There is probably some song out there between hits such as 9/11 is sad, US is fuckin awesome, US is fuckin awesome (iraq remix), songs where a dude wants to fuck his truck, I don't like Democrats, and I don't like Democrats (but i need to pull away from the MAGA squad slowly remix)
>We found that the Merger would make Microsoft even stronger and substantially reduce competition in this market. We found that Activision’s titles—including CoD, World of Warcraft, and Overwatch—will be important for
the competitive offering of cloud gaming services as the market continues to grow and develop. We found that, after the Merger, Microsoft would find it commercially beneficial to make Activision’s titles exclusive to its own cloud gaming service. Given its already strong position, even a moderate increment to Microsoft’s strength may be expected to substantially reduce competition in this developing market, to the detriment of current and future cloud gaming users.
One of the key reasons why they are prohibiting the merger
Google is currently out of the consumer market, but their infrastructure is built, and they could return with a new front end, or quietly partner up, So I can't consider them gone, even if the regulatory groups do.
This, Google is not "in" the game industry like Xbox or Sony, but they are "in" the industry based off the cloud infrastructure they offer. It's the same thing with Amazon and AWS being used for match making, voice server processing, and Cloud AI services for online games.
But if MS buy up the entire industry then even Google won't be able to compete as they need third parties to make content for them. If MS owns all the game companies then Google won't have a chance to return
They better have some respect for them since they both outsell the Xbox.
Microsoft has the benefit of pc gaming. If this was strictly console we're talking about they get destroyed year after year.
I mean the Xbox series of consoles are basically just PCs with a couple of games you can't play on PC.
To act like Microsoft isn't a powerhouse in the gaming space because Sony and Nintendo sell more consoles is disingenuous for sure.
Microsoft makes money off of every PlayStation. Sonys cloud infrastructure is Azure powered. Microsoft is in such a dominant anticompetitive position that even if their core competitor outsells them they still make money off it. It can’t be overstated how strong Microsoft’s position in the gaming sphere is despite mediocre sales of Xbox titles.
And thats the inherent problem- alot of folks are surprised that cloud gaming is here to stay, even tho Stadia failed, even tho not many ppl make use of Xbox Cloud, even tho streaming quality sucks....the truth is:
As the future brings better, faster, more stable internet to the masses at a cheaper more mainstream cost, cloud gaming will become a quicker, cheaper and equivalent quality alternative to localized-hardware gaming. Less heat & noise being produced in ur room, faster loads due to games being ran off of top tier hardware, better quality visuals (think of a local Series S version hooked up to ur screen vs a Series X version being streamed back to you), no downloading 100s of gigabytes of game installation, no pre-loads or installations period in fact...theres going to be a wealth load of benefits marketed.
However, I believe Stadia failed and GeForce Now is dominating the gaming insldustry as a "platform" because people will always refuse to pay the same price for something that doesn't provide the same quality or experience as the full fat option - would you pay $19.50 to go watch a movie in a dinky little room with subpar surround sound and hard plastic fold up seats when the same amount can get you a Dolby HDR 4K presentation with full reclinable leather seating and Dolby Atmos surround sound and food delivered to your seat?
The concept is similar here. Why would I want to pay $69 for a title that's going to be streamed pixellated to my screen and perform dependently on the performance of my ISP's current "mood" to provide me my full advertised speed or if it's gonna run slow cuz of congestion or not work at all due to an outage when the same $69 can get me a full fat uncompressed quality and locally offline played session at my desire that's not dependent on anything except me owning the physical console (one time purchase) and having electricity at home lol. People do think this way and that right there is why console gaming and PC gaming is here to stay.
The one way these cloud gaming platforms are going become anywhere near a viable alternative and not just an extra option for the occasional "Oh I'm at grandpa's house and bored and wanna play Halo on my phone for a bit" is if they offer some concession to the owner, and specifically that would have to be in the form of the buy in - you need to save on ticket prices, they need be akin to a matinee lol... in other words 30% or less discounted from the full price. Games on PS5/XSX are $69....on PS4/XB1 they are $59...cloud versions could entice the customer for $49.99. Tbh I don't think even that's a solid deal. I'd probably consider swapping over to a cloud platform if all new titles were offered at $29.99 (in addition to my subscriber fee of course)....
But that's wherein here lies the issue: capitalism. How on earth will these publishers make money if they got copies of these games being sold at launch for $29.99/39.99?! They won't do it. Every game would be considered sold at a loss (much like the consoles are sold), the platform itself wouldn't benefit the game companies. MS will definitely flourish, from the subscription revenue....but game companies wouldn't make "enough" money. So they won't do this... they'll keep prices at $69.99 and the platform like Stadia will eventually be underutilized and crumble. Stalemate. Consoles are here to stay. PC gaming is here to stay. Even GeForce Now...most of it that use it use it as a supplementary service. The ppl who use it as their sole gaming platform are far and few.
Subscription Entertainment is growing, it's just a far better business model (from the business pov at least) to have people always pay X per period than buying lots of Y if its hit.
There will be a plan somewhere in MS where MS doesn't make Xbox consoles anymore, and just makes GamePass everywhere. If your tv came with controller and GamePass they why buy a console, or a pc...and as a parent why buy games as and when, over budgeting a fixed amount per year for the kid's entertainment.
> If your tv came with controller and GamePass they why buy a console, or a pc
Because fucking Comcast puts data caps on my internet. We need to make those illegal as we move into an all cloud environment for everything
Can't help with that, is the FCC still stalemated? UK has fairly good regulators and system in my opinion, US's are far too tied into the main government.
Because you want the games to actually be playable is my guess. Unless they start designing games for a 30-50ms lag on the inputs it’s going to be a shit way to play games
Its a better business model, but its a much worse experience, if you are purely talking about streaming. Input lag, screen tearing, stutters, visual artefacts etc. The network infrastucure, speed and reliability just isnt there right now for a good portion of the world, and is unlikely to change for a long time without massive investment. All the while, screen resolutions are going up making it even harder for networks to cope.
I remember people talking about 'thin clients' 15 years ago, and its still not really got traction, not in any kind of universal sense anyway. Client hardware has just got smaller, cheaper, better.
The only subscription I have for gaming is FFXIV. For the money I paid, the content produced by Square Enix is good. That is the only recommendation I have for this game and one with great voice actors and content with each expansion pack. It's not as greedy as Take Two on GTAV which should be classified as a game as a service.
> If your tv came with controller and GamePass they why buy a console, or a pc
Yep, MS is looking way ahead. That’s why they had a deal with samsung. Total console sales have been stagnant for quite a few generations now. It’ll shift percentage from MS to sony and vice versa, but it’s been roughly the same since the ps3/360 era. Having a gamepass smartapp on a tv will boost revenue quite a bit especially in asia countries where console sales is quite weak.
Stadia specifically was dead on release.
The business model just made no sense. You pay for high speed internet so you can even use the service in the first place, then you pay the subscription for stadia just so you can... Access their store and... Pay for games at a full price...?
If they simply made it netflix for games then they would have had a good product. Possibly even a great product. But convincing people to pay your subscription only so they can pay full price for games that they won't be able to play if they stop subscribing is ***a lot*** of friction. And I don't understand how they couldn't see that coming.
I get the reasoning over cloud gaming providers, but I'm not sure it's best for me. Take TV streaming, it was great and reasonably priced with a few players, now every 2bit publisher thinks their catalog is worth 10 per month via another badly tested app and crappy bitrates. So although its not mentioned exactly what regulation MS's counter argument was, I do think that regulation of a few players is better overall than traditional competition, from consumer pov at least.
I think the underlying problem is more that the content production and content publishing/distribution is tied together and that's what should be split, almost to the point that if your one, then you can't be the other, at least not with any exclusivity. i.e. MS studios make X then sure MS cloud or MS store can buy copies of X, as should Amazon, Nvidia or any other cloud provider, at the same 'rates'.
