I work in gaming at Microsoft and I really enjoy it. I think Microsoft gives us a ton of space to explore and make our own impact and I am a huge fan* of Phil Spencer.
> Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision has been described as the largest in tech history. It deserves scrutiny. That scrutiny has paid off: Microsoft has committed in writing, in public, and in court to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation for 10 years on parity with Xbox.
How does this make anyone feel any better? What happens after 10 years? Microsoft has been around for 4x that long.
> How does this make anyone feel any better? What happens after 10 years?
What happens in less than 10 years if they don't abide by it?
Does Activision get split back out? I doubt it.
We're long past the point where you can just set rules/laws and companies will abide by it. We need to be at the point where we also list the punishment ahead of time.
that's not a bad idea, laws without punishments are kind of ambiguous I suppose. I wonder the utility of leaving this open, is it tantamount to mandatory sentencing and takes freedom away from the judge or something like that.
> What happens in less than 10 years if they don't abide by it?
Likely nothing. I don't understand why people believe in these things.
> We're long past the point where you can just set rules/laws and companies will abide by it.
What's the rule / law here anyhow? There are always workarounds, e.g. it says it will keep it in parity with xbox... well what if they called a new console something else?
> Likely nothing. I don't understand why people believe in these things.
No kidding. They could just introduce a new game franchise called "Duty of Call - Warfare That's Modern" and make that Xbox exclusive instead. Or any number of other workarounds and sneaky tactics.
Depends how good Sony's lawyers are. Theoretically the courts could offer an injunction preventing sale of the CoD until it is also available on whatever equivalent Playstation type system there is.
Sony vs MS lawyers... that would be messy... and fun to watch. grabs popocorn
Would they just build a COD that is dependent on specific MS tech so they cannot release it on competing systems? Why not try and rebrand Call of Duty so that it isn't in violation? Just call it 'Duty'. It starts to get very grey very quickly.
You mean like Facebook/WhatsApp which committed to not do some things and that certain things aren't even technically possible (which even back then was a lie) to get the merger through in the EU and then a few years later was, oh that, yep, let's ignore it and just turn it into a long legal battle which will anyway cost us far less then what we gain from it.
> We're long past the point where you can just set rules/laws and companies will abide by it.
We're not, but this is pretty nebulous stuff. The state blocking freely agreed transactions because it can foresee some damage is not exactly a clear cut good, other than for people who are reassured by the idea of the state as a benevolent, all-knowing mom and pop, and for the lawyers who get paid a fortune to debate past and future hypotheticals.
What about this: allow the merger, and if the harm is done, the company must pay, but if the harm is not done, the state must pay?
> Companies with more resources than small countries are often too big to regulate because they capture the regulators and/or the judiciary.
Regulatory capture is entirely the fault of the regulator. They don't have to be captured. They choose to be. A government body, funded by taxes, that decides to be captured, is a complete disgrace. People work hard to pay taxes, and they shouldn't be spent on employing people who choose to align with those they should be regulating.
> Prevention is cheaper than treatment, especially when treatments have proven so ineffective.
The same state that has the power to prevent has the power to treat. It chooses not to. Switching approach won't help. Getting regulators to do their jobs will.
I wish it were that simple. Sadly a large portion of US voters seem to think a revolving door with "industry experts" (i.e. insiders) is desirable. And that courts should defer to business interests above all else.
‘Running the government like a business’ is and was the biggest crock of shit ever sold.
Anyone who has worked at large corporate bureaucracies knows they are just as slow and rule bound as government departments and in many ways worse. At least there are some well motivated people in government.
Government is us. The people. We’ve delegated it to an elite class that gets more and more cut off from the common politik as time goes by.
I see no easy solution . Power does not willingly give up power.
I don't think any solution here we've mentioned is simple. I don't think you should be characterising only the ones I'm mentioning as being not simple.
> What about this: allow the merger, and if the harm is done, the company must pay, but if the harm is not done, the state must pay?
The FTC identified not having CoD on multiple platforms as a large issue. What payment is justified if Microsoft doesn't allow CoD on multiple platforms?
It's easy to say "if harm is done, the company must pay" but look how long we've know leaded gasoline was harmful, look how long we've know abestoes was harmful, look how long we've know pfas was harmful, look how long we've know cigarettes are harmful. And then look how long it took for any company to pay after fighting tooth and nail saying it wasn't harmful despite their _own_ internal research saying the contrary.
Sure, CoD is not in the same scope as leaded gasoline. The point still remains, a harm has been identified and I don't think they should be allowed to merge so long as the punishment for that harm occurring isn't pre-determined.
The state blocking freely agreed transactions because it would allow someone to create something larger and more coercive than the state seems like a good minimum.
We don't have to debate past and future hypotheticals - that's an invention of the "consumer welfare" theory of antitrust. The one that said it's entirely fine for, say, Apple to have a monopoly on iOS software as long as they have a prosocial justification for it. Apple's specific argument is that their monopoly protects from malware... or, in other words, they're big enough that they can make and enforce their own laws.
A better and simpler rule is this: being big is illegal, period. That's how antitrust used to work. If a business deal would give you the capability of becoming your own sovereign state, you don't get to execute that deal. If you knock out all your competition, we break you up into competing companies.
This is the sort of thing that triggers free market types, I know. My argument is specifically that large businesses get to write their own rules, and the only way to prevent them from doing that is to make them small enough that they cannot execute political power equivalent to that of a monarch. Right now, we live in this comedic parody of free market liberalism where the business owners have centralized power to themselves, turning themselves into de-facto states, and gotten the de-jure state drunk on surveillance tech to avoid scrutiny.
It’s not about Sony, but customers that own a PS and not an XBox. Microsoft loves to buy studios and restrict access, just look a Halo it was introduced as a Mac game by the studio, Microsoft bought them specifically for XBox and fuck anyone that owned a Mac.
2 years after release they released a copy of the first game because all the work was done. Nothing from the rest of the series.
Please, Apple has been shooting themselves in the foot with gaming for decades. Halo: CE was also released for the Mac, so I'm not sure what the complaint is here.
What are you blaming Apple for Microsoft’s direct customer harm here?
A more than 2 year delay for the first game and never getting the rest of the series is a major downside for existing customers. That’s exactly the kind of monopolist behavior you are supposed to block mergers for. Waiting 2 years cost Microsoft a little revenue directly, but pushed XBox sales which was far more valuable.
