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Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

news.microsoft.com

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Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#891

Post by baud147258 »

krageon wrote: post #451
neogodless wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? Game pass is significantly cheaper, unless you buy very few games on steam (and/or only buy them on deep, deep sale. Which doesn't really exist anymore in any meaningful way).

> Game pass is significantly cheaper, unless you buy very few games on steam

or if you want to play games that aren't on Game Pass. Though then it's not exactly a fair Game Pass vs Steam comparison, more Microsoft vs Steam.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#892

Post by ska »

aparticulate wrote: post #517
jpablo wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that basically the same Nintendo and Sony? Save for the cloud platform.

Nintendo operates on different rules due their absurd array of reliable IPs. I get the sense that MS, Sony are still trying to sort out their own "Mario, Zelda, Pokemon" clone with mainstream movies/merch potential and all that entails.

> Nintendo operates on different rules due their absurd array of reliable IPs

Or do they have an "absurd array of reliable IPs" because they operate differently?

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#893

Post by keithnz »

keewee7 wrote: post #439
kungito wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

They haven't completely given up on mobile. The Microsoft Launcher for Android is really close to what a modern Microsoft mobile platform would feel like. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/launcher https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Launcher

I use this on my phone, I really like it. All they have to do is leverage it and start a store, but not sure if the timing is right just now.

I think if MS embraced ad blocking and made edge (both mobile and desktop) support extensions including ublock origin they could really eat into that platform. At the moment you can run Firefox with ublock origin on Android ( which I do ) but quite a few extensions don't work ( like violent monkey). To me, being able to run ublock origin (and other addons) on Android is a massive competitive advantage, but Firefox can't seem to convert it to users in the mobile space, basically they have no real platform/marketing leverage.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#894

Post by baud147258 »

einpoklum wrote: post #866
YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

So, you're saying that between the giant douche and the turd sandwich you pick the sandwich? Somehow I'm not impressed.

Sometime people prefer the turd they know compared to the unknow one

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#895

Post by baud147258 »

rodgerd wrote: post #853
YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And if you compare Tencent and Sony's gaming division to Microsoft's gaming division?

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#896

Post by mmcconnell1618 »

andrewparker wrote: post #581
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.

Creation layer of the stack: Unity or Unreal.

I'm surprised they didn't snap up Unity before it went public. C# is the main language, cross platform deployment that goes well with .NET's new cross platform story and there are strong commercial markets for Unity like Movies, TV and Architecture that could benefit from Microsoft's enterprise sales force and relationships.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#897

Post by baud147258 »

haunter wrote: post #636
simlevesque wrote: post #541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What platform does Nintendo support ? It has always been like that.

iOS and Android, they have some gacha games there https://www.nintendo.com/sg/games/smartphone/index.html

I wouldn't exactly call super mario run a gacha game. (I don't argue with the others, though)

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#898

Post by JohnJamesRambo »

dls2016 wrote: post #702
palijer wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I looked around for a while, a d I can't actually find a list of any mergers that antitrust regulations actually prevented. I'm assuming some survivor bias is involved here and we don't hear about the ones that stopped early, but it seems that what I and most folks assume antitrust regulations do is different than what actually happens. I remember the Sirius/XM merge and how those were the only two players in the mar…

> I looked around for a while, a d I can't actually find a list of any mergers that antitrust regulations actually prevented. A lot has been written about the decline of antitrust enforcement in the US since 1970. https://hbr.org/2017/12/the-rise-fall-and-rebirth-of-the-u-s...

I think this is a huge source of a lot of the wealth inequality and just general dystopia we find ourselves living in. We need some sort of commoner lobbyist organization we can all be part of, the voting doesn't seem to be working very well. You have to literally pay the politicians.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#899

Post by baud147258 »

trymas wrote: post #540
michaelbuckbee wrote: post #203

I think that Microsoft's Game Pass has really changed the gaming ecosystem. If you're not familiar it's basically "Netflix of Videogames" where for a low monthly price (compared to buying a game at full retail) you get access to whole downloadable/streamable library of games. It's such an outsized value that it's a big reason to choose an Xbox console over a PlayStation and it's pretty clearly the driving force behin…

I guess it's just business at the end of the day, but IMHO this model in the end could not be the best for consumer after all. For example tv streaming, where if your favorite movies/tv series maybe spread over dozen services and you need to pay subscription to all of them. Or it could happen that copyrights get bought by different providers and thus migrate from service to service. I will not be surprised if piracy…

> I will not be surprised if piracy will have a comeback for movies or tv-series.

I'm pretty sure piracy numbers for movies and series went up with the number of streaming services

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#900

Post by fomine3 »

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'd like to read analysis about why only Twitch succeeded in this market.
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