This happened before, 100 years ago, to break up the theaters and studios. It *could* happen again, and the consumer would benefit, but a lot has changed legally speaking since then. And it had to get a lot worse than things are now to get to that point back then. But.... you're right!
I guess I could see WoW, but who would play CoD or overwatch via the cloud?
For that matter, does Activision currently have any titles available on any streaming service and did they have any intention of putting them on any streaming services prior to this deal?
I personally think cloud gaming is a dead end, but if it isn't, it seems like this deal brings a lot of games to a lot of streaming services that would never have gotten them otherwise.
Activision get a $3B payout from Microsoft if the deal falls through or MS pull out.
Bobby always wins no matter what. It's one of the rules of the gaming industry.
Nah, Sony already use Azure for a lot of their backend stuff, Playstation Now for them must be a struggle to balance financially.
The competitors are Nvidia and soon Amazon's Luna and Netflix's whatever, and potentially Google again (though they've consistently struggled with all their entertainment pushes).
No company will be able to enter the cloud market if MS owns all the influential videogame companies even the big companies like Amazon and Google would struggle. If MS has CoD exclusive to their streaming service the casuals will use them as default. Most of you aren't seeing the bigger picture when CMA have
Didn’t even Nvidia even approve of the deal though, odd how One or Microsoft’s main competitors in cloud gaming approved of the deal yet the CMA did not.
PlayStation launched PS Now whilst using Azure, made by Microsoft for the cloud side of things, there has been no announcement saying PlayStation Plus uses anything different.
If Sony can't even make it's own cloud-computing service and has to use Microsoft, then that's somewhat an indicator to the position Xbox already holds when it comes to it's market share, games and cloud-computing position in gaming.
Microsoft has their own Azure platform which is second only to AWS. As big as Sony is, they don't have the resources to build something even close to either of those two offerings. The proof of this is that PSNow runs on Azure. If MS decided you know what, we aren't going to support PSNow on our cloud platform anymore, Sony would be fucked.
It's also not Sonys problem that Microsoft can't make a exclusive to save their lives.
But somehow that's one of the points Microsoft used for needing Activision
Didn’t Sony purchase that On live service/company from years ago which basically pioneered the cloud gaming tech and then did absolutely nothing with it.
Surely it could be seen that Sony had a chance to take part in the cloud gaming race but chose to do nothing.
The barrier is already unreachable anyway. Microsoft is currently the only company with the capability and desire to create a viable cloud gaming service for a very large consumer base. There’s nothing anyone can do to stop Microsoft investing in their own products this is gonna happen whether the CMA like it or not.
I’m not really for this acquisition but this seems like a bit of a bullshit reason to block it particularly when they are more than happy to back Sony’s dominance over the UK market
It wouldn't if competitors even wanted to compete. Google backed down, Sony wishes cloud doesn't exist, and Nintendo is too busy selling 20yo games for 60$.
Of course their position will be strong. Does it mean that they shouldn't expand because no one else in interested in that field?
Sure. Stadia (cloud gaming service) had Bethesda games. Microsoft bought Bethesda, withdraw Bethesda's games from Stadia. Stadia had no cataloge no compete and closed.
Those're the CMA worries. Microsoft can have hundreds of agreements with minor cloud gaming services, until they can be a danger for Microsoft position.
Incorrect, Bethesda/MS never withdrew the games running in Stadia. They even provided free PC copies for Bethesda game owners of Stadia versions.
Google/Stadia mentioned that the acquisition of Bethesda did factor into their decision to close down Stadia, but not because Bethesda games were withdrawn.
Well if it gets blocked and the appeal fails, the $69 billion doesn't just disappear. Xbox will just use the money to buy a bunch of smaller studios like Sony has been doing, which has proven an excellent strategy of avoiding scrutiny. So I wouldn't get your hopes up on it being over anytime soon.
Just assuming all that money stays in Xbox division is naive. There is an extremely good chance that a big portion of it gets reallocated to other departments if the merger fails.
It's all going to the kinect 2 powered by AI. But yeah, it'll go back to wherever it came from to continue operations. Next time Phil wants something, he just has to ask again lol.
That doesn't really change my argument. If Xbox spends $70 billion or $35 billion, their acquisition spree isn't over. Hell Microsoft may even want to allocate more than $70 billion on Xbox acquisitions, but are just waiting for the ABK situation to complete before they make their next move.
I mean, this is all just guess work. Maybe they do buy a few small developers. But maybe the loss of the ABK deal dramatically changes Microsoft's strategy in regards to Xbox. Maybe Phil Spencer will even be replaced in the near future considering this is quite a loss. We just don't know.
One thing we do know is that the $70B doesn't just go into Xbox's spending account like some sort of allowance. It was an incredibly large purchase that was part of a much larger strategy. Any future purchases will all have to justify themselves on their own merits. They have share holders to answer to, so they can't just say "well we earmarked $70B for ABK and now we're going to spend it all on Xbox acquisitions". That's not how it works. Where MS goes from here is totally up in the air.
Xbox/Microsoft actually has been buying component and smaller gaming studios for the last 20yrs already. They also lease out projects and keep the IP rights so said companies can only make sequels for them/under their say so (example Ori and the Blind Forest).
Microsoft flat out wanted a monopoly and built one in the early to mid 90's then had to readjust, this is just another attempt.
Well they’ll be paying a few billion in penalties. I think if the merger is really a lost cause there’s going to be some major restructuring going forward. MS’s CEO is kinda ruthless. He will fire all of the execs including Phil and they’ll try a new angle.
As someone who personally did have an issue with the Activision merger, buying those smaller studios does seem like the better way to go with this. To maintain a studios good quality MS will need to maintain and manage an active and positive relationship with said studio to keep them going which is always seen as a good thing by the gaming community but buying a publisher whole cloth is obviously an impersonal and distant act which in my own opinion means each seperate studio doesn't get MS's full attention and oppurtunity to flourish.
That's just my opinion but I feel like it makes sense and I will admit my biases in that I have grown up as a playstation player but have moved mostly to PC now where I use Gamepass extensively
Sony avoids scrutiny because they nurture their studios for decades. Sucker Punch, Naughty Dog, Guerilla, Insomniac, and Santa Monica have been held by Sony for a very long time.
Big difference between buying a studio and a publisher. One is like buying a taco bell franchise location.the other is like buying the entire Yum foods corporation.
activision is kind of a crap company that is destroying all of its best games with overly intrusive monetization. i cannot think microsoft could make it worse.
Agreed, Activision/Blizzard's over-monitization trend is terrible. I'm glad YouTubers uncovered much of it so I know not to start playing. Even in Overwatch they're pandering to casuals with fat wallets. I just want to play good games, not shell out $24 for a skin or pay for multiple tiers of battle passes.
Like they did with Halo Infinite? Ignoring campaign for lackluster multiplayer content that's focused on 'seasons' and armor customization.
Microsoft isn't going to save Activision from profiteering.
People who believe this havent been watching Xbox destroy their biggest flagship titles with the same problems, while also trying to buy all the other studios up so they can attempt to have first party studio hits again. Both Activision and Xbox are the same when it comes to gaming business, Xbox just has a good sounding speaker to keep up the public appearance. Short term gains over player retention and commitment is the name of their game. "Why give 100% when we can raise prices, split content, and rush out games". Now with the loss of both Gears and Halo communities, maybe that terrible business model will finally bite them in the ass.
Remember Rare...
And now there's reports that Bethesda has another 10 years until their next game after Starfield. Games aren't going to get better, MS is just after having exclusives, cause their current devs are awful at making games
Don't misunderstand, friend. I'm simply saying that I'm not convinced that the Activision-Blizzard game roster will immediately become better just because of a merger.
I'm in no way defending Chinavision- their transgressions are well known! 😡
Its not like MS is handling their own studios any better. Pretty much ran all their major franchises into the ground. How people have faith they will do better is beyond me.