Halo would have been a flop if it was Mac exclusive.
Keep in mind, this was back in the year ~2000. Mac market share in the home user market was a rounding error. Schools were full of iMacs, but at home, it was all Windows.
The entire point was Halo wouldn’t have been an anything exclusive. Bungee would have released it on all platforms at roughly the same timeframe.
“Due out in the first half of 2000, Halo will have a simultaneous release for PC and Mac, with multiplayer compatibility between the two operating systems. While you'll need a 3D card and a powerful system to take full advantage of the game's features, it'll be scalable so you can play it on less powerful machines.” http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9907/26/halo.idg/
Things got delayed ~18 months so Microsoft could port it to XBox thus waiting till November 2001. Then tacked on another 2 years to release it on Mac.
Yes, in 2003 not 2000 which is when they would have gotten it without Microsoft fucking them over.
First Halo was delayed to port it to windows and XBox on top of that two years after its initial release they let the already working Mac version out the door. That’s a huge fuck you by any standard.
On top of this Halo 2 etc was XBox and Windows exclusive fuck PS owners, fuck Mac owners, and fuck the free market.
> Ehm, allow me to remind everyone what I heard about Twitter censorship for years.. If Sony doesn’t like it, they can make their own Call of Duty.
Maybe Microsoft should argue this point instead. But they didn't. They argued that they would allow CoD on multi-platforms so it's only reasonable to expect people to respond to that point.
It's a bit similar to how some people said that the posts deserved to be deleted while others said those people should just make their own twitter. Depending on whose talking and their argument you need to change your response. Using a response that the posts shouldn't've have been deleted to somebody who said you should make your own twitter is a non-sequitor.
>Maybe Microsoft should argue this point instead. But they didn't. They argued that they would allow CoD on multi-platforms so it's only reasonable to expect people to respond to that point.
That's just basic business. If I buy a shoe factory, I'm going to say of course I'll sell them to Canadians! I wouldn't say "Eh, stuff it Canada, go make your own shoes!" even if my own internal plans didn't prioritize exports.
But there's nothing dishonest with Canada trying to block the purchase on the shoe factory on the grounds that they don't believe you'll actually sell to them considering they legitimately don't believe you.
Perhaps you may feel that Canadians can be responsible for making their own shoe companies that sell to Canada. Then bring up that as your argument instead of having "oh yeah, I'll totally sell to you" as your argument.
Well, your comment is flagged so I can no longer quote from it.
But from what I remember is that you were accusing people of being dishonest because they said that Twitter could have an alternative but people aren't saying that Sony can just make a CoD alternative.
And I'm saying its not dishonest because A) its different people and B) Microsoft made a claim and these response are directly in response to that claim.
in 10 years I fully expect Sony to have a competitive first party title exclusive to playstation, now that they actually have to give a damn. I love the killzone series but Guerilla seems to be doing fine with Horizon, hopefully a new IP
In 10 years Sony… I don’t think Sony is intending to go all out on gaming going forward. They’ve been figuring out how to cross pollinate their IPs into media productions. It certainly will make them more money in the long term but some people might be turned off with how much they milk each franchise before moving onto a new IP. Naughty dog is working on LoU3 and Guerilla is working on Horizon Remaster, Horizon Multiplayer and supposedly a non horizon game..
It would be incredibly stupid for MS to make CoD an xbox exclusive and completely misses the business case for buying Activision in the first place.
Remember, MS is in business to make money, not to win the console wars. Buying the CoD (etc) IP at an inflated price and then immediately cutting off more than half of the revenue would be so mind-boggingly stupid, almost to the point of malpractice. This is why they really don't even need to be forced into saying they'll maintain it for 10 years on PS.
It's all about moving gaming to a recurring revenue model. So you don't care about if the consumer made a one time purchase of your console (in fact, you might even prefer they didn't if you're losing money on each one!), but you do care about the fact that they're playing your games.
Ben Thompson put it better than I could:
> Notice that this is for games that are purchased, and keep in mind that Microsoft’s goal with the Activision acquisition is not to gain exclusive games to sell but rather games to subscribe to. As I’ve argued the only way this acquisition makes sense is the extent to which it makes possible a new business model for gaming; simply buying exclusives via established titles like Call of Duty would be hugely value destructive.
>What is notable about Microsoft’s subscription push is that it aligns the company’s Xbox division with Microsoft’s overall push towards cloud computing and subscription services. What is interesting to consider are two questions:
>First, would Microsoft have ever gone down this path absent the investment in its original (failed) Xbox strategy? I would argue the answer is no; this is a reasonable leveraging of Xbox assets, but I do wonder if Microsoft could go back two decades if they would even bother.
>Second, if regulators were to kill this deal (Microsoft still needs approval from the UK and the US) would Xbox be long for this world? It’s hard to see how the division makes sense if Microsoft has the current business model dictated to them, given just how dominant Sony is with said business model.
I don't know. I doubt MS, Sony, or the FTC know either. They probably have an idea, but who's to say if it right or wrong? It's really hard to predict markets out that far.
The following is personal opinion based on publicly available figures, IDK how accurate they are.
Skyrim has supposedly sold around 60 million copies over the span of 12 years. Let's be generous and say those sold at an average of $60 each (probably less in practice due to sales, etc.)
That's $3.6b USD in raw revenue. Pretty sick!
On the other hand, as of 2022 (Skyrim numbers are 2023), Call of Duty as a franchise had generated over $31b USD in raw revenue. 10x that of Skyrim, Bethesda's biggest title.
So in terms of scale, I don't see how making Starfield exclusive can possibly be on the same level as the idea of making the whole CoD franchise exclusive. Certainly it would be impactful but I can understand treating them differently.
You don't just cut it off in a single go, Microsoft make their platforms more enticing. Heck they can do game companies used to and have timed exclusive releases. COD dropping on Xbox 2 months before anyone else.
Microsoft are REALLY good at playing the long game.
My disagreement would be that you're comparing an installment with a franchise. The whole of the Elder Scrolls is bigger than Skyrim, although Skyrim was the biggest standalone seller. Elder Scrolls online has I think about 750k MAUs, at $10-$15/mo.
