'd of thunk there were so many people willing to pay good money to waste their time?

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

#473

Post by CobrastanJorji » Sat, Oct 14, 2023, 6:03 AM UTC

imbnwa wrote: post #460

WorldMaker wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also kind of wish to see that. Al Lowe is beyond retired at this point, but maybe Microsoft money can buy at least outlines of his four (!) proposed sequels.

Can you imagine a Leisure Suit Larry in 2023

I regret to inform you that the most recent original Leisure Suit Larry game, "Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Dry Twice," came out in 2020 (2021 on console, 2022 on mobile).

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

#474

Post by anakaine » Sat, Oct 14, 2023, 6:37 AM UTC

mehlmao wrote: post #413

vel0city wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> needs a strong internet connection I've used Xbox Cloud Gaming on a cheap $300 Walmart laptop all over my home on WiFi, several different cafe/bar WiFi networks, and several places tethered to my phone without any real playability concerns. I might not recommend it if you're playing some kind of twitch shooter kind of game, but I've played a lot of Forza, Starfield, Gotham Knights, and Ghost Recon Wildlands on it.

I'm surprised, I had pretty much the opposite experience. I used Xbox Cloud Gaming to play through Halo 5 (the only game in the series to not have a PC port) in four sessions over a few months, wrapping up last weekend. I'm on a high spec desktop playing with an Xbox controller connected by USB. The desktop is on Ethernet, 200 Mbps down / 30 Mbps up. In my experience, the game frequently failed to start. Most often I…

The technology they chose to power the experience, Rainway, seems to have needed a huge amount of work to get good enough for commercial adoption.

There have been large differences between app vs browser vs xbox streaming, too.

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

#475

Post by hsbauauvhabzb » Sat, Oct 14, 2023, 6:42 AM UTC

s1artibartfast wrote: post #424

didibus wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

15 years is a long time though. I suspect we're not far away from being able to sell a 100$ device, that can AI reconstruct and upscale a super compressed video feed, so that you can stream with lower latencies or even with worse connections. Nvidia seems to be leading the way here. But imagine in the cloud, they only needed to render games at 320p, and then they'd stream it compressed at low bitrate using H266 (assu…

I want some of what you're having. That makes absolutely no sense. There is no possibility for a AI algorithm to be more efficient than a simple compression and decompression.

I think op was talking about AI powered lossy ups along, but I imagine AI would be able to generate better compression algos for highly targeted use cases too.

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

#476

Post by chii » Sat, Oct 14, 2023, 6:50 AM UTC

surgical_fire wrote: post #282

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.

if nothing is getting meaningfully worse, why is it considered a poorly managed acquisition then? At best they are neutral and is only changing where the profits of said acquisition flows, rather than changing the acquisition.

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

#477

Post by Sakos » Sat, Oct 14, 2023, 6:51 AM UTC

k12sosse wrote: post #51

Sakos wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just don't see how it meaningfully reduces competition. This barely moves the needle. If I look at the top sellers on Steam, the vast majority are not Activision Blizzard.

You mean the games that are sold on battle.net aren't being tracked by steam?

So you'd rather just miss the point, ok.

It doesn't matter how much revenue Battle.net makes for them. The multitude of developers and publishers that are successful on Steam show that AB is irrelevant to the market. If AB owned a significant number of the top 50, it'd be a different story, but they don't.

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

#478

Post by physicsguy » Sat, Oct 14, 2023, 7:05 AM UTC

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…

They also forced resale of those games as part of it - so Ubisoft is allowed to sell Activision games. Originally MS proposed only playing games you’d already bought on Ubisoft’s platform

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

#479

Post by Talanes » Sat, Oct 14, 2023, 7:28 AM UTC

Nullabillity wrote: post #366

lapetitejort wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Backwards compatibility was a luxury, and not the standard, until recently. The first Nintendo backwards compatible home console was the Wii in 2005. Rapidly changing architecture differences made playing older games difficult. The GBA, DS, PS2, and PS3 all had custom hardware needed to play older games. The fact that the PS3 could play PS1 games in any way should be lauded, not labeled as anti-consumer.

Backwards compatibility has been standard on PC since pretty much the start. This is absolute bare minimum stuff .

Tautologically impossible for something to be an absolute bare minimum if it wasn't common in the industry for decades.

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

#480

Post by hyperhopper » Sat, Oct 14, 2023, 7:29 AM UTC

deprecative wrote: post #444

hyperhopper wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same thing that happened with Netflix. Everybody loved it when it started, now things come in and out of the catalog, quality has gone down, prices have gone up ads have been added, and you need to subscribe to 10 other services as well. Why are people acting like gamepass is a good thing

Because it is for now . If they mess with it then it'll not be a good deal and folks will leave it.

The first part of all the shit that's bad, is to have a phase where it's good first.

"It's good for now" is just the typical path to it becoming shit.