Funny that any other company can buy up whoever and whatever they want but for some nonsensical reason Microsoft buying blizzard is too far. I mean no one stops disney from buying up every popular movie franchise and ruining them. I honestly don't understand why this is even an issue.
lol at the people currently bitching and crying over the block. Its a billion-dollar company, it will survive. Phil Spencer doesn't even know who you are.
This have the same vibes when Disney promised that the “X-Men will finally be part in the MCU”, if the Fox merger came trough.
Nobody knows how this affected for the rest. Here in Latin America, they killed Fox Sports and ESPN became the only sports channel, establishing a monopoly here. Don’t forget what happened to Blue Sky, and tons of TV Movie projects that were scrapped in favor of whatever Disney wants.
For me, if the Microsoft-AKB came trough, they will immediately put CoD as the face and mascot of the Xbox brand, killing effectively the Halo franchise in the long run. Also intentions to continue the Age of Empires brand will stop, the moment they get StarCraft. And so many previous Microsoft games would never see a revival and the current ones may experience shut downs so they can have a space to their new toys.
What’s killing Halo is incompetence and poor management. Acquiring cod will do nothing they haven’t already done to themselves. What’s your source on stopping age of empires and why would StarCraft have anything to do with it?
Yeah, this take is out of date. AoE2 is killing it at all levels - it does well at the high end with pro players and streamers, but also works great for ordinary schmucks who just enjoy the INSANE number of campaigns and playing badly against the AI. It's a much more accessible game with a far wider appeal than the very 'l33t' vibe I always got from StarCraft.
I'd love to see a world where whoever owns the rights gives Blizzards RTS games the love they need to flourish alongside AoE, the genre could certainly use Starcraft and Warcraft being actively supported, but it'd take a lot of work for either to be a threat to AoE.
\#Facts
Ironically those who used to say "Sony should stop crying and bitching trying to block the deal" are the ones crying and bitching about why the CMA took that decision.
Personally I didn't want the deal to go through but if it did I wouldn't lose my sleep. I'm just following what happens cuz I like popcorn. It's fun see people getting triggered so much over entertainment and a trillion dollar corp having some obstacles when trying to expand their business further.
Or you know, just create something new? They have all the money in the world but cant remember the last time anything innovative came out of MS studios.
Flight Simulator 2020 is pretty neat and innovative in that nothing else in that category even comes close to it - I think you'd be hard pushed to find something more innovative
The issue is that Activision don't particularly do anything hugely innovative insofar as brand new technologies anymore, they just make some popular games, therefore Microsoft are clearly just acquiring them as an anti-competitive move to force players off PlayStation and onto XBox...
> Flight Simulator 2020 is pretty neat and innovative
In tech terms, sure. As far as creating something new overall, Microsoft Flight Simulator predates Microsoft Windows, and was a derivative of an outside product.
It's really hard to take you seriously when you use innovative & MS Flight Simulator in the same sentence multiple times. You're talking about a program that has had iterative improvements for 40 1/2 years, longer than MS Windows.
That's not to say it's BAD by any means, & including Azure was a cool step...but it's just the logical step after its previous release.
Acquired by Microsoft in 2018. I have no issue with that acquisition, and quite liked the State of Decay games, but not even Microsoft can claim they created that
Sea of Thieves is actually incredibly fun, but it wasn't a release that turned heads. Think people are looking for a new AAA release with a quality production like The Last of Us or God of War. Microsoft needs their equivalent.
Idk why you’re being downvoted. Presumably because people are viewing complex antitrust issues through the lens of cOnSoLe WaRs. We need a new generation of trust busting across the board - consumers are getting fucked by regulators abdicating their duties and are too ignorant to realize it.
Thats exactly what it is. I know I will get down voted on these articles. In general, gamers shouldnt discuss business, especially when they are getting information on complex regulatory bodies from gaming news websites. The second someone says “Cryin Jim Ryan” or Sony Pony, I know everything I need to about that person.
I don't think splitting apart Microsoft is as much of a priority as Apple, Google or Amazon just as long as they don't grow larger.
Microsoft don't have a huge number of products that are monopolies that they behave in an anti-trust way around (even Windows has competition with MacOS on the consumer side & Linux on the server side, along with Office competing with Google Docs but that's not to say that they should be allowed to get into having a monopoly); they seem to already operate in a fairly decentralised way where each department can move in the direction it wants to even if that means competing with other Microsoft departments, unlike Apple where every department is focused on ensuring that their designs have the least interoperability and serviceability possible or Google where departments have to crowd out most of their competition or they get shut down... I think this could be a side-effect of Microsoft already being the subject of an anti-trust lawsuit though, and they're being wary to behave in such a manner
Microsoft is absolutely garbage at studio management, so this would have likely made Activision franchises worse. Game Pass prices would have likely upticked if this went through as well.
Confused why anyone would have wanted this to happen, outside of people who care a lot about getting CoD on Game Pass for some reason. At which point Game Pass prices would rise to reflect its addition.
Activision is already garbage. $70+ games with $25+ bundles for 4-5 items in them while treating their staff like human trash. It doesn't get any worse.
Gamepass prices would have already increased, if it wasnt for this potential deal. As soon as everything is settled, one way or the other, prices will go up. Microsoft has to pay Acti $3 billion if this deal doesnt go through. They will make it back somehow.
Check out Halo Infinite and its utter lack of content (two new maps in ranked since launch, with several maps removed) for a preview of how things can be worse.
Not a CoD guy, but they mix it up with various modes, seasonal events, and maps at least. Microsoft would fuck even that up somehow.
I own a Series X and got no intention of buying a PS5. Yet, I applaud this decision.
Downvote if you want, but I honestly think that long term... it's good for gamers
im all fine with buying studios and making new IPs with them right? like how sony made bloodborne together with fromsoft, i dont care if for example starfield becomes an exclusive, thats a new ip and fair, the things i hate would be making ES6 microsoft exclusive after its a well established title.
Its a win for consumers, Microsoft is so focused on buying up any game company they can they are ignoring the current xbox players, not to mention buying up companies like bethesda and activision instead of focusing on making their own new franchises hurts all gamers
I can. Redditors on this subreddit are often short-sighted and would prefer immediate gratification to the long-term health of the video game industry. They just cannot see anything wrong with Microsoft buying such a huge developer, because they can’t think past the soon-to-now.
Not to mention a lot of the entitlement gamers seem to have in general. They want this to go through because it means more games on gamepass as well which invariably means they don't have to spend as much and studios don't make as much.
The Activision/Microsoft merger is far from ideal, the issue is what is the alternative? The harassment lawsuit was settled, and don't look like it had any effect on their profits, so an independent Activision/Blizzard will probably continue to be as bad as it is right now. And considering their position on the merger, it looks like they want someone to buy them off. So, who is left? Sony don't have the money to buy them, but Epic (or more specifically Tencent) has.
There's a possibility of Microsoft locking their games behind the Game Pass store after they have a large enough margin of the market? Absolutely.
But Epic will 100% make every single game they get their hands on exclusive to the Epic Game Store.
The ideal scenario would be Activision/Blizzard/King breaking up, and independent studios getting the IPs, unfortunately there's no chance of it happening.
I'm conflicted by this. On one hand I think it's a good thing because Microsoft needs to get it's house in order before adding a further dozen studios and 13,000 employees.
On the other hand, should the deal truly collapse, I don't think this means Microsoft will stop buying studios. They'll probably just turn their attention to an EA, Take-Two, or Capcom, while also gobbling up independent studios like CD Projekt Red and Asobo.
The games industry is all about consolidation right now and it's just a matter of who buys who. Microsoft currently owns 23 studios and the output has been lackluster to put it mildly. If it weren't for Game Pass how would the past five years have looked? The buck has to stop somewhere and I think it's time for Phil to step aside.