And, I suppose more fundamentally, why would MS turn down a good chunk of $3.6b for the dev costs of making a Playstation version of Starfield?
>My disagreement would be that you're comparing an installment with a franchise.
funny thing is that if you compared the last 15 years of COD to Elder scrolls, you're still comparing some dozen COD games to Skyrim and ESO. And I guess that one mobile game? 15 years ago is still a year after Oblivion launched.
The economics are different: Redfall isn't a huge name, so it's more valuable for MS to get people into the game pass subscription than the comparatively piddly incremental one-time revenue they'd get from releasing it on PS5.
CoD on the other hand is already a huge name, that releases every year (i.e. recurring revenue, even if it's not a subscription per se), and MS is paying a huge premium for it. Forcing people over to game pass in that case isn't worth taking the hit to reliable revenue you're virtually already guaranteed to get from PS owners.
To be clear: I think it's less important to worry about this as less of a PC/Xbox exclusive than a Game Pass exclusive/available. I'd be willing to bet if Sony approached MS to bring Game Pass to PS, MS would be super willing to do it. Not that Sony would given their business model, but that's basically the point. It's not HW platform exclusivity, but store/subscription exclusivity.
There's so much speculation about motives here. Neither you nor I have any idea what Microsoft's business strategy is. All I can judge them on is their actions. And their actions are buying up large publishers and making their most anticipated games exclusive to the Xbox. Sure Redfall was a somewhat minor release (and a mess), but what about Starfield? The game is hyped up to hell and now an Xbox exclusive as well.
Minecraft proves the parent's point. Following your logic, Microsoft should've made Minecraft an exclusive. They didn't. In fact they're expanding the footprint, rolling it out to Chromebooks last month.
Well, the FTC court docs show Phil Spencer wanted to (the spinoff Minecraft Dungeons), but couldn't due to the contract with Notch. He instructed his team to try and find a loophole, and described the contract as something he regrets. When asked about this on the stand, he said "We ended up releasing on PlayStation"
Microsoft themselves said that they had no economic incentive to make Starfield exclusive prior to buying Bethesda then went and did it anyways. They have earned a huge amount of skepticism in any of these matters and are absolutely not trustworthy.
With the enormous size difference in Playstation to XBox markets, it is not a "piddly incremental" to also tap that market. Odds are stacked heavily against them making more by aiming for the subscription uptick they may see. That is, this is almost certainly a "grow the market" move. Hard to see it as anything else.
If MS doesn't care about winning the console wars why don't they just stop making Xboxes entirely?
Microsoft's subscription push can't work without winning the console wars since Sony isn't about to let them put GamePass on PS since that kills Sony's revenue model. (That would itself be a very interesting antitrust case.)
So they still want to win the console wars, they just want to monetize that victory differently. But pulling things like Starfield - and eventually COD - off of other platforms is 10000% still aligned with "making as much money as possible."
Because they want to sell their games without paying a 30% cut to someone (Sony/Nintendo/Valve/Apple/Google/etc) if possible. Also getting the 30% cut from someone else selling on their platform is really nice.
Yeah. Looking at past form, after the MS anti-trust agreement in the EU expired (the browser choice one), MS have now gone all-in to force Edge down everyone's throat.
They're clearly "Ok, we have more room to legally get away with XYZ now so LETS GO FOR IT!!!!".
Why can't MS play along with the industry and support Vulkan on Xbox though? That would make them not look like the worst lock-in examples of the '90s.
Feels like these kind of issues are what anti-trust should have handled.
I don't think they really care what people think until it becomes a really major issue. MS has been through this these fazes so many times in the past and look at were they are. It doesn't seem to have slowed them down that much.
That lock in of the 90's never really stopped, they just figure out how to make it look better. The only times they gave up on the lock in was when it was starting to look really bad and even then they just pivot the messaging and then try to lock themselves in. Look at MS with "We love Linux", it didn't slow Windows down one bit.
A large chunk of the entire purpose of Xbox is to cement DirectX as the default option to perpetuate that lock-in. It's even in the name: The Direct X-Box!
It's a damn shame too, since they could really take advantage of things like dxvk (zlib licenced) to make porting existing games easier. Surprised no 'middleware' company has tried this either.
Why would you be a huge fan of the man who’s single handedly responsible for sinking the Xbox IP ship to the point of having to monopolize the industry to right the ship?
I’m surprised people didn’t wake up with the One era lies he kept pushing, and given HNs general distaste for “marketer talk”, how can one be a fan of a dude that every time he opens his mouth, it’s marketing talk (when it’s not a lie). This dude would constantly say shit like “the console wars are stupid. We need to all get along”. And then when pressed about “hidden DGPU” that he knew didn’t exist, he lies and responds “we are not letting Sony have a hardware advantage”. This dude is a scumbag.
He’s been terrible for Xbox, and now his horrid management of Xbox has led to being terrible for gaming in general.
I am most definitely not, Mattick was Mr “we have a console for that, the Xbox 360” ultimately leading to Spencer taking his role over. Spencer was 100% the dude saying “we’re not letting Sony have a hardware advantage” although I may have mixed up which obviously bullshit Xbox fanboy excuse it was about.
None of it really matter though, because even forgetting Phil obviously constantly fanning the console wars, he’s presided over Xbox for what like 10 years? In that time, what he’s managed to do is be a baby, and complain that his ineffective management is leading to their console having no games.
A bit of a loaded question, but how do you feel about xbox f-in up major titles like Halo Infinite and Phil Spencer just saying "yep, we are sorry, that's on me". When a) there doesn't seem to be any change in quality assurance (see Redfall) and b) the devs still take the hit (see 343).
To me it's incomprehensible how they managed to f-up Halo Infinite, then just stand there in silence and then say, yeah we are sorry for not having a lot of interesting titles on Xbox, but here's what's coming next year.
If I were a game dev at Microsoft, I'd be furious!
The judge considers it reasonable because if the market is as the FTC defines it and if Call of Duty is actually an essential input for a competitor in the "high-performance gaming console" space, then those commitments from Microsoft give Sony ten years to innovate and come up with a replacement for CoD. It makes a lot more sense if you read the whole judgement, Judge Corley is basically saying "Most of what the FTC is asserting is questionable, but even if we assume that their assertions are correct, the argument to temporarily prevent & potentially permanently ban the deal to prevent harm there is little evidence for is not strong enough to harm Microsoft and Activision in this way". There's other stuff that had some impact as well, like how the FTC knew the deals deadline (six days from now) more than a year ago, but only chose to bring the PI motion recently, giving Microsoft barely any time to prepare (and making the federal judge in this case have to work some unusual hours, including the entire weekend, because it's now so time critical). Basically, a lot more went into this decision than just the ten year agreements.
