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Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

news.microsoft.com

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Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#571

Post by simonh »

pjmlp wrote: post #452
kungito wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are still missing a mobile platform and that's why I believe they will retry within the next few years

They are going at it with their own Surface Duo based on Android, it is like Android but with Microsoft twist, so.

Duo is an utter facepalm. What are they thinking. It doesn't make the device cheaper or lighter, in fact it makes it heavier and more expensive. It constrains your interaction and UI model. It introduces unnecessary mechanical complications and points of failure. It made sense for Nintendo on the DS because it did reduce costs and the device could be small and light enough for it to work. The Duo is just different for the sake of being different though. Classic solution in search of a problem.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#572

Post by awill »

Microsoft is not building the future of gaming, they're buying it. Seeing a bunch of excellent third-party cross-platform games become xbox-exclusive is really sad for gamers.

Microsoft has not been making money on xbox. They're not investing money made with xbox. They're using Office/Windows/Azure funds to boost Xbox, and it's not a fair fight. Sony and Nintendo don't have that kind of money.

I get Sony has acquired studios too, but by comparison they seem carefully planned. They're usually studios already making (mostly) playstation exclusives (e.g. devs of Returnal, Spider-Man and Dark Souls).

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#574

Post by AlwaysRock »

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.

Gamepass will be the netflix of game... rental? Sharing? Streaming? Whatever you want to call Gamepass. I'm surprised it didnt happen sooner.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#575

Post by fasteddie »

yalogin wrote: post #232

Will the DoJ jump in? Only two gaming consoles in the world and one of it is buying one of the biggest game developer for both platforms. Very good reason for DoJ to jump in

As much as the HN crowd dislikes to hear it, the biggest gaming console in the world is the smartphone. PC Gaming is almost as big as the entire console market, bigger than any individual platform. Any publisher-focused antitruster would have microsoft leaning very hard into those facts.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#576

Post by icu »

t3rabytes wrote: post #493
goldfeld wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is quite wild. The only thing missing is good will.

I think Game Pass has built up a helluva goodwill bucket, from talking with friends of mine.

The Games Pass is such ridiculous value that my "non-gaming" partner got a Series-S with Games Pass to play MS Flight Simulator, and as an aside, to have games available to myself and our kids (it was impossible to get the Series-X in the UK in the lead up to Christmas without paying scalpers).

I have a PS5 (sadly from a scalper), and I begrudgingly got Plus to fully experience the PvP aspect of Demon's Souls but the fact that it comes with a bunch of PS4 games for free, especially a few that I've been meaning to buy, makes it worth the subscription.

I doubt Sony would have done this without the pressure from the Games Pass.

I think Microsoft know that the PS4 won last gen on the basis of the amazing exclusives it had. I think that Microsoft is going to put a lot of exclusive pressure on Sony this gen with their buying spree (Bethesda etc), and while it is very hard to find time for gaming, I'm glad we have both systems in my house.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#577

Post by luckydata »

mathattack wrote: post #560
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.

People may be flooding into vertical integration, though the history of that isn’t great. (Look at AOL/TimeWarner or Verizon/AOL/Tumblr/Yahoo) All it takes is missing one generation and the house of cards gets written down. Someone can create the next generation blockbuster for a lot less than $69bln. To argue against myself, they’ve become a lot better at picking trends since Balmer left too.

Nah, their model is different. They are building a Disneyland-like experience, where the public pays to "be there" and the attractions always change. Never been done before.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#578

Post by ren_engineer »

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.

my question is whether Microsoft was fanning the flames of all the controversy surrounding Activision recently and how much that dropped the acquisition price.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#579

Post by weakfish »

sharkjacobs wrote: post #543
paulpan wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'll depend on the perspective. For the gaming industry, this seems to push Microsoft into 3rd place (by size) behind Sony and Tencent. So hardly a monopoly and akin to T-Mobile's acquisition of Sprint a few years ago. It makes Microsoft much more competitive against Sony and even Nintendo since it'll likely bolster their 1P offerings in the future. But if Microsoft uses their ownership to favor their own game subsc…

> if Microsoft removes or heavily discourages Activision and Bethesda from making their titles cross-platform. I'm pretty sure that Starfield is announced to be a Windows/Xbox exclusive already.

Timed I believe

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#580

Post by lopis »

awill wrote: post #572

Microsoft is not building the future of gaming, they're buying it. Seeing a bunch of excellent third-party cross-platform games become xbox-exclusive is really sad for gamers. Microsoft has not been making money on xbox. They're not investing money made with xbox. They're using Office/Windows/Azure funds to boost Xbox, and it's not a fair fight. Sony and Nintendo don't have that kind of money. I get Sony has acquired…

I'm still surprised that to this day Minecraft Java was allowed to survive (albeit just so slightly behind Minecraft Bedrock, but still with some extra features).
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