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Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

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Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#831

Post by tytrdev »

anotherman554 wrote: post #812
tytrdev wrote: post #796

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Microsoft uses AMD for their Xbox consoles, not Nvidia.

Honestly wasn't thinking about xbox at all. Good point. Now I'm wondering what the market share is between the two. I'd guess xbox is properly higher?

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#832

Post by alsaaro »

This move is a hedge against Apple and is not about gaming as much as it is about maintaining Windows client side hegemony.

Apple is almost certainly planning to release AR/VR headset in the near future, this raises the question; what hardware is going to be used to power this headset; I'd bet Apple is working on a console like iDevice, or probably more likely an external GPU, that can be used with any Apple device.

Now imagine if Apple decides, admittingly in a very un-Apple like fashion, to allow anyone to run MacOS on their iPads, and iPhones; what that would do to consumer Windows market share.

This primarily establishes a moat against Apple, not Sony, and protects consumer Windows, not Xbox.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#833

Post by u2077 »

bduerst wrote: post #669
u2077 wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what I’m worried about. With them owning both the games and the OS that they are played on, we could be forced into a subscription. Paying to own may be a thing of the past.

Paying to own is already a thing of the past for music and movie content. How is this different?

I’m not saying it’s different, it’s more like the nail in the coffin. Movies, music, apps, games, treadmills, coffee, printers. Anything that can somehow have internet connectivity becomes a subscription.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#834

Post by isk517 »

icu wrote: post #576
t3rabytes wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I liked the PS4 but even I feel like Sony didn't so much win the last generation so much as Microsoft lost it. Microsoft just never recovered from just how bad the XBox One launch was and Sony managed to win by pretty much doing nothing but releasing great exclusive titles. Sony right now seems to be fully into the hubris stage they were in when they made the PS3 and I feel like they are going to slowly lose market to XBox which has immerged from the disastrous XBox One humbled and with a greater desire to cater to their audience.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#835

Post by lumost »

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.

To argue in favor of your point. Big vertically integrated firms often become insulated from economic, technical, and business realities. This eventually leads to politics winning out over technical or business savvy. At the extremes you'll have companies burning 10s of billions on pet projects going nowhere, or software engineers producing 0 lines of code per year.

I wouldn't be surprised if this effect could even be mathematically quantified.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#836

Post by kooshball »

cletus wrote: post #824
blondie9x wrote: post #776

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

bing made 8b in revenue last year. your data is way out of date. its wildly profitable

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#837

Post by tempestn »

I'd love if they might breathe some life back into Starcraft 2, or even start working on 3. Normally I'd be worried when the company that owns my favorite game gets acquired, but it'd hardly be possible to do less with it than they already were.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#838

Post by redisman »

cletus wrote: post #691
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. Imag…

They tried with the failed Windows phone. I think after that they wanted to stay out and focus on their strengths. Besides this purchase gives them King - of Candy Crush fame. So now they own one of the biggest mobile game devs.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#839

Post by LanceH »

alsaaro wrote: post #832

This move is a hedge against Apple and is not about gaming as much as it is about maintaining Windows client side hegemony. Apple is almost certainly planning to release AR/VR headset in the near future, this raises the question; what hardware is going to be used to power this headset; I'd bet Apple is working on a console like iDevice, or probably more likely an external GPU, that can be used with any Apple device.…

I can't imagine anyone losing any sleep over an AR/VR powerplay.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#840

Post by klabb3 »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #802
TameAntelope wrote: post #704

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 g…

> Firstly, "video gaming" is really competing against things like reading a book, walking your dog, board games, etc You're not wrong, but I can't agree with this.

Disagree, I think it's spot on! But you may need to substitute for more modern attention hogs like Netflix, podcasts, mobile and web based games, indie games etc.

I'm sure that a pervasive predatory corporate development department backed by a cash-heavy company could reel in virtually all AAA PC games, but the long tail not so much. And the funny thing is, AAA has been a huge disappointment for gamers and I imagine investors as well over the last years, compared to its golden days.

Compare to say "owning your social graph" like Facebook, that's something that's much more robust. A good messaging platform doesn't take over the world in a few weeks like an indie game (almost) can, so Facebook has plenty time to acquire it or copy/steal their features.

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