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Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

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Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#691

Post by cletus »

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.

This is an overly rosy view of Microsoft's moat (and acumen) IMHO.

For one, Microsoft completely missed out on the mobile revolution.

For another, look at Mixer. This was there attempt to clone Twitch. They threw a bunch of money at it and quickly gave up. To me this was insane. Streaming has shown to be great marketing for games and I never thought they'd give up so quickly and right before the new Xbox launch.

Imagine if Mixer streamers had early access to the new console and titles? And drops? Viewers absolutely love drops.

What if the Xbox Game Pass included a Mixer sub like Amazon Prime does with Twitch Prime?

To me this just showed they have absolutely no idea what they're doing.

I mean, look at how much money they've thrown at Bing.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#692

Post by Macha »

mdoms wrote: post #603
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…

> Seeing a bunch of excellent third-party cross-platform games become xbox-exclusive is really sad for gamers What are you talking about? Microsoft is embracing PC and cross play more than ever.

> PC

Specifically Windows, it has to be pointed out these days.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#693

Post by mrtranscendence »

JAlexoid wrote: post #479
izacus wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't quite understand what you're trying to say here? If Microsoft starts subsidizing Game Pass games from their other businesses (like Amazon, Google and Apple do for their other services), it'll make the business model of actually selling games unviable by pure race to the bottom. As a result, you'll lose independent development and market diversity because everyone will need to beg Microsoft (and maybe Sony and…

It's already a race to the bottom. It has been for a while. Don't blame mobile games - they got those exploitative ideas from PC market. The upside of a PC market, is the lack of a centralized authority to tell you what games are good - a.k.a the app stores. (App stores are horrible for games or any creative content discovery, as they use purely utilitarian categorization) That doesn't mean that PC, or web, games are…

> It's already a race to the bottom. It has been for a while.

Is it? Undoubtedly there's exploitative crap on PC, but there are countless great titles -- indie and otherwise -- released every year that you can pay money to own. On my iPhone I can hardly even find games to pay a fair price once to own anymore; it's almost entirely exploitative crap.

I used to buy games all the time on my iPhone; were it not for Apple Arcade I'd've hardly played anything in years.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#694

Post by Noos »

krageon wrote: post #451
neogodless wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 Pa…

> Why wouldn't Steam continue to be competitive against Game Pass? Game pass is significantly cheaper, unless you buy very few games on steam (and/or only buy them on deep, deep sale. Which doesn't really exist anymore in any meaningful way).

the cheapskate consumer really doesn't have much power here, though. Not many people will develop primarily for xbox if all they can hope is to have gamepass level money. Thats why despite it, Xbox is still very much a 3rd in the console wars, and microsoft has to resort to buying popular IPs to have a chance.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#695

Post by coliveira »

skohan wrote: post #631
ho_schi wrote: post #519

Competition oversight? Probably dead since Regan? After they stopped controlling AT&T the UNIX-Wars happened, impcompatiblity, lawsuits, closed-source has become a normal thing and proprietary software locked users in and competitors out. What platform will Microsoft support? Likely not: * Linux * BSD * MacOS * Nintendo * Sony Does anyone miss id Software? Native ports on Linux, incredible source-code and impressive…

I honestly think behind climate change, the current state of anti-trust enforcement is one of the biggest issues facing Americans right now. It's disappointing that it's not even expected for anti-trust action to happen anymore.

This is not a new danger. Americans had to deal with that by the end of the 19th century. The elites were able to run back the clock and remove or control any anti-trust structure that has been created to avoid their crazy accumulation of money and power.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#696

Post by pessimizer »

NetBeck wrote: post #211
coldpie wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does happen, but it's pretty rare. One example that comes to mind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attempted_purchase_of_T-Mobile...

That failed merger's poison pill is the reason T-Mobile is the juggernaut it is today. The cash T-Mobile received allowed them to upgrade their network, and customers could roam free on AT&T's 1700MHz frequency. AT&T's threat assessment of T-Mobile was correct at the time.

> AT&T's threat assessment of T-Mobile was correct at the time.

I think that assessment was obvious to everyone at the time. The question is whether buying out competitors is good for the public.

Of course, the cash was a penalty for not being able to pull off the merger; if the cash was critical for T-Mobile to become the threat it has been, the outcome is ironic.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#697

Post by agar »

neogodless wrote: post #534
krageon wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why wouldn't Steam continue to be competitive against Game Pass? Game pass is significantly cheaper, unless you buy very few games on steam (and/or only buy them on deep, deep sale. Which doesn't really exist anymore in any meaningful way).

Ah yes I don't buy a ton of games, and I see sales all the time for Steam, like seeing $40 games for $10.

So imagine deciding to spend $10 on that game, then realizing it's on GamePass. You now can choose wither to spend that same $10 to have access to 150+ games (including that one that's on sale), or just that game.

Sure, that $10 gets you only 1 month, but will you buy a different $10 game next month? Will you play this game for more than a month?

Pretty soon the GamePass ROI becomes difficult to ignore. (This coming from someone that doesn't have GamePass but is very impressed by the business model and value proposition around it).

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#698

Post by amyjess »

benlumen wrote: post #591
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…

> 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. Torn on this. On the one hand I completely agree. I doubt there'll be any anti-trust action, first because that doesn't seem to be a thing anymore and second because I can't imagine the American au…

The purpose of antitrust law is to prevent monopolies, not to prevent industry consolidation. Consolidation is fine in the eyes of the law, but monopolistic behavior isn't.

No antitrust action will be taken because even after all these acquisitions, Microsoft still competes with Take-Two, EA, Nintendo, Square Enix, Sony, Tencent, etc., plus a vast number of smaller players (Paradox, Sega, the sixteen gazillion indie developers on Steam...).

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#699

Post by obert »

skohan wrote: post #631
ho_schi wrote: post #519

Competition oversight? Probably dead since Regan? After they stopped controlling AT&T the UNIX-Wars happened, impcompatiblity, lawsuits, closed-source has become a normal thing and proprietary software locked users in and competitors out. What platform will Microsoft support? Likely not: * Linux * BSD * MacOS * Nintendo * Sony Does anyone miss id Software? Native ports on Linux, incredible source-code and impressive…

I honestly think behind climate change, the current state of anti-trust enforcement is one of the biggest issues facing Americans right now. It's disappointing that it's not even expected for anti-trust action to happen anymore.

I think America might want to tackle health care, drug addiction, inequality, racism, sexism before worrying about anti-trust

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#700

Post by skohan »

obert wrote: post #699
skohan wrote: post #631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly think behind climate change, the current state of anti-trust enforcement is one of the biggest issues facing Americans right now. It's disappointing that it's not even expected for anti-trust action to happen anymore.

I think America might want to tackle health care, drug addiction, inequality, racism, sexism before worrying about anti-trust

I think having a handful of corporations owning everything makes all of those issues worse
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