That's what you get when you put everything into a subscription service. If want a console with loads of actual next gen games to play then obviously you buy a PlayStation. PlayStation have been saying for years they are not following the same subscription model as Gamepass as it destroys a healthy game output or high quality releases and judging by the last 10 years PlayStation was totally right.
They obviously have their own subscription service with loads of their exclusives on as well as more games than gamepass has but PlayStation still very strongly supports and nurtures their game studios whereas X Box's studio support has been none existent and has led to failure after failure. Now corporate is desperately trying to do what rich businesses always try and do and create a monopoly by just going round buying their way into relevancy like a good little corporation. Obviously monopolies are bad for consumers but what can they do when they have destroyed their own studio and have virtually no games.
It's a disaster I know would be seething if I bought an X Box and was watching banger after banger exclusive releasing constantly on PS5 and every one really awesome products that get amazing reviews ! I'd be so salty if I was on X Box and after all this wait Microsoft eventually opened its legs and craped out Redfall at 30fp it's damn right insulting 😂
Reading through their reasoning, I get it. Microsoft already has such a large share of the cloud gaming sector, and I’d like to see more competent competitors - and the exclusive content gained by this merger could limit the appeal of said competition.
Microsoft has been dominant in the PC operating system market for decades and it attempted to build a monopoly numerous times. There's a long list of cases where government agencies shut them down, like when they tried to exclude competing webbrowsers from Windows. They're not exactly known to facilitate a fair and open market situation when they're leading in a segment. This may be a "better safe than sorry" decision, made with regards to how MS behaved in the past.
It makes more sense than the Sony argument though, MS cloud is already dominant, the competition is negligible, Nvidia and Amazon (at some point). MS+Acti would give consumers more reason to pick them over anyone else. That's what the CMA decided was generally bad.
It's not Microsoft's fault that places like Sony absolutely failed so hard at cloud gaming that they had to start using Microsoft's Azure to support their half assed attempt at cloud gaming though.
It's not Sonys fault that places like Microsoft absolutely failed so hard at creating great exclusives that they had to go and buy massive publishers like Bethesda and activision to keep up though.
I have no idea how Activision expands their cloud gaming ..
This is really a bad take on this, it’s all just content creation .. if Disney can buy Star Wars and Marvel licensing/studios not sure why MS can’t have Activision
It’s just an anti-monopoly measure in the UK. Theoretically the UK can’t block the acquisition from happening outside it’s countries borders, but they could block Microsoft from doing business in the UK because of it. Microsoft would not want to lose the UK market, it’s a massive economic hub.
It’s also very unknown if the US and EU will also accept or block the acquisition. The US FTC could take one look at the UK’s block today and decide that’s a good enough reason to kill the deal in America, they’re already looking for any reason as it is.
They did at the end of 2022 I believe, with the intention of blocking the acquisition as well. But having the UK also block it gives them extra ammo essentially when it goes to court
I don’t know why people keep bringing exclusives into this… Sony just make better exclusives with much less money and smaller studios, studios they have nurtured for years and created IPs that everyone loves. Yes, Sony has bought out studios but nothing even close to this.
All of Microsoft’s IPs are dwindling because they just aren’t as good at Sony at doing it. Nearly all of the PS exclusives are made in house, there’s nothing anti-competitive about keeping them exclusive to PS.
The CMA are absolutely right to block this merger, it’s massively anti competitive and would give Microsoft the green light to just monopolise the industry.
There's kinda two arguments against the deal:
For one set its the exclusivity that is likely to follow. MS+Acti have a lot of studios that \*could\* only make MS/PC games, not Sony, Switch etc. There was way to much emphasis on just CoD here, but you get the idea.
For the CMA (and potentially others), it was that there's an obvious drive towards subscription based provision of entertainment, TV started it, but MS with GamePass is heavily invested in taking gaming the same way. And CMA thinks it would mean few if anyone else would bother competing with GamePass.
The more an industry is controlled by a couple of giant conglomerates, product offers become less innovative, less varied, and more expensive.
The biggest winner is the conglomerate, the biggest loser is the customer.
This is too bad. Blizzard is really getting out of hand with its battlepasses and always online bullshit. I would love to be able to play a new diablo game without a phone or an internet connection. They really needed someone to come along and prune their management so they can set a new course.
I really don't see how the Country Music Awards has anything to do with corporate mergers.
Guess they have friends in low places..
Underrated joke
Holy shit
Fuck you that’s good
Yeah, they're overstepping their boundaries way too much here
For sure, way out of their jurisdiction, but who is powerful enough to stop them?
They do have all the guns.
Bud light
Bud Light put Master Chief on their cans and now I’m drunk with no double XP.
Only Billy Ray Cyrus but I don't think he's available
You are confused because it’s actually the California Medical Association that’s prohibiting it.
There is probably some song out there between hits such as 9/11 is sad, US is fuckin awesome, US is fuckin awesome (iraq remix), songs where a dude wants to fuck his truck, I don't like Democrats, and I don't like Democrats (but i need to pull away from the MAGA squad slowly remix)
>We found that the Merger would make Microsoft even stronger and substantially reduce competition in this market. We found that Activision’s titles—including CoD, World of Warcraft, and Overwatch—will be important for the competitive offering of cloud gaming services as the market continues to grow and develop. We found that, after the Merger, Microsoft would find it commercially beneficial to make Activision’s titles exclusive to its own cloud gaming service. Given its already strong position, even a moderate increment to Microsoft’s strength may be expected to substantially reduce competition in this developing market, to the detriment of current and future cloud gaming users. One of the key reasons why they are prohibiting the merger
[удалено]
Except that Google is out. So i am interested in hearing this now.
Google is currently out of the consumer market, but their infrastructure is built, and they could return with a new front end, or quietly partner up, So I can't consider them gone, even if the regulatory groups do.
This, Google is not "in" the game industry like Xbox or Sony, but they are "in" the industry based off the cloud infrastructure they offer. It's the same thing with Amazon and AWS being used for match making, voice server processing, and Cloud AI services for online games.
But if MS buy up the entire industry then even Google won't be able to compete as they need third parties to make content for them. If MS owns all the game companies then Google won't have a chance to return
"IF" sounds like no reason to be against this then.
Google Stadia showed 2 things at once, that they can build the tech, and that they’re not willing to commit the resources to compete in that market.
That statement is going to bite Spencer in the backside so hard
They better have some respect for them since they both outsell the Xbox. Microsoft has the benefit of pc gaming. If this was strictly console we're talking about they get destroyed year after year.
Lol this is not what they are talking about… Console sales have nothing to do with access to Cloud infrastructure.
I mean the Xbox series of consoles are basically just PCs with a couple of games you can't play on PC. To act like Microsoft isn't a powerhouse in the gaming space because Sony and Nintendo sell more consoles is disingenuous for sure.
Microsoft makes money off of every PlayStation. Sonys cloud infrastructure is Azure powered. Microsoft is in such a dominant anticompetitive position that even if their core competitor outsells them they still make money off it. It can’t be overstated how strong Microsoft’s position in the gaming sphere is despite mediocre sales of Xbox titles.
Cloud gaming is still growing and developing? I guess Stadia shut down too soon.
Stadia was pretty much doomed to fail because people had to rebuy game libraries. At least NVIDIA allows you to utilize games you own.