Optimistically, Sony utilizes their Bungie aquisition and makes something worthy as a competitor. I imagine the 10 years is less a promise and more of a timer, and 10 years is enough for a AAA company to get at least a few attempts.
Pessimistically, MS drives Activision to the ground and COD isn't even a valuable IP anymore. Bigger icons have fallen from grace faster.
I don‘t think this will work for gaming. Competition from both new Indie titles and older games will always be there. If prices for newer games in big franchises increase without reason, at some point customers will leave and buy other games.
The evidence presented at trial showed that this vertical (not horizontal) acquisition would increase competition in the market. If antitrust laws were based on the conception of monopolization you seem to be suggesting then any acquisition or merger would be a monopolist’s act, and that’s ridiculous.
> vertical (not horizontal) acquisition [..] any acquisition or merger would be a monopolist’s act
Past a certain size, it absolutely is. E.g. a food producer will have a much harder time entering (or staying in) a vertically-integrated market (as an independent entity), where all the grocery chains privilege offerings by producers they own.
Using other near-monopolies as argument for why new ones should be allowed to form will lead to a very consolidated market, which is exactly what anti-trust is supposed to prevent.
You’ve moved beyond this specific acquisition and are now talking in generalities. I don’t agree with your post; however, I would note that the situation at issue here in the Microsoft case is actually very similar to your hypothetical. Activision is the food producer. Sony is the grocery chain. Microsoft is also a grocery chain, one that is losing to Sony and is trying to buy Activision in order to compete.
The solution isn’t to sanction Sony because it’s not clear that Sony has done anything illegal to obtain its market position. It’s not illegal to have a monopoly. The solution is to let competition arise from the market and increase consumer choice either by driving down prices or providing more options for consumers. In the market for grocery stores, Microsoft buying Activision is anti-monopolist and pro-competition.
Pay special attention to the theories of harm advanced by the FTC and note that the harm focused on by the FTC is that done to a foreign company (Sony) rather than US consumers.
That is not evidence of your claim. The FTC argues that the deal would reduce competition, and that reduced competition is bad for consumers. To show that the deal would reduce competition, they focused on the impact the deal would have on Microsoft's competitors, i.e., Sony.
Well if we can’t agree that the FTC’s position in this case is blatantly pro-foreign-monopolist at the expense of domestic consumers then I guess we’re sort of at an impasse. You seem to be asking me for a source from the FTC saying that they’re bought and sold by foreign powers. It’s rare to have someone confess to a crime, so you can see how this type of statement from the FTC would be hard to come by (although we can get close: “the FTC announced in March that it would send its own agency officials to aid Europe in implementing and enforcing the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA). When challenged in an April congressional hearing, Kahn defended her position as simply ‘good government.’” per https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/4075612-how-one-us-go...). I’m basing my argument on what the FTC has actually done, regardless of what they have(n’t) said:
Microsoft offered direct evidence of this acquisition being good for US and global consumers (including “willfully” entering into agreements to preserve consumer access to their products via their competitors’ platforms). FTC offered “evidence” that Sony’s monopoly position would be (only slightly) eroded by this acquisition and then hand-waved that this is bad for competition and then hand-waved that this is bad for consumers. Further, the FTC’s own expert (who provided the “evidence” of Sony’s monopoly being eroded) couldn’t even support his chosen inputs/assumptions beyond more hand-waving that amounted to “well that’s what I think would happen.”
So you’ve got a poorly (if at all) supported tertiary-effect on the only people that should actually matter to the FTC (domestic consumers). That’s why the court found that FTC had “not shown a likelihood it will prevail on its claim this particular vertical merger in this specific industry may substantially lessen competition.” The FTC shouldn’t be throwing US consumers under the bus in order to protect a foreign company’s dominant market position, especially with such flimsy evidence. If this was the first or second time this happened with the New FTC? Maybe that’s a coincidence. This many times? Well, that’s enemy action.
Where is your evidence that the FTC’s meritless case is anything other than the FTC working at the behest of a foreign monopolist? Who gains from this FTC action other than Sony?
It's fine that you dislike their argument. The court did, too. That doesn't mean the only explanation is secret, massively illegal payments from Sony to FTC commissioners.
You asked if I had anything to back up my claim that “Lina Khan and the FTC have been brazenly bought and sold by a foreign company and weaponized against US consumers.” I provided my evidence: their actions to date supporting foreign powers and companies at the expense of US companies and consumers.
It’s fine that you dislike my argument or conclusion. That doesn’t mean that my evidence doesn’t back them up.
The FTC has openly stated their going to be more aggressive fighting acquisitions in general to test the limits of the current law, and has pursued other cases as part of that strategy too that aren't "advancing the interests of a foreign company."
You believe Microsoft's claims that this will be good for consumers. I don't. I believe the FTC's claims that "bad for their main competitor" = "bad for consumers." You don't. Fine.
But their actions here are entirely consistent with their stated platform and you haven't provided a shred of evidence that there's any of the behind-the-scenes bullshit you claim.
Nobody said that it is Sony's fault. The fact remains though, that it is Sony, not Microsoft, for which there are monopoly concerns on the console market.
Given that Sony has an overwhelming lead, it really is not a problem for microsoft to do this acquisition.
I think the overarching concern is giving tech giant like Microsoft a hand when it's already entrenched in consumer, enterprise and government markets.
We don't need to inflate an already bighead corporate oligarch.
Yeah, if Microsoft wants to compete, they need to build great game making culture, not just spend lavish amounts of money to acquire all the independent studios out there after the Bethesda acquisition for $8B. Now Activision for $70B. What next?...Nintendo for $150B?.
And using monopolistic profits from other tech businesses like Enterprise software/cloud. And maybe in the future AI profits with OpenAI.
We've had enough of a future controlled by Big Tech. The goal in all cases should be to make them smaller, not more powerful.
Maybe so, but can you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments to HN? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly, and we're trying for something different here.
