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Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

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Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#881

Post by ThalesX »

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…

If the hype for the metaverse is a fraction true, and their distribution channels hold, these acquisitions will have been peanuts compared to the value they'll produce.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#882

Post by oneepic »

ThalesX wrote: post #877

Microsoft has all the pieces in place to make the great next gen MMORPG. They now have the IP to do whatever they want with our mind, they have the distribution channels, they have the capacity to run servers and also the technology to create truly immersive worlds; their planetary rendering engine, GPT-3 for NPCs, Minecraft, for example. There is a market for it, the latest awesome release in the space has been Worl…

They'll certainly market their titles as the next great gaming experiences. I am skeptical that it will come out that way. I personally predict there will be some elements of a great product but not entirely. the ultimate focus is on money and business value, not the product.

At least we have the xbox game pass which is absurdly underpriced.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#884

Post by cwkoss »

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…

I think "the mobile revolution" is a joke and never materialized. 95+% of mobile games are unoriginal clones with layers of mechanisms to reduce fun unless the user pays. People who enjoy games have largely abandoned mobile, save a handful of decent titles that were ported from other platforms.

Mobile-first gamers are: people (mostly kids) who are so naive about games they will accept garbage (or cant afford a better gaming system) and whales who enjoy spending large amounts of money to move up the leaderboards.

Mobile gaming C-level's loved talking about the mobile revolution for a decade, but I really think it was all optimistic nonsense in service of their fundraising.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#885

Post by ThalesX »

oneepic wrote: post #882
ThalesX wrote: post #877

Microsoft has all the pieces in place to make the great next gen MMORPG. They now have the IP to do whatever they want with our mind, they have the distribution channels, they have the capacity to run servers and also the technology to create truly immersive worlds; their planetary rendering engine, GPT-3 for NPCs, Minecraft, for example. There is a market for it, the latest awesome release in the space has been Worl…

They'll certainly market their titles as the next great gaming experiences. I am skeptical that it will come out that way. I personally predict there will be some elements of a great product but not entirely. the ultimate focus is on money and business value, not the product. At least we have the xbox game pass which is absurdly underpriced.

> I personally predict there will be some elements of a great product but not entirely. the ultimate focus is on money and business value, not the product.

Ultimately, it will depend on the team building it. Microsoft, the entity, couldn't give a rat's ass about the product, but the people building it might.

At this point, technology has advanced to a point where some truly innovative gameplay mechanics could be employed with relative ease. We're living in a summer of AI and game ones are still dumb as bricks. With the power of cloud and current AI research papers, I think a world could really feel alive with today's technology.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#886

Post by ThalesX »

viktorcode wrote: post #658
Tempest1981 wrote: post #648

> This acquisition will accelerate the growth in Microsoft’s gaming business across mobile, PC, console and cloud and will provide building blocks for the metaverse. Just like that -- they're in the metaverse!

Can't wait until metaverse will fail to lure gamers. The hype is on par with NFTs, in both vitality and lack of substance.

Don't forget Microsoft also has metaverse for Business and business has a lot of free floating money. This is also also a pie Meta wants a slice of.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#887

Post by baud147258 »

Now I'm seeing (elsewhere) people bandying around the idea that Microsoft engineered the harassment reports and subsequent lawsuits to drop Activision-Blizzard's share price and push the shareholders to sell.

I'm not saying that the harassment reports were false, just that Microsoft could have helped people talking to the press/organize the lawsuits, pushing up the stories in the medias and so on.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#889

Post by [deleted] »

falcor84 wrote: post #299
JeremyNT wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Steam Deck is Valve opening up an alternative to Microsoft land. This seems to put the writing on the wall for the Steam Deck though, right? How many people are really going to care about a Valve system that can't run any of the popular games from the MS catalog? I preordered the Steam Deck and plan to follow through with the purchase, but things look pretty dismal for Valve at this juncture. It seems like they're…

> How many people are really going to care about a Valve system that can't run any of the popular games from the MS catalog? So far, it seems MS is quite happy to put its games on Steam as an additional revenue source. Looking now, Xbox Game Studios has 49 games on steam, including its latest and biggest offerings, such as Halo Infinite and Forza Horizon 5[0]. [0] https://store.steampowered.com/curator/3090835-Xbox-G…

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#890

Post by tyfon »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #860
dawsmik wrote: post #759

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Tesla also makes components like seats internally.

A lot of companies just outsource that and lose out on the profits, it is one of the reasons tesla has such high margins.

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