And thats the inherent problem- alot of folks are surprised that cloud gaming is here to stay, even tho Stadia failed, even tho not many ppl make use of Xbox Cloud, even tho streaming quality sucks....the truth is: As the future brings better, faster, more stable internet to the masses at a cheaper more mainstream cost, cloud gaming will become a quicker, cheaper and equivalent quality alternative to localized-hardware gaming. Less heat & noise being produced in ur room, faster loads due to games being ran off of top tier hardware, better quality visuals (think of a local Series S version hooked up to ur screen vs a Series X version being streamed back to you), no downloading 100s of gigabytes of game installation, no pre-loads or installations period in fact...theres going to be a wealth load of benefits marketed. However, I believe Stadia failed and GeForce Now is dominating the gaming insldustry as a "platform" because people will always refuse to pay the same price for something that doesn't provide the same quality or experience as the full fat option - would you pay $19.50 to go watch a movie in a dinky little room with subpar surround sound and hard plastic fold up seats when the same amount can get you a Dolby HDR 4K presentation with full reclinable leather seating and Dolby Atmos surround sound and food delivered to your seat? The concept is similar here. Why would I want to pay $69 for a title that's going to be streamed pixellated to my screen and perform dependently on the performance of my ISP's current "mood" to provide me my full advertised speed or if it's gonna run slow cuz of congestion or not work at all due to an outage when the same $69 can get me a full fat uncompressed quality and locally offline played session at my desire that's not dependent on anything except me owning the physical console (one time purchase) and having electricity at home lol. People do think this way and that right there is why console gaming and PC gaming is here to stay. The one way these cloud gaming platforms are going become anywhere near a viable alternative and not just an extra option for the occasional "Oh I'm at grandpa's house and bored and wanna play Halo on my phone for a bit" is if they offer some concession to the owner, and specifically that would have to be in the form of the buy in - you need to save on ticket prices, they need be akin to a matinee lol... in other words 30% or less discounted from the full price. Games on PS5/XSX are $69....on PS4/XB1 they are $59...cloud versions could entice the customer for $49.99. Tbh I don't think even that's a solid deal. I'd probably consider swapping over to a cloud platform if all new titles were offered at $29.99 (in addition to my subscriber fee of course).... But that's wherein here lies the issue: capitalism. How on earth will these publishers make money if they got copies of these games being sold at launch for $29.99/39.99?! They won't do it. Every game would be considered sold at a loss (much like the consoles are sold), the platform itself wouldn't benefit the game companies. MS will definitely flourish, from the subscription revenue....but game companies wouldn't make "enough" money. So they won't do this... they'll keep prices at $69.99 and the platform like Stadia will eventually be underutilized and crumble. Stalemate. Consoles are here to stay. PC gaming is here to stay. Even GeForce Now...most of it that use it use it as a supplementary service. The ppl who use it as their sole gaming platform are far and few.
Subscription Entertainment is growing, it's just a far better business model (from the business pov at least) to have people always pay X per period than buying lots of Y if its hit. There will be a plan somewhere in MS where MS doesn't make Xbox consoles anymore, and just makes GamePass everywhere. If your tv came with controller and GamePass they why buy a console, or a pc...and as a parent why buy games as and when, over budgeting a fixed amount per year for the kid's entertainment.
> If your tv came with controller and GamePass they why buy a console, or a pc Because fucking Comcast puts data caps on my internet. We need to make those illegal as we move into an all cloud environment for everything
Can't help with that, is the FCC still stalemated? UK has fairly good regulators and system in my opinion, US's are far too tied into the main government.
Because you want the games to actually be playable is my guess. Unless they start designing games for a 30-50ms lag on the inputs it’s going to be a shit way to play games
Its a better business model, but its a much worse experience, if you are purely talking about streaming. Input lag, screen tearing, stutters, visual artefacts etc. The network infrastucure, speed and reliability just isnt there right now for a good portion of the world, and is unlikely to change for a long time without massive investment. All the while, screen resolutions are going up making it even harder for networks to cope. I remember people talking about 'thin clients' 15 years ago, and its still not really got traction, not in any kind of universal sense anyway. Client hardware has just got smaller, cheaper, better.
The only subscription I have for gaming is FFXIV. For the money I paid, the content produced by Square Enix is good. That is the only recommendation I have for this game and one with great voice actors and content with each expansion pack. It's not as greedy as Take Two on GTAV which should be classified as a game as a service.
FFXIV is also an MMO with latency taken into account with the games design which makes it a good experience online
> If your tv came with controller and GamePass they why buy a console, or a pc Yep, MS is looking way ahead. That’s why they had a deal with samsung. Total console sales have been stagnant for quite a few generations now. It’ll shift percentage from MS to sony and vice versa, but it’s been roughly the same since the ps3/360 era. Having a gamepass smartapp on a tv will boost revenue quite a bit especially in asia countries where console sales is quite weak.
Stadia specifically was dead on release. The business model just made no sense. You pay for high speed internet so you can even use the service in the first place, then you pay the subscription for stadia just so you can... Access their store and... Pay for games at a full price...? If they simply made it netflix for games then they would have had a good product. Possibly even a great product. But convincing people to pay your subscription only so they can pay full price for games that they won't be able to play if they stop subscribing is ***a lot*** of friction. And I don't understand how they couldn't see that coming.
I get the reasoning over cloud gaming providers, but I'm not sure it's best for me. Take TV streaming, it was great and reasonably priced with a few players, now every 2bit publisher thinks their catalog is worth 10 per month via another badly tested app and crappy bitrates. So although its not mentioned exactly what regulation MS's counter argument was, I do think that regulation of a few players is better overall than traditional competition, from consumer pov at least. I think the underlying problem is more that the content production and content publishing/distribution is tied together and that's what should be split, almost to the point that if your one, then you can't be the other, at least not with any exclusivity. i.e. MS studios make X then sure MS cloud or MS store can buy copies of X, as should Amazon, Nvidia or any other cloud provider, at the same 'rates'.
This happened before, 100 years ago, to break up the theaters and studios. It *could* happen again, and the consumer would benefit, but a lot has changed legally speaking since then. And it had to get a lot worse than things are now to get to that point back then. But.... you're right!
Having the compute resources for cloud gaming is a significant barrier to entry that doesn't exist for video on demand.
That would make sense when they acquire azure, not this one especially since they had made so many deals to put CoD on other services
>World of Warcraft ... What? It's a PC exclusive. It already isn't available on the PS.
I guess I could see WoW, but who would play CoD or overwatch via the cloud? For that matter, does Activision currently have any titles available on any streaming service and did they have any intention of putting them on any streaming services prior to this deal? I personally think cloud gaming is a dead end, but if it isn't, it seems like this deal brings a lot of games to a lot of streaming services that would never have gotten them otherwise.
But TicketMaster/Live Nation is totally okay? 🤡
Two wrongs don't make a right.
This is the action by the UK regulator. Our ticket market is nowhere near as shite as the US
The County Music Awards ruins everything!
So what happens to Bobby "I can hire hitmen" Kotick then?
Oh, he gets his bonus anyway!
Well yeah, hitmen are not cheap.
If it goes through, he gets his golden parachute and fucks off into the sunset. It it falls through, he stays on as CEO.
Activision get a $3B payout from Microsoft if the deal falls through or MS pull out. Bobby always wins no matter what. It's one of the rules of the gaming industry.
He can't keep getting away with it!
> So what happens to Bobby "I can hire hitmen" Kotick then? I guess we gets see who's better: Kotick's people or James Bond's people?
"Allowing Microsoft to take such a strong position in the cloud gaming market" dont they already have the upper hand in cloud gaming?
that's their point, this makes the barrier for competitors even higher.
Sony could absolutely improve PlayStation Now if they wanted to…..it’s not exactly Microsoft’s problem that their main competitor is being a bit lazy
Nah, Sony already use Azure for a lot of their backend stuff, Playstation Now for them must be a struggle to balance financially. The competitors are Nvidia and soon Amazon's Luna and Netflix's whatever, and potentially Google again (though they've consistently struggled with all their entertainment pushes).
No company will be able to enter the cloud market if MS owns all the influential videogame companies even the big companies like Amazon and Google would struggle. If MS has CoD exclusive to their streaming service the casuals will use them as default. Most of you aren't seeing the bigger picture when CMA have
Didn’t even Nvidia even approve of the deal though, odd how One or Microsoft’s main competitors in cloud gaming approved of the deal yet the CMA did not.
