Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#851

Post by oneoff786 » Tue, Jan 18, 2022, 10:11 PM UTC

kizer wrote: post #608

oneoff786 wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think no chance that Tim Sweeney sells Epic. Unity is a public company and I think would benefit immensely from being acquired by Microsoft.

I made this point in another comment thread, but I think MS would make a competitor to Unreal/Unity instead. Think of all the game engine talent they now have. The IW engine for CoD, Halo’s slipspace, WoW. They could readily assemble a team to build an engine on par with Unreal.

I could see it happen, but I feel a lot of these home grown engines are just too driven by tribal knowledge to be easily released to the public.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#852

Post by redisman » Tue, Jan 18, 2022, 10:11 PM UTC

megumax wrote: post #147

I don't really understand these acquisitions made by Microsoft, first Mojang, then Bethesda and now Activision. Is Microsoft trying to revive these companies or it's just trying to leech of the market? At this moment, Activision is living out of in-game purchases, not making good games. Bethesda was almost dead when they bought it. >Legendary games, immersive interactive entertainment and publishing expertise acceler…

Revive? Bethesda will have two best selling games out in the next two years in the fairly empty AAA RPG landscape. Minecraft is a evergreen with kids with over a 100M monthly players

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#853

Post by rodgerd » Tue, Jan 18, 2022, 10:12 PM UTC

YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo wrote: post #122

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.

At this rate it's going to be Tencent vs Microsoft and if I have to choose I pick Microsoft.

Tencent and Sony are still much larger than Microsoft's gaming division, even after this.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#854

Post by 0xedd » Tue, Jan 18, 2022, 10:15 PM UTC

_notathrowaway wrote: post #786

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.

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

So, only food, water, electricity and housing should be overseen by regulators?

Besides, with so many games out right seeking to get kids addicted, let's at least have some trade regulations. It's not like parents can ignore them.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#855

Post by footlose_3815 » Tue, Jan 18, 2022, 10:20 PM UTC

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.

[dead]

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#856

Post by 0xedd » Tue, Jan 18, 2022, 10:23 PM UTC

JAlexoid wrote: post #460

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.

Not really. It's only an issue if this negatively. affects the competitive market. And since games are a creative market - there's hardly any reason to fear that Microsoft can restrict access to new players. This is not like a utility, that could technically force something on you. One company can buy all of game developers/publishers and still not make a dent in competitiveness of the games market.

Wrong. Here's a hypothetical scenario:

Kids' PCs are windows. Microsoft has Game Store installed by default. Pop ups about the latest Fortnite NextGen, installed by default. More addictive than gambling but hella legal.

Easy scenario, no regulations. Market is heavily skewed and MS has a big win in the gambling for kids industry.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#857

Post by LadyCailin » Tue, Jan 18, 2022, 10:25 PM UTC

PascLeRasc wrote: post #413

apocalyptic0n3 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AT&T's acquisition of T-Mobile was aborted due to anti-trust complaints if I recall correctly. The original purchase of Rite Aid by Walgreens was aborted due to similar concerns, although that one ended in a revised partial acquisition anyway. The Staples acquisition of Office Depot/Office Max was stopped as well on anti-trust grounds. They also blocked a merger of Nasdaq and NYSE. Those are all since 2010. I'm sure…

Intuit was blocked from buying Credit Karma Tax just recently. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-requires-d...

Thank goodness, they don’t need any more power over people.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#858

Post by jprd » Tue, Jan 18, 2022, 10:29 PM UTC

kgersen wrote: post #741

jprd wrote: post #728

== MS acquires formerly preeminent corporation for 30% discount == MS announced today that it was acquiring Activision Blizzard Inc. (ATVI). This news comes on the heels of a year filled with government lawsuits, internal leaks, low morale and poor performance. Many analysts have commented that years of failing to invest in their IP and a string of poorly-received sequels have diluted customer and stockholder faith.…

I don't see any discount. They're bying at $95 per share. Look at YTD and 5Y prices. The 30% prior isn't the price they're bying at.

Fair point, and conceded.

Oddly though, I nearly tried some weak defense. Outrage algorithms are destroying my brain.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#859

Post by ece » Tue, Jan 18, 2022, 10:29 PM UTC

atlasunshrugged wrote: post #34

I wonder if this will trigger any antitrust lawsuits. I know Microsoft isn't that of the 90's but it seems like the political situation is ripe for politicians to go after "big tech" and this is a pretty major acquisition that will help Xbox be the dominant player in terms of content.

If moderate democratic senators could be bought with handouts to toe the party line (anyone remember those times?), perhaps closely examining mergers like this would be a higher priority. There are bills moving through congress though, and eventually with more authority, perhaps the FTC could make meaningful market changes. Like: making MS offer games on other platforms, or at-least not actively stopping them from running by offering good anti-cheat support on all platforms.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#860

Post by AnthonyMouse » Tue, Jan 18, 2022, 10:35 PM UTC

dawsmik wrote: post #759

mathattack wrote: post #560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Gasprom, Dell and Tesla may be some examples of companies that have done will with vertical integration.

Tesla is kind of vertically integrated, but mostly because they were the first to make a popular electric car, so adequate supply chains for those components didn't previously exist. It remains to be seen whether it's still an advantage when most of the industry is making electric vehicles and competitive alternate suppliers for those components are common.

Dell installs a Microsoft operating system on SSDs from the lowest bidder and puts them in a Foxconn motherboard with a CPU from AMD or Intel.

Gasprom is a majority state-owned company in Russia. This can't really be an example of anything to do with a free market.

The typical example is Apple, because they're currently very profitable. But they've been doing vertical integration for decades and their history is full of instances of almost going out of business. The previous "see how well vertical integration works" example was IBM.