At first glance it looks/feels a lot more like Total Annihilation / Supreme Commander than StarCraft. Very robot focused. A sense that Armada and Cortex are very balanced. StarCraft has a more asymmetrical set of factions, where their strengths, economies, units, etc. at least feel more distinct.
A lot of the StarCraft guys have already left and formed their own company (frost giant). They are making a quasi spiritual successor to StarCraft called StormGate.
Single-purchase retail like Starcraft 1 & 2 simply doesn't make sense as an exclusive revenue source for small studios anymore, you're not likely to sell enough copies. The revenue isn't there. You've got to sell cosmetics, battle passes, or (barf) put in a gacha system. I'm not happy about it as a game dev but it's the reality. Even big games like Destiny 2 rely heavily on those microtransactions to rake in the cash. :(
This is especially bad for multiplayer where you need high player counts so people can get into matches quick. Indie multiplayer games HAVE to be free or very inexpensive.
I hope they decide to revive Heroes of the Storm, even dedicating a small team to continue putting out content would be a massive win. The previous team had a ton of content that was nearly ready to ship before leadership canned the project.
How could closing the deal look like in practice while the UK is blocking it? Would that mean Microsoft can't sell Activision Blizzard games in the UK?
When did that happen? On the dedicated CMA page[0] about the inquiry I see nothing since the draft final order[1] in May, which absolutely does not approve it. Quote:
On 5 May 2023, the CMA made an Interim Order pursuant to section 81 of the
Act preventing each of Microsoft and Activision and all members of their
Groups of Interconnected Bodies Corporate from acquiring in the other any
interest conferring control within the meaning of section 26 of the Act
This is just from eyeballing the top results of some Google searching so may not be super accurate, but it looks like the console games market is around $34 billion a year in the US, $11 billion a year in the EU, and under $1 billion a year in the UK.
The merger has been approved by EU and now US regulators.
The UK market might be small enough compared to the US and the EU that Microsoft and Activision might find it worthwhile to just leave the UK console game market if they had to choose between that and not being able to complete the merger.
> MLex also reported last month that Microsoft was exploring options to close the deal despite the UK block, which could have involved closing over the UK decision and potentially carving out Activision in the UK. That’s a messy process, and it looks like both parties are now willing to negotiate to avoid it.
Given how Microsoft has managed Bethesda (giving them a large amount of autonomy and shipping the doomed Redfall) it's way too optimistic to expect any positive changes for Activision/Blizzard customers. It wouldn't surprise me is Bobby kept running the whole thing, just under Microsoft's ownership.
Meanwhile I do expect more Xbox exclusives - which will ultimately harm consumers.
All I know about that is I tried to migrate my Mojang account to Microsoft - when Microsoft started "unifying logins" - and I still haven't heard back from them. So my experience has been negative. Hopefully they don't try to migrate Battle.net accounts in the future.
FYI you have 2 months to migrate your account before they delete it. You will have to repurchase the game on a new account if you ever want to play it again if you don't migrate it by September 19th.
Microsoft’s acquisition of Bethesda lead directly to Starfield not being released on the Sony PlayStation at all. I read the game’s developers were not happy with that.
I think Microsoft might be treating it as kind of a loss leader. But from an article I read the employees and executives whose bonuses are based on sales are mad about PS5 being cut out of the equation. And I can see what you site about Game Pass playing into that as well.
An independent studio is independent. Just because other countries can be better run by 1 country, doesn't justify acquiring other companies. Many corporations once they acquire a smaller company, skin it for parts, and dissolve it. Like HBO-Discovery recently. The consumer almost always pays, either in terms of choice, or price.
Europe considers both direct harm to consumers and harm to competitors because without significant competition, the big players inevitably slide into exploiting customers and their vendors.
The current status quo is on a path to being harmful to both.
I love Nintendo but they compete more with Apple and Google than they do with Sony and Microsoft.
If Microsoft exits game consoles next generation Sony won’t have any real competition and that will be very bad for consumers.
Microsoft needs their own heavy hitting exclusives and they need them sooner than they can home grow them. This acquisition is one of the only ways they can do that.
There really isn't a Nintendo-Sony duopoly. They don't really compete with each other. It's a handheld game system with the ability to dock and work with a TV. The hardware and its gaming capabilities are very different. There is almost no overlap in the games available to each console. Nintendo stopped competing on high performance hardware several generations ago.
It competes like a Honda Civic competes with a Chevrolet Corvette.
Out of curiosity, which year Type R did that lap? I'm familliar with the EK9 generation from the 90s, is this lap in one of the newer models from the last years?
And the 2023 was a stripped down version only available in Europe as well, that + the track change is why I looked up the 2017 numbers to compare properly.
Ha, I missed that. “Type R S” sold in left hand drive European markets to let them call it a production car lap time, as if anyone actually wants a Civic with no air conditioning.
I don't really buy this. There's only so many much time individuals can/will commit to playing video games and spend on accessories. There'll be an overlap of those who can afford the time/money to use both a Switch and a PS5. And with consoles, it's often game sales that matter more than hardware as Nintendo is the only company that makes some money off of its hardware.
Quality of games doesn't matter so much. If someone is spending hours playing Tears of the Kingdom, that's time not spent on playing games on another console.
Even with your analogy there will be some people who can afford 2 cars and drive them for different occasions but others only dedicate to just one. And even then a person can only drive one car at a time.
Sony is at little risk of harm here. They have a ridiculous amount of system selling platform exclusives. Microsoft has what Halo, Forza, Gears of War, and I guess Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020? They have a few other exclusives, but I don't think they're enough to make someone chose an Xbox over a PlayStation.
Microsoft is seriously behind this generation and I just don't see them continuing next generation if they can't make up some ground this one.
These are genre-defining games, and have been historically multiplatform. Not just Activision, they did the Bethesda acquisition, before it. Now, Elder Scrolls, Fallout, will be only Xbox. And now Starfield is confirmed exclusively on Xbox. These are the games I buy a system for, and I only have a PS4 before.
Meh, maybe with Microsoft's kind of accessibility support, Blizard can get more of a go-ahead to make Hearthstone, and other games, accessible. We've seen with the GuideDev Hearthstone mod that it's possible.
This is a very good thing for gamers. It reminds me of the Sprint/T-mobile merger, which was a huge win for consumers, allowing T-mobile to actually put pressure on ATT and Verizon.
