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

Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

news.microsoft.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

791–800 of 1001 posts

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#791

Post by stormbrew »

cletus wrote: post #732
chc wrote: post #708

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Throwing money at Ninja is really an example of poor execution. What makes Twitch successful is not any one streamer. It's an ecosystem. Raiding is huge on Twitch for streamers supporting other streamers. You don't build a forest by planting one very large tree. A forest is everything from the tallest tree to the undergrowth. > do you really think a bunch of obscure streamers nobody watches having drops would have ma…

> Throwing money at Ninja is really an example of poor execution.

Really agree with this. They should have been trying to pull as many streamers on the verge of success on twitch as they could (newly qualifying partners mostly) rather than trying to get already established talent to come over for big money.

I do think they also tried this, I knew of some mid-tier streamers who moved over as well, but they probably could have done more. Ninja was clearly a last ditch effort to save the platform rather than a calculated plan.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#792

Post by FanaHOVA »

neogodless wrote: post #425
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.

> 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?

I paid like $5/mo for 1 year of the Ultimate version, I can play games on both Xbox and PC and carry over progress for most of them. It's great. Steam doesn't have anything like that, so not sure there's any comparison to do.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#793

Post by RugnirViking »

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

Extending off what the other commenter said, consolidation within the medical market is a big reason for the opiod epidemic. It's not something that just came out of nowhere, its directly because a large company intentionally pushed for highly addictive drugs to be given to as many people as possible

It's also a big reason for the fact that americans spend far far more on healthcare than other countries. For reference, the US government spends 28% of your tax on healthcare. The UK government spends 18.8%, which is arounge average among western nations. And ON TOP of that, americans pay huge medical fees and insurance.

Inequality is partly caused by the two above issues, combined with the fact that its really damn hard to make much of a company for yourself when a vastly more powerful company is intentionally suppressing or if you're one of the lucky few buying out all of its competition.

Racism and Sexism are at least partly caused by ineqality, but another big part of it comes from the consolidation in mass media. Shock stories on the national news about the actions of ten or fifteen people can cause and deepen ingrained biases about millions.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#794

Post by shmoopi »

kungito wrote: post #365
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.

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

They don't need to have a mobile platform if they can get a foothold on game streaming on mobile.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#795

Post by smileybarry »

phatfish wrote: post #656
smileybarry wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sony practically owns their cloud platform too, with their Gaikai purchase a decade ago[1] and PS Now being "PS3/PS4s in the cloud". [1] https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-07-03-sony-acqui...

I assumed Sony were migrating to or already using Azure at this point. https://news.microsoft.com/2019/05/16/sony-and-microsoft-to-... At the time Microsoft where not throwing so much money at games development an IP ownership. I wonder how Sony feel about this now.

I see. But because they're maintaining datacenters for PS3/PS4 streaming I think they have the potential to go hosted, at the end of the day multiplayer servers are developer-controlled and network servers (e.g.: PSN, Xbox Live) are mostly identity services and such. (Even matchmaking isn't the network's job anymore)

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#796

Post by tytrdev »

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.

They still rely extremely heavily on Nvidias ability to create more and more powerful hardware. I recently found out that like 70% of the world's supercomputers are powered by nvidia GPU compute. People often talk about the tech power of different countries (personally I've heard a ton of people talk about China in this way), but at the end of the day they are still reliant on the hardware manufacturers. Who am I to say that China or X country doesn't secretly have something that far outclasses nvidia hardware, though?

Between gaming (the biggest form of media), supercomputers, science computation, crypto nonsense, etc. It's really looking to me like nvidia is actually one of the biggest power players across the globe. Makes me really wonder about the tech they aren't flashing to the public. I was personally astounded when I saw their announcement to purchase ARM. I've seen a few instances of people saying the dead acquisition is stifling innovation. Honestly I'm kind of happy it didn't go through. Probably just a lack of vision on my part, though.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#797

Post by TheRealDunkirk »

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.

A guy named Matt Stoller focuses on this sort of thing. He's been saying that the right people have been appointed to the FTC, but it remains to be seen if this will produce any real, consumer-felt fruit. This is him, just 2 hours ago, at the time of this writing:

https://twitter.com/matthewstoller/status/148348691488801996...

He is reporting that the chair of the FTC is begging for public comment on merger activity.

UPDATE

And just a few minutes ago, questioning whether this whole Microsoft/Activision will be stopped.

https://twitter.com/matthewstoller/status/148353211536295117...

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#798

Post by tytrdev »

tytrdev wrote: post #796
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.

They still rely extremely heavily on Nvidias ability to create more and more powerful hardware. I recently found out that like 70% of the world's supercomputers are powered by nvidia GPU compute. People often talk about the tech power of different countries (personally I've heard a ton of people talk about China in this way), but at the end of the day they are still reliant on the hardware manufacturers. Who am I to…

Also apparently tencent owns like 40% of Epic Games? It's all bullshit folks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6-r7GNlZvk&ab_channel=Cap.H...

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#800

Post by nightski »

MisterBastahrd wrote: post #775
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #767

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, isn't this basically how it used to work when the console manufacturers were also the game developers? Like Sega and Nintendo.

It's not really the same. For one, when those were the two juggernauts in the game cartridge era, they weren't really in the business of just scooping up a bunch of game studios, because financially it didn't make much sense. What's different now is that Microsoft is focusing on becoming the Amazon Prime Video of video games. While you will still be able to buy the games outright, the games of the companies they're p…

It's definitely a compelling offering. I don't think one model has to win over the other though. There will be room for subs and there will be room for steam libraries where you own licenses as well in the future.

For me personally I have a hard time justifying game pass. I only complete 2-3 games a year at best and it's really expensive at that rate.

Post reply on HN