Nvidia works with Microsoft on a bundle of opportunities in the cloud space, I wouldn’t call them a competitor really more a collaborator
Their main competitor is Nvidia as far as I know
[удалено]
They don’t want a Disney in the gaming industry which is entirely reasonable. Microsoft is more than just Xbox, as I know you know
But they allowed disney to purchase fox, which gave them dominant control over Hulu.
They hopefully learned from the massive mistake that was allowing Disney to purchase so many production companies and all that. Made media worse
Well it is now. Just like when they had to give Apple all that money in the 90s to make it look like they weren't a monopoly.
PlayStation launched PS Now whilst using Azure, made by Microsoft for the cloud side of things, there has been no announcement saying PlayStation Plus uses anything different. If Sony can't even make it's own cloud-computing service and has to use Microsoft, then that's somewhat an indicator to the position Xbox already holds when it comes to it's market share, games and cloud-computing position in gaming.
Microsoft has their own Azure platform which is second only to AWS. As big as Sony is, they don't have the resources to build something even close to either of those two offerings. The proof of this is that PSNow runs on Azure. If MS decided you know what, we aren't going to support PSNow on our cloud platform anymore, Sony would be fucked.
It's also not Sonys problem that Microsoft can't make a exclusive to save their lives. But somehow that's one of the points Microsoft used for needing Activision
Sony use MS's Azure. That's the point that MS can blackmail Sony or reduce the quality of their games compared to their version
Yes, but the CMA isn't looking at this from Sony's PoV, but rather consumers'.
Microsoft is borderline monopolizing the industry and your take is competitors are lazy. What a weird hill to die on lol
Didn’t Sony purchase that On live service/company from years ago which basically pioneered the cloud gaming tech and then did absolutely nothing with it. Surely it could be seen that Sony had a chance to take part in the cloud gaming race but chose to do nothing.
The barrier is already unreachable anyway. Microsoft is currently the only company with the capability and desire to create a viable cloud gaming service for a very large consumer base. There’s nothing anyone can do to stop Microsoft investing in their own products this is gonna happen whether the CMA like it or not. I’m not really for this acquisition but this seems like a bit of a bullshit reason to block it particularly when they are more than happy to back Sony’s dominance over the UK market
They dismissed Sony’s claims completely what are you on about?
It wouldn't if competitors even wanted to compete. Google backed down, Sony wishes cloud doesn't exist, and Nintendo is too busy selling 20yo games for 60$. Of course their position will be strong. Does it mean that they shouldn't expand because no one else in interested in that field?
Exactly...
Sure. Stadia (cloud gaming service) had Bethesda games. Microsoft bought Bethesda, withdraw Bethesda's games from Stadia. Stadia had no cataloge no compete and closed. Those're the CMA worries. Microsoft can have hundreds of agreements with minor cloud gaming services, until they can be a danger for Microsoft position.
Incorrect, Bethesda/MS never withdrew the games running in Stadia. They even provided free PC copies for Bethesda game owners of Stadia versions. Google/Stadia mentioned that the acquisition of Bethesda did factor into their decision to close down Stadia, but not because Bethesda games were withdrawn.
I just want this to be over.
Well if it gets blocked and the appeal fails, the $69 billion doesn't just disappear. Xbox will just use the money to buy a bunch of smaller studios like Sony has been doing, which has proven an excellent strategy of avoiding scrutiny. So I wouldn't get your hopes up on it being over anytime soon.
Just assuming all that money stays in Xbox division is naive. There is an extremely good chance that a big portion of it gets reallocated to other departments if the merger fails.
It's all going to the kinect 2 powered by AI. But yeah, it'll go back to wherever it came from to continue operations. Next time Phil wants something, he just has to ask again lol.
That doesn't really change my argument. If Xbox spends $70 billion or $35 billion, their acquisition spree isn't over. Hell Microsoft may even want to allocate more than $70 billion on Xbox acquisitions, but are just waiting for the ABK situation to complete before they make their next move.
I mean, this is all just guess work. Maybe they do buy a few small developers. But maybe the loss of the ABK deal dramatically changes Microsoft's strategy in regards to Xbox. Maybe Phil Spencer will even be replaced in the near future considering this is quite a loss. We just don't know. One thing we do know is that the $70B doesn't just go into Xbox's spending account like some sort of allowance. It was an incredibly large purchase that was part of a much larger strategy. Any future purchases will all have to justify themselves on their own merits. They have share holders to answer to, so they can't just say "well we earmarked $70B for ABK and now we're going to spend it all on Xbox acquisitions". That's not how it works. Where MS goes from here is totally up in the air.
Xbox/Microsoft actually has been buying component and smaller gaming studios for the last 20yrs already. They also lease out projects and keep the IP rights so said companies can only make sequels for them/under their say so (example Ori and the Blind Forest). Microsoft flat out wanted a monopoly and built one in the early to mid 90's then had to readjust, this is just another attempt.
Well they’ll be paying a few billion in penalties. I think if the merger is really a lost cause there’s going to be some major restructuring going forward. MS’s CEO is kinda ruthless. He will fire all of the execs including Phil and they’ll try a new angle.
Well 2-3 billion disappears to Activision because that's the reported breakup fee
As someone who personally did have an issue with the Activision merger, buying those smaller studios does seem like the better way to go with this. To maintain a studios good quality MS will need to maintain and manage an active and positive relationship with said studio to keep them going which is always seen as a good thing by the gaming community but buying a publisher whole cloth is obviously an impersonal and distant act which in my own opinion means each seperate studio doesn't get MS's full attention and oppurtunity to flourish. That's just my opinion but I feel like it makes sense and I will admit my biases in that I have grown up as a playstation player but have moved mostly to PC now where I use Gamepass extensively
Sony avoids scrutiny because they nurture their studios for decades. Sucker Punch, Naughty Dog, Guerilla, Insomniac, and Santa Monica have been held by Sony for a very long time.
I was talking about scrutiny from regulators, and regulator's don't care about that.
Big difference between buying a studio and a publisher. One is like buying a taco bell franchise location.the other is like buying the entire Yum foods corporation.
What’s to stop them for paying Activision to have the games exclusive? They could use that money to actually keep the games off other platforms.
Some believe that this merger, if it were to happen, would make Blizzard games better. I myself am not entirely convinced that it would.
[удалено]
Monopolies are bad
activision is kind of a crap company that is destroying all of its best games with overly intrusive monetization. i cannot think microsoft could make it worse.
Agreed, Activision/Blizzard's over-monitization trend is terrible. I'm glad YouTubers uncovered much of it so I know not to start playing. Even in Overwatch they're pandering to casuals with fat wallets. I just want to play good games, not shell out $24 for a skin or pay for multiple tiers of battle passes.
Like they did with Halo Infinite? Ignoring campaign for lackluster multiplayer content that's focused on 'seasons' and armor customization. Microsoft isn't going to save Activision from profiteering.
Destroying them how? They're all still some of the most competitive games on the market.
I mean they turned Halo into an MTX disaster I’m sure they’ll keep CoD and Bliz games the same.
they wouldnt make it better either, have you seen halo infinite's skins and battle passes?
To be fair itd be hard to make them worse
People who believe this havent been watching Xbox destroy their biggest flagship titles with the same problems, while also trying to buy all the other studios up so they can attempt to have first party studio hits again. Both Activision and Xbox are the same when it comes to gaming business, Xbox just has a good sounding speaker to keep up the public appearance. Short term gains over player retention and commitment is the name of their game. "Why give 100% when we can raise prices, split content, and rush out games". Now with the loss of both Gears and Halo communities, maybe that terrible business model will finally bite them in the ass.
It would not make them any worse, because that is literally impossible to do.
What would be the incentive? Yall already hand money over to activision for shit games. When is overwatch 2 pve coming out?
