>> "to bring the joy and community of gaming to everyone, across every device"
Should say "to bring the joy and community of gaming to XBOX AND WINDOWS USERS, across every MICROSOFT device".
Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard
701–710 of 1001 posts
Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard
#702With 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.
I looked around for a while, a d I can't actually find a list of any mergers that antitrust regulations actually prevented. I'm assuming some survivor bias is involved here and we don't hear about the ones that stopped early, but it seems that what I and most folks assume antitrust regulations do is different than what actually happens. I remember the Sirius/XM merge and how those were the only two players in the mar…
> I looked around for a while, a d I can't actually find a list of any mergers that antitrust regulations actually prevented.
A lot has been written about the decline of antitrust enforcement in the US since 1970.
https://hbr.org/2017/12/the-rise-fall-and-rebirth-of-the-u-s...
Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard
#703It'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 are still missing a mobile platform and that's why I believe they will retry within the next few years
Convinced they're just going to do the Netflix/Stadia route with mobile etc. Sell a controller, use the device you already have and stream games running from azure.
Long term plan, obviously.
Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard
#704I hate to see a monopoly in the gaming industry. Controlling the content will prevent any competition both in gaming consoles and in PC gaming. Forget about gaming on Linux or any new platform. Forget about sony's PlayStation and Nintendo. We are going to see the real face of Microsoft. What do you think Microsoft will do next? Buy unreal engine and unity and have control over the content and the tools to make them?…
A real monopoly in video gaming isn't nearly as valuable as it first seems.
Firstly, "video gaming" is really competing against things like reading a book, walking your dog, board games, etc., so it's not like Microsoft can just start jacking up prices and people will have nowhere to go with their time.
Secondly, creating and releasing new games has never been easier. So many small indie game companies are creating great games to compete with blockbusters like CoD and LoL, the ecosystem for game development is plenty healthy, with or without Activision belonging to Microsoft.
Thirdly, they haven't done what you're saying with the games they have released; you can play Minecraft on the Switch [0]. Maybe wait for Microsoft to actually do the thing you're worried about before criticizing them for it! They have had opportunities to be exclusive and they haven't taken them, so it's not so simple as to just assume they will no matter what.
I'm not worried about the industry, but I am cautiously optimistic about what Microsoft will be able to do with some IP that I've loved for most of my life.
[0] - https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/minecraft-switch/
Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard
#705Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sony spent 20+ years building up and planning their 1st party studios. Microsoft could do that too, but it would take 20 more years. They don't have the time for that and acquisition is really their only option. I don't like it either, but that's the reality of it.
Playstation has also bought (and closed) a lot of studios (and one publisher) over the years. A lot of the Playstation 1st party studios were not built from ground up but instead bought.
The difference is that Sony was the original publisher behind many of the studios they have acquired. Presumably these studios wouldn't have gotten traction without Sony backing to begin with.
Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard
#706Earlier quoted context omitted.
Creation layer of the stack: Unity or Unreal.
Next headline: MS to acquire Epic Games? Tencent is in the way there. Really, I could see them launching their own engine. Think of all the studios and talent they have now. They have the engines behind Halo, CoD, WoW, Overwatch. Could build an Unreal competitor.
Tencent and Sony have investments in Epic Games, not sure if either party wants to start selling to Microsoft.
Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard
#707>> "to bring the joy and community of gaming to everyone, across every device" Should say "to bring the joy and community of gaming to XBOX AND WINDOWS USERS, across every MICROSOFT device".
If your device runs a somewhat modern browser and you have a reliable internet connection you can just stream from the cloud.
Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard
#708It'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. Imag…
I don't know about that. They gave it like four years and spent a lot of money promoting it and it was still microscopic. They could have tried other things, but if Ninja couldn't draw viewers, do you really think a bunch of obscure streamers nobody watches having drops would have made a bigger difference? At some point you have to stop throwing good money after bad.
Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard
#709Earlier quoted context omitted.
Meta’s (Facebook) acquisition of Giphy got blocked by European regulators iirc.
UK, I think. Still a weird decision. Of all the stuff Facebook bought they blocked Giphy. Not Whatsapp, Instagram, etc.
I imagine that if Facebook tried to buy Whatsapp or Instagram toady, they would be facing a different kind of a regulatory environment. It feels like the world has only recently awakened to how Facebook just tries to buy out their competition.