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Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

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Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#821

Post by rndphs »

amyjess wrote: post #698
benlumen wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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.

The purpose of antitrust law is to prevent anticompetitive behaviour by limiting the accumulation of market power. The most extreme case of this is monopolies.

I agree that no action will be taken, though. The current status quo is so full of market power abuse that this acquisition looks normal.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#822

Post by xahrepap »

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…

Blizzard's (not sure about Activision games) ongoing support for most of those platforms has been pretty crap recently anyway. Diablo2 Resurrected removed mac support but they did add consoles.

OW only support Windows.

I guess SC2 and D3 had support for many platforms, but not Linux.

It's a crap situation that I don't think is being improved or worsened here.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#823

Post by xhrpost »

jmnicolas wrote: post #719
xhrpost wrote: post #655

I have to wonder how much investing in some of today's tech behemoths comes down to viewing them more as a holding company / investment firm and less about their original core products. Microsoft has lost tons of desktop share over the last decade, this should have been a death signal for them but instead amazing acquisitions like Mojang, GitHub, ActBliz have pushed them to an amazing market cap. Similar with FB loos…

Facebook own WeChat?

My bad, I meant WhatsApp, can't edit

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#824

Post by cletus »

blondie9x wrote: post #776
cletus wrote: post #691

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You know there are essentially only two search engines on the internet right? Google and Bing? Microsoft is doing good and cornering market and is helping users forget that DDG and Ecosia and Yahoo are just Bing.

Who is Microsoft "doing good" for? It's not Microsoft shareholders. Bing is a money pit and poorly executed.

Do you know who benefits the most from Bing? Google. Why? Because Bing's (subsidized) existence helps create this illusion that there really is more than one search engine. Google loves that Bing exists because it nicely helps them avoid having to have the monopoly talk.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#825

Post by oblio »

habeebtc wrote: post #787
999900000999 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a GamePass subscriber, I mildly disagree. Saw an indie game last night and felt like buying it. Steam Deck is Valve opening up an alternative to Microsoft land. Although I will admit I'm tempted to cancel my pre order since I'm worried it won't run well.

Indeed the Steam Deck is very exciting because what we've seen is that the mobile space is where Linux has been able to defeat Microsoft in end user adoption. As some other folks have pointed out, the existence of WINE and other compat layers is actually hindering gaming on Linux, by disincentivizing game devs to make games directly for linux. A huge hit with the Steam Deck could actually start bringing more games di…

> Indeed the Steam Deck is very exciting because what we've seen is that the mobile space is where Linux has been able to defeat Microsoft in end user adoption.

That's a very generous definition of "Linux".

Android won, not Linux.

What's the GUI toolkit? Android's one. Audio? Same. Notifications? Android. Etc, etc.

There's a reason many people are scared of Fuchsia, it's not inconceivable that Google at some point just pulls the plug on Linux and replaces it wholesale with Fuchsia as the base for Android.

Linux on mobile failed utterly, from Maemo to Meego to Ubuntu Mobile to all other attempts.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#826

Post by torginus »

Server6 wrote: post #588
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…

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.

The weird thing I remember some of the best games from my childhood were made by Microsoft Studios - Freelancer, Midtown Madness, Flight Simulator, Age of Empires etc.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#827

Post by unsigner »

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.

The only thing they're missing is hardware design capabilities.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#828

Post by oblio »

calf wrote: post #815
_notathrowaway wrote: post #786

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, why should any regulator bother with this? It's video games, it is clearly not any kind of essential infrastructure/software.

Not that regulators might care but game software shapes how young people conceive of software and IP issues. A company notorious for manipulating IP buying out a massive game company means entire generations of children and families will be exposed to this software as a service model of IP consumption.

At this point both Google and Apple have more end users than Microsoft.

Their "software as a service model of IP consumption" didn't seem to bother many regulators so far.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#829

Post by torginus »

erwincoumans wrote: post #597
lopis wrote: post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Here my kids prefers the Java edition, for its mods.

It's crazy to think that the no.1 best selling video game of all time (by copies sold) derives a large part of it's values from the free work of volunteers.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#830

Post by ThatPlayer »

brobdingnagians wrote: post #667

Activision Blizzard has been seriously mismanaged. They have very nice IP and a fanbase that is still somewhat loyal because of the glories of the past, but Microsoft would need to revitalize the management and the creativity. - Overwatch hit the ground running to massive success, but hasn't materialized Overwatch 2 and has stagnated. - Warcraft III Reforged is a total disaster and abandoned. - WoW has a wide followi…

>The Starcraft Remaster is basically the same game but with a bit nicer graphics.

At least with that, I think that's exactly what the audience wanted. Anyone who wanted a different (and mechanically easier) game has Starcraft II.

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