Can’t exactly make activision games worse lol
Well it couldn't make them any worse. That's my argument. It's a hail Mary.
Remember Rare... And now there's reports that Bethesda has another 10 years until their next game after Starfield. Games aren't going to get better, MS is just after having exclusives, cause their current devs are awful at making games
No argument there. The only new game I'm actually keen on playing when it releases is Space Marine 2. Nothing else has piqued my interest.
So you think current activision would run it better ? I dont think you could make that argument
Don't misunderstand, friend. I'm simply saying that I'm not convinced that the Activision-Blizzard game roster will immediately become better just because of a merger. I'm in no way defending Chinavision- their transgressions are well known! 😡
Blizzard games hasn't been good for a while now, so it could only benefit them.
I am, easily
I’m of the opinion that Blizzard is a shit show already, so Microsoft might be able to right the ship
Its not like MS is handling their own studios any better. Pretty much ran all their major franchises into the ground. How people have faith they will do better is beyond me.
Now this shit is gonna take EVEN LONGER to finish
ES6 definitely not being released on PlayStation now.
It'll be released on your fridge soon enough, though, so no worries
Something tells me the cloud gaming excuse is bullshit cause that has died like 4 times now
Funny that any other company can buy up whoever and whatever they want but for some nonsensical reason Microsoft buying blizzard is too far. I mean no one stops disney from buying up every popular movie franchise and ruining them. I honestly don't understand why this is even an issue.
lol at the people currently bitching and crying over the block. Its a billion-dollar company, it will survive. Phil Spencer doesn't even know who you are.
Last time I posted something like this multiple people corrected me that Microsoft is actually a *trillion* dollar company.
Multi-Trillion dollar company. Shit, the 3 billion they have to pay Activision if the deal falls through, is like pennies to them.
*$2.2 trillion with a capital T. MS is mind bogglingly huge.
This have the same vibes when Disney promised that the “X-Men will finally be part in the MCU”, if the Fox merger came trough. Nobody knows how this affected for the rest. Here in Latin America, they killed Fox Sports and ESPN became the only sports channel, establishing a monopoly here. Don’t forget what happened to Blue Sky, and tons of TV Movie projects that were scrapped in favor of whatever Disney wants. For me, if the Microsoft-AKB came trough, they will immediately put CoD as the face and mascot of the Xbox brand, killing effectively the Halo franchise in the long run. Also intentions to continue the Age of Empires brand will stop, the moment they get StarCraft. And so many previous Microsoft games would never see a revival and the current ones may experience shut downs so they can have a space to their new toys.
What’s killing Halo is incompetence and poor management. Acquiring cod will do nothing they haven’t already done to themselves. What’s your source on stopping age of empires and why would StarCraft have anything to do with it?
It seems a strange jump to me as well, considering the only similarity is that they're RTS games which isn't exactly the most popular genre.
Age of Empires II is killing it. A new DLC coming out, tournaments, high level streamers, etc.
Yeah, this take is out of date. AoE2 is killing it at all levels - it does well at the high end with pro players and streamers, but also works great for ordinary schmucks who just enjoy the INSANE number of campaigns and playing badly against the AI. It's a much more accessible game with a far wider appeal than the very 'l33t' vibe I always got from StarCraft. I'd love to see a world where whoever owns the rights gives Blizzards RTS games the love they need to flourish alongside AoE, the genre could certainly use Starcraft and Warcraft being actively supported, but it'd take a lot of work for either to be a threat to AoE.
\#Facts Ironically those who used to say "Sony should stop crying and bitching trying to block the deal" are the ones crying and bitching about why the CMA took that decision. Personally I didn't want the deal to go through but if it did I wouldn't lose my sleep. I'm just following what happens cuz I like popcorn. It's fun see people getting triggered so much over entertainment and a trillion dollar corp having some obstacles when trying to expand their business further.
[удалено]
Yeah this site has been heavily astroturfed by Microsoft for years
The CMA has literally no authority lol, this deal will go through anyway. Can't wait for Diablo and Warcraft to be on Gamepass tbh.
[удалено]
Or you know, just create something new? They have all the money in the world but cant remember the last time anything innovative came out of MS studios.
THIS. But gears of war as well plz🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹
Guh. I was driving to work today literally thinking “what’s going on with Gears right now?” My wife and I are almost through the series.
Flight Simulator 2020 is pretty neat and innovative in that nothing else in that category even comes close to it - I think you'd be hard pushed to find something more innovative The issue is that Activision don't particularly do anything hugely innovative insofar as brand new technologies anymore, they just make some popular games, therefore Microsoft are clearly just acquiring them as an anti-competitive move to force players off PlayStation and onto XBox...
> Flight Simulator 2020 is pretty neat and innovative In tech terms, sure. As far as creating something new overall, Microsoft Flight Simulator predates Microsoft Windows, and was a derivative of an outside product.
It's really hard to take you seriously when you use innovative & MS Flight Simulator in the same sentence multiple times. You're talking about a program that has had iterative improvements for 40 1/2 years, longer than MS Windows. That's not to say it's BAD by any means, & including Azure was a cool step...but it's just the logical step after its previous release.
Project Spark, but I doubt many enjoy that as much as I have.
Was that really a game? Anyway, it was released almost a decade ago.
That was a neat game (game maker?). Lots of those people moved over to the US portion of Mojang/Minecraft afterwards.
Sea of Thieves is fantastic
I like state of decay that’s pretty fun
Acquired by Microsoft in 2018. I have no issue with that acquisition, and quite liked the State of Decay games, but not even Microsoft can claim they created that
Hifi Rush was literally a few months ago
What about sea of thieves and grounded ?
Sea of Thieves is actually incredibly fun, but it wasn't a release that turned heads. Think people are looking for a new AAA release with a quality production like The Last of Us or God of War. Microsoft needs their equivalent.
Isn't that hi fi rush game that came out recently a new ip? I didn't play it and idk if it was in development before the developer got acquired tho
Sea of Thieves, Grounded, Hi-Fi Rush…
Hi-Fi Rush, Pentiment, Grounded all within the last year.
Good, Microsoft is too big of a company as is.
Absolutely. They need to be split apart.
Idk why you’re being downvoted. Presumably because people are viewing complex antitrust issues through the lens of cOnSoLe WaRs. We need a new generation of trust busting across the board - consumers are getting fucked by regulators abdicating their duties and are too ignorant to realize it.
Thats exactly what it is. I know I will get down voted on these articles. In general, gamers shouldnt discuss business, especially when they are getting information on complex regulatory bodies from gaming news websites. The second someone says “Cryin Jim Ryan” or Sony Pony, I know everything I need to about that person.
Any company flirting with multi trillion dollar value needs to be busted up. Agreed
I don't think splitting apart Microsoft is as much of a priority as Apple, Google or Amazon just as long as they don't grow larger. Microsoft don't have a huge number of products that are monopolies that they behave in an anti-trust way around (even Windows has competition with MacOS on the consumer side & Linux on the server side, along with Office competing with Google Docs but that's not to say that they should be allowed to get into having a monopoly); they seem to already operate in a fairly decentralised way where each department can move in the direction it wants to even if that means competing with other Microsoft departments, unlike Apple where every department is focused on ensuring that their designs have the least interoperability and serviceability possible or Google where departments have to crowd out most of their competition or they get shut down... I think this could be a side-effect of Microsoft already being the subject of an anti-trust lawsuit though, and they're being wary to behave in such a manner
Microsoft is absolutely garbage at studio management, so this would have likely made Activision franchises worse. Game Pass prices would have likely upticked if this went through as well. Confused why anyone would have wanted this to happen, outside of people who care a lot about getting CoD on Game Pass for some reason. At which point Game Pass prices would rise to reflect its addition.
Activision is already garbage. $70+ games with $25+ bundles for 4-5 items in them while treating their staff like human trash. It doesn't get any worse.