Activision is a terrible company whose iron grip on their beloved IP (bought from Blizzard and Infinity Ward) has been absolutely stifling to the industry. They are almost singlehandedly responsible for everything that sucks about gaming now.
>The court ruling even agrees with Microsoft in theory about the Nintendo Switch being part of the console market, but also accepts the FTC can reasonably claim it’s not.
The portability doesn’t matter. Nintendo operates in a different market segment because of the hardware specs, and games they support. If you want to play the latest Call of Duty, Halo, God of War, Elden Ring… then Sony and Microsoft are competing for your business (sometimes with exclusive contracts), Nintendo is not. Their consoles wouldn’t be able to support those games.
Call of Duty will be available for Switch under Microsoft. Halo and God of War are platform exclusives. But so are Tears of the Kingdom and various Mario titles. Elden Ring is the only game listed that's not available for Switch but is on both others.
Even then, there are a ton of games that are available across all platforms, including some AAA ones:
Mortal Kombat 11
The Witcher 3
Assassins's Creed (multiple)
Skyrim
Resident Evil (multiple)
Monster Hunter Rise
Overwatch 2
etc...
The Switch runs plenty of previous generation games, because it’s capable of supporting them. The Switch wouldn’t support MW 2, and Microsoft have not announced any plans to release that game, or any upcoming CoD game on it.
The reason Microsoft and Sony sign exclusive deal is mostly the keep games off each others platforms. Graphics-intensive “AAA” games aren’t going to run on the switch. Nintendo undeniably operates in a distinct segment, even if it’s capable of supporting some limited amount of overlap with the other vendors.
It’s something MS has been saying numerous times, including in the FTC court case.
The number of games that are exclusive to a platform that are paid to be that way is actually quite small. Almost all platform exclusives come from companies that are subsidiaries of their respective platform company (343 Studios, Naughty Dog, etc).
The argument of graphic capabilities as something that defines the Switch to be in a different market that’s that of Sony/MS is a straw man argument, IMO. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere in these comments, it’s still competing for peoples’ video game time.
Sorry buddy, you’ve fallen for fake news. Microsoft has said they’ll bring it to Nintendo, not the Switch, and the timeframe they’ve announced for this is sometime in the next 10 years. Most non-tabloid commentators seem to think this means it will either be delivered by a streaming service, or to a yet-to-be announced new console. In any case, if it happens it will have to be accompanied by a shift in Nintendo’s position in the market.
> As I’ve mentioned elsewhere in these comments, it’s still competing for peoples’ video game time.
Penguin and Scholastic are both competing for peoples book reading time, yet they quite clearly compete in different market segments. Your argument is contrived and ignores the fact that consumers understand how these products are differentiated to appeal to different preferences.
All market segments have subsets and supersets. Why should the line be drawn where you imply?
Is Sony monopolizing the God of War market because God of War fans understand how those games are differentiated to appeal to their preferences?
The FTC's case that PS and Xbox exist in their own "high-performance console" market is the contrived argument. Honestly, it's dated to even consider consoles their own market. Product planning practice in the games industry these days pretty much looks at 2 markets: the mobile market and the "HD market" (PC + console).
I didn’t invent this segment, the market did when Nintendo had the insight to gamble on there being demand for lower-powered consoles (and more recently with an added focus on portability) to play less graphically demanding games on. A decision consumers subsequently validated by buying over 100,000,000 of them. Granted it wasn’t that much of a gamble, as by the time they made the Switch, this had already become Nintendo’s entire brand identity.
The Switch simple can’t do the same things that an Xbox or PlayStation can do. Many of those consoles top selling games would not be playable on a Switch, because they’re high performance games that require high performance hardware, and the Switch simply isn’t a viable substitute for that. Even for the most graphically demanding games that can run on a Switch, they can only do so with comparatively low resolution and frame rate, which in case you didn’t know, are major selling points for the segments that Microsoft/Sony are competing in.
If you don’t want to accept these plainly obvious facts, why don’t you go and inform r/NintendoSwitch that it’s a viable substitute for a PS5, and see how many people you can convince?
>The Switch simple can’t do the same things that an Xbox or PlayStation can do. Many of those consoles top selling games would not be playable on a Switch, because they’re high performance games that require high performance hardware, and the Switch simply isn’t a viable substitute for that. Even for the most graphically demanding games that can run on a Switch, they can only do so with comparatively low resolution and frame rate, which in case you didn’t know, are major selling points for the segments that Microsoft/Sony are competing in.
Absolutely no one is arguing this and it's not the point. You should give the commentators on this forum more credit than thinking we aren't aware of the power/capabilities differences.
The "high-end console gaming market" is what is what people are taking issue with. It's such a limiting segmentation and is arguably not a very good definition. There's a console gaming market as a whole, with a subset of it being high-end, that competes on user's gaming time. In my view, that's how it should be defined. There's also the mobile gaming market. Are we to now say the Switch shouldn't belong in the mobile gaming market because of screen size and power capabilities? It doesn't make sense to define the Switch in its own, standalone market. What would it be? Mid-tier portable gaming market? One that has no competitors and it has a monopoly in? That's not practical nor reflective of gaming purchasing habits.
Segregating the market based on capabilities breaks down in many ways. The argument shouldn't be that the Switch should belong in its own category because many people who own an Xbox or a Playstation also happen to own a Switch. Nearly half of Xbox owners also happen to own Playstation console (myself included) so does the fact that there's an overlap now mean that Xbox and PlayStation should be somehow in their own category? Of course not. Nor should the argument be about how it's played. One can that the Switch can be played in a portable manner but I just as easily play on my Playstation or Xbox through my iPad locally or even the cloud. Yes, it's not a popular option but the capabilities are there. All that's left is arguing about whether or not something can play AAA games in higher fidelity. If fidelity is something a gamer is truly after, they'd be buying a PC.
> The FTC insists the Nintendo Switch’s pricing, performance, and content make it an improper substitute at least for purposes of its preliminary injunction motion
I have to kinda agree with the FTC. I consider the Switch to be a very different device than the XBox/PS with different uses as far as the gaming experience I expect. The XBox or PS, on the other hand, I expect to have similar experiences.