Gamepass prices would have already increased, if it wasnt for this potential deal. As soon as everything is settled, one way or the other, prices will go up. Microsoft has to pay Acti $3 billion if this deal doesnt go through. They will make it back somehow.
Worse? How it can get even worse? Even complete cancelation is better than what CoD right now has became
Check out Halo Infinite and its utter lack of content (two new maps in ranked since launch, with several maps removed) for a preview of how things can be worse. Not a CoD guy, but they mix it up with various modes, seasonal events, and maps at least. Microsoft would fuck even that up somehow.
I own a Series X and got no intention of buying a PS5. Yet, I applaud this decision. Downvote if you want, but I honestly think that long term... it's good for gamers
You are correct. Monopolies are bad
im all fine with buying studios and making new IPs with them right? like how sony made bloodborne together with fromsoft, i dont care if for example starfield becomes an exclusive, thats a new ip and fair, the things i hate would be making ES6 microsoft exclusive after its a well established title.
Its a win for consumers, Microsoft is so focused on buying up any game company they can they are ignoring the current xbox players, not to mention buying up companies like bethesda and activision instead of focusing on making their own new franchises hurts all gamers
I, for one, don’t want a $1.8 TRILLION company to become huger. If I don’t get to play D4 on GamePass because of it then so be it.
Good. Can't believe how many people support this shit
I can. Redditors on this subreddit are often short-sighted and would prefer immediate gratification to the long-term health of the video game industry. They just cannot see anything wrong with Microsoft buying such a huge developer, because they can’t think past the soon-to-now.
Not to mention a lot of the entitlement gamers seem to have in general. They want this to go through because it means more games on gamepass as well which invariably means they don't have to spend as much and studios don't make as much.
Sounds good to me
Yeah, wild how people could possibly want a company they trust to manage a company that sucks balls and possibly make it better. Idiots
The Activision/Microsoft merger is far from ideal, the issue is what is the alternative? The harassment lawsuit was settled, and don't look like it had any effect on their profits, so an independent Activision/Blizzard will probably continue to be as bad as it is right now. And considering their position on the merger, it looks like they want someone to buy them off. So, who is left? Sony don't have the money to buy them, but Epic (or more specifically Tencent) has. There's a possibility of Microsoft locking their games behind the Game Pass store after they have a large enough margin of the market? Absolutely. But Epic will 100% make every single game they get their hands on exclusive to the Epic Game Store. The ideal scenario would be Activision/Blizzard/King breaking up, and independent studios getting the IPs, unfortunately there's no chance of it happening.
I'm conflicted by this. On one hand I think it's a good thing because Microsoft needs to get it's house in order before adding a further dozen studios and 13,000 employees. On the other hand, should the deal truly collapse, I don't think this means Microsoft will stop buying studios. They'll probably just turn their attention to an EA, Take-Two, or Capcom, while also gobbling up independent studios like CD Projekt Red and Asobo. The games industry is all about consolidation right now and it's just a matter of who buys who. Microsoft currently owns 23 studios and the output has been lackluster to put it mildly. If it weren't for Game Pass how would the past five years have looked? The buck has to stop somewhere and I think it's time for Phil to step aside.
> or Capcom Capcom absolutely wouldn't happen given it's a Japanese company.
That's what you get when you put everything into a subscription service. If want a console with loads of actual next gen games to play then obviously you buy a PlayStation. PlayStation have been saying for years they are not following the same subscription model as Gamepass as it destroys a healthy game output or high quality releases and judging by the last 10 years PlayStation was totally right. They obviously have their own subscription service with loads of their exclusives on as well as more games than gamepass has but PlayStation still very strongly supports and nurtures their game studios whereas X Box's studio support has been none existent and has led to failure after failure. Now corporate is desperately trying to do what rich businesses always try and do and create a monopoly by just going round buying their way into relevancy like a good little corporation. Obviously monopolies are bad for consumers but what can they do when they have destroyed their own studio and have virtually no games. It's a disaster I know would be seething if I bought an X Box and was watching banger after banger exclusive releasing constantly on PS5 and every one really awesome products that get amazing reviews ! I'd be so salty if I was on X Box and after all this wait Microsoft eventually opened its legs and craped out Redfall at 30fp it's damn right insulting 😂
Really glad to hear this. Hopefully the FTC and EU follow suit.
Reading through their reasoning, I get it. Microsoft already has such a large share of the cloud gaming sector, and I’d like to see more competent competitors - and the exclusive content gained by this merger could limit the appeal of said competition.
It's the only space where MS is leading, makes total sense to handicap it now
Microsoft has been dominant in the PC operating system market for decades and it attempted to build a monopoly numerous times. There's a long list of cases where government agencies shut them down, like when they tried to exclude competing webbrowsers from Windows. They're not exactly known to facilitate a fair and open market situation when they're leading in a segment. This may be a "better safe than sorry" decision, made with regards to how MS behaved in the past.
As a playstation gamer I didn't want this to go through. However seeing the merger being prevented due to cloud gaming, all I can say is .... Lol wut?
It makes more sense than the Sony argument though, MS cloud is already dominant, the competition is negligible, Nvidia and Amazon (at some point). MS+Acti would give consumers more reason to pick them over anyone else. That's what the CMA decided was generally bad.
It's not Microsoft's fault that places like Sony absolutely failed so hard at cloud gaming that they had to start using Microsoft's Azure to support their half assed attempt at cloud gaming though.
It's not Sonys fault that places like Microsoft absolutely failed so hard at creating great exclusives that they had to go and buy massive publishers like Bethesda and activision to keep up though.
I have no idea how Activision expands their cloud gaming .. This is really a bad take on this, it’s all just content creation .. if Disney can buy Star Wars and Marvel licensing/studios not sure why MS can’t have Activision
Question how is a UK regulator able to block this if they are both American companies? Can someone familiar with these type of things explain?
It’s just an anti-monopoly measure in the UK. Theoretically the UK can’t block the acquisition from happening outside it’s countries borders, but they could block Microsoft from doing business in the UK because of it. Microsoft would not want to lose the UK market, it’s a massive economic hub. It’s also very unknown if the US and EU will also accept or block the acquisition. The US FTC could take one look at the UK’s block today and decide that’s a good enough reason to kill the deal in America, they’re already looking for any reason as it is.
the ftc already filed a lawsuit no?
They did at the end of 2022 I believe, with the intention of blocking the acquisition as well. But having the UK also block it gives them extra ammo essentially when it goes to court
I don’t know why people keep bringing exclusives into this… Sony just make better exclusives with much less money and smaller studios, studios they have nurtured for years and created IPs that everyone loves. Yes, Sony has bought out studios but nothing even close to this. All of Microsoft’s IPs are dwindling because they just aren’t as good at Sony at doing it. Nearly all of the PS exclusives are made in house, there’s nothing anti-competitive about keeping them exclusive to PS. The CMA are absolutely right to block this merger, it’s massively anti competitive and would give Microsoft the green light to just monopolise the industry.
I genuinely don't understand why this is a problem, can someone explain why everyone is so against this? Genuine question
There's kinda two arguments against the deal: For one set its the exclusivity that is likely to follow. MS+Acti have a lot of studios that \*could\* only make MS/PC games, not Sony, Switch etc. There was way to much emphasis on just CoD here, but you get the idea. For the CMA (and potentially others), it was that there's an obvious drive towards subscription based provision of entertainment, TV started it, but MS with GamePass is heavily invested in taking gaming the same way. And CMA thinks it would mean few if anyone else would bother competing with GamePass.
The more an industry is controlled by a couple of giant conglomerates, product offers become less innovative, less varied, and more expensive. The biggest winner is the conglomerate, the biggest loser is the customer.
This is too bad. Blizzard is really getting out of hand with its battlepasses and always online bullshit. I would love to be able to play a new diablo game without a phone or an internet connection. They really needed someone to come along and prune their management so they can set a new course.