As I understand it, but the rest of this is based on skimming the ruling, the judge has to take into account whether the merger will help or hinder customers. MS said "Call of Duty isn't even on all the consoles now, it's just on Playstation and XBox. Let the merger go through and we will port it to the Switch. See how we don't play favorites for our console.". The FTC's response was "there isn't real market for console players of games like COD released on Switch, the Switch isn't a competitor to the XBox for this game"
It is. The court is basically saying here "We'll accept your argument that the Switch isn't in the same market because it doesn't matter. You're wrong either way."
They do this again later on in regards to the FTC's arguments that cloud gaming and multi-game subscription services are functionally separate markets.
What that commenter meant is that it clearly opens the door for further consolidation of the gaming industry. I can clearly see for example Microsoft buying Sega and Square Enix as we saw that filing (1) or Sony buying Konami or Nintendo buying studios. They're surely going to be coming and it's going to be bad for consumers in the long run limiting choices.
Yes. The starting gun for consolidation and less for the consumer. Another grave mistake.
But as long as you throw enough money at the judges and bribing regulators, perhaps you do get away with monopolistic practices. Microsoft will never change and cannot be trusted.
They will continue their horizontal integration of games studios and apply their lock in with their game-pass platform over a so-called 10 year pinky promise which they can make all other new games exclusive anyway afterwards.
Now Zork belongs to MS. Release it under MIT and everyone would win a great history of gaming (and the right to create new histories in the Zorkverse without worrying).
Spiritwrak it's a good example.
In case of anyone says "text adventures have no future"... the folk lore from a distant past made Disney rich. The Arturian legends plus some samurai touches set into a futuristic space made George Lucas and Lucasfilms loaded, too.
I think Microsoft might be willing to release the Infocom build tools and engines under an MIT license – by now they would be of purely historical interest, similar to open-sourcing MS-DOS 1.0 and 2.0.
I'm not sure if they'd be willing to do so for the game assets (the room/item descriptions/etc) – it would remove one of the main legal barriers to a competitor creating their own game set in the Zork universe. The Fortran 77 version of Zork has long been available under a "non-commercial use only" license, so they might be willing to release the game assets under such a license too (or maybe a more modern equivalent such as CC-BY-NC or CC-BY-NC-SA)
> We already have build tools for infocom against the Z-Machine
The TOPS-20 versions of ZILCH (and ZAP) don't seem to be available.
The ITS version of ZILCH from MIT has been recovered, but (from what I understand) it is an earlier version, and the TOPS-20 version which Infocom used later isn't publicly available, and that later version had added features.
In any case, its copyright status is murky, Microsoft could clean up that murkiness.
I find the whole thing to be a tempest in a teapot -- why is the FTC involved in this at all? For christ's sake it's a video game! If we were discussing access to some critical resource I would understand, but how is this not a criminal waste of our government's time and resources? It reminds me of the congressional baseball steroid hearings.
Am I totally off base here? Can anyone explain to me why this case is so critical?
You're totally off base. Video games are not just kids stuff. The industry makes nearly three times more money than the film industry. This is exactly the kind of stakes that FTC should be getting involved in.
Both of these industries are entertainment though -- and to me at least it seems there's a pretty limited amount of consumer harm that could come from various IP exclusivity deals.
Again -- am I thinking about this wrong? What is the consumer harm that could result from the moving of IP from one company to another? A truly dedicated fan has to buy a different console to play their favorite game? Non-truly dedicated fans play one of the hundreds of other FPS games on the market that work with their console of choice?
The FTC is getting involved, because the goal is to make Big Tech smaller not more bigger, and more dominant through acquiring independent studios with major titles, such as they did with $7B Bethesda, and now 65B+ Activision deal. These are huge IPs, that have large amounts of players, and can give a company like MSFT huge control in gaming, and in the metaverse,etc in the future, which is another nascent field. But far off, that they have not mentioned it in the case or with the public.
For one, lack of consumer choice. To play those games, I would need to buy an Xbox, whereas for the last 20 years, Call of Duty, etc. has been multiplatform.
That's literally one game. That's it. Lack of consumer choice when it comes to a single title shouldn't be something that the FTC is getting involved in. Even when you expand that to all the titles that activision/blizzard produce we're talking a tiny drop in a literal ocean of consumer choice.
Activision has dozens of famous titles, and a huge IP catalog from the 80's which they can make 100's of exclusives. The $68 Billion price tag tells itself of it's importance in gaming.
Should corporations the size of Microsoft (almost 25x of Sony, the 2nd nearest competitor) be allowed to make acquisitions of this size to grow itself, and weaken competition. Antitrust law is one of the FTC's mandates, then this is what they are tasked to do.
When (tech) corporations are too big, I can think of many ways it can cause destruction to society. Only have to look at Facebook in the 2016 election. And tech companies will continue to grow, and become too big to fail, unless reigned upon as with past crises, like with banks. Only this time, they have all your information, can surveil you, etc, and with AI pretty soon.
>Should corporations the size of Microsoft (almost 25x of Sony, the 2nd nearest competitor) be allowed to make acquisitions of this size to grow itself, and weaken competition.
Sure. Becuase they aren't even a monopoly in the gaming space to begin with. If you could simply outspend to become a major gaming competitor, Amazon should be #1 by now.
It's clearly not that simple so I'm not concerned about Sony suddenly declining. And meanwhile, Nintendo sits in its own throne above Sony/MS as if it's watching two children on a playground.
> I can think of many ways it can cause destruction to society. Only have to look at Facebook in the 2016 election.
Do you really think a loosely historical shooter game most people use to compete against one another will be used to control information for national elections? I simply don't see it, but who knows?
Even if so: the big issue with that comparison is that your grandparents aren't playing COD. Mine were on FB around that time.
If at some point consumers have to pay more than they would in a more competitive market, how is that not harm? If you believe that this is a move that will result in less consumer choice and more possibility for MS to extract more $$$$, then you don't like it.
>If at some point consumers have to pay more than they would in a more competitive market, how is that not harm?
No one HAS to pay for entertainment. It's a pure luxury. There's tons of things you can do with your free time besides playing video games (let alone brand-new AAA console titles): go outside, take a hike, play an instrument, take up a hobby, socialize, learn to cook, write your own software, I could go on and on. You can even do other forms of entertainment with your time: watch a movie or TV series, watch YouTube, watch a sports game, actually play in a sports game, play retro video games on archive.org or in an emulator, etc. All these things compete with (modern Activision) video games for time.
I'm not sure this is absurdity. The point is that no company could possibly have an abusable monopoly on entertainment because A) the sheer variety of things there are to do for entertainment, B) the incredibly low barriers to entry in entertainment, and C) that even if there were some entity that gained control over some significant portion of it, that vast majority of people would just do something, anything else rather than submit to such a monopolist's demands. They might be grumpy about it on some level, but that's hardly rising to the level of consumer harm. You might say there is still the case of some tiny number of incredibly dependent people who would continue playing and paying for certain titles no matter the cost, but that is their decision -- they are not without agency to simply say no, and so even that doesn't rise to the level of consumer harm.
As I mentioned in another comment, what if, after completing this acquisition, MS decided to raise the price of CoD to $100,000 per player per year? Would this really harm consumers? Would people really be forced to sell their homes and kidneys?
Of course not. They'd just play another game, or watch a movie or something.
If someone wants to play video games, they can do it for free on archive.org, and all they need is a web browser.
Because it's not a material good that gets in the way of my ability to live. And I say that despite working in entertainment. If a dam breaks down or is owned by some coporate entity that means people may not have access to water.
If Disney owns every single videgame/movie/music/etc and I detest Disney... I find some other pasttime. Hell, maybe I just focus more on foreign media. Sucks for my work but I can find a new job outside of the Mouse. It's a relative minor impact.
>If at some point consumers have to pay more than they would in a more competitive market, how is that not harm?
that's my exact issue. If I can't pay for insulin, I die. if I can't afford COD 2025... what? I don't get to play a video game? Is that "harm" in the traditional sense?
> If you believe that this is a move that will result in less consumer choice and more possibility for MS to extract more $$$$, then you don't like it.
Me not liking something =/= harm. I don't like mushrooms but I wouldn't say they harm me. I just don't like the texture or taste.
Money in itself is not an argument for FTC involvement. E.g. the wedding industry is also enormous, within an order of magnitude of the video game industry in the US.
That's just it though -- video games are not "monopolized" in any meaningful sense. A particular IP may be "monopolized" -- e.g. owned by a particular company that has more or less of an interest in producing cross platform versions. But that's not really a monopoly, is it?
> Will the courts allow Microsoft to buy Sony gaming business?
Why not? What would it matter to the players on these consoles? Is demand for certain titles so price insensitive that Microsoft could then jack up the price by 100% and people would still buy them? Even if that's true (it's almost certainly not) the barriers to entry in the video game business are extremely low, so this would just create an enormous opportunity and pissed off consumers would jump to a newly created platform.
>Will the courts allow Microsoft to buy Sony gaming business?
The gaming business, sure. The rest of Sony is still HQ'd in Japan and in fact manages many semi-needed and needed busineses, so there's zero chance MS buys Sony as a whole.
>Microsoft is also getting ready to eat Steam’s lunch for a while on the PC side
Didn't go too well last decade. Best of luck this time.
Microsoft is neither close to eating Steams lunch nor is this acquisition going to change anything about the competitive landscape. Microsoft is currently a distant third place behind Sony and Nintendo, and after this acquisition they are... still a distant third.
If Microsoft is ever in a position where a single merger will materially threaten to catapult them over Sony or Nintendo, then that would be the time to block the deal. In the meantime, I would prefer if the FTC doesn't kill off deals because someday, in the far distant future, the companies involved may be in a more dominant position.
If anything, blocking this deal does nothing but protect Sony's already dominant position from one of their sole competitors making up even a small amount of ground.
Games are bigger than most movies. Besides, gaming was responsible for a lot of innovation in computing, we all know how well that will go under a Microsoft monopoly.
This is a great decision for the US game industry. Sony has a ton of exclusives, many from acquisitions, and strengthening XBOX will help maintain a competitive gaming market which should lead to even better exclusives in the long run. Some of the best rivalries in the history of gaming came from different sides with hard hitting exclusives (SNES vs Genesis for instance).
While Microsoft has promised to keep Call of Duty on the Playstation, I think it would be totally ok if they stopped doing that in the future, as any other Activision-Blizzard game; after all, Uncharted and Last of Us aren't available on the XBOX either.
Maybe we can put aside the superficial sports-team rivalries for a moment.
Maybe both Microsoft and Sony could develop good products that consumers and publishers want to pay money for, rather than make unrelated, restrictive business deals!
>rather than make unrelated, restrictive business deals!
I thought you wanted to put aside the superficial sports-team rivalries?
No casual consumer cares about the deals, they care about the games. If this makes better games, cool. If not, not cool. We'll see how history goes this time around.
I don't play one my of favourite games of all time, Bloodborne, because it's forever stuck at 1080p 30fps with terrible loading times on a PS4 solely due to these stupid exclusivity deals.
All the other games built in the same engine by the same studio are released on Xbox and PC.
I see what you mean, but that wasn't the best example. Bloodborne wasn't a mere exclusivity deal. Sony published the game, owns the IP, and co-developed the game with the now dead Japan Studio. They own Bloodborne the same way they own Ratchet and Clank (20 years before they aquired the primary developers of that IP). FromSoft has no more control over Bloodborne than Monolith has over Xenogears/Xenosaga.
The producer of Bloodborne doesn't even work at Sony anymore. There's a multitude of reasons Sony is dragging their feet there, unrelated to aquisitions.
Understandable. Nintendo is full of exclusives + it's the best selling console too (by the court's admission) and that's ok so as MS buying Actiblizz. Otherwise I don't know how would Nintendo get a pass lol, they are the worst with exclusives (and what ends up on mobile is p2w thrash)
>If the Court was the final decisionmaker on the merits, it would likely find Nintendo
Switch part of the relevant market. But it is not. Instead, on a 13(b) preliminary injunction, the
FTC need only make a “tenable showing that the relevant market” is Gen 9 consoles. Given the plethora of internal industry documents and the acknowledged differences, the FTC has met its preliminary injunction burden to show the Switch is not included
in the relevant market.
>Nintendo made “technical decisions to enable an experience that they thought their customers would want to have, and it’s the best selling console right now in the market. So when I — when people try to tell me it’s not competition — competitive, for any number of reasons, I don’t believe
that because I just look at what’s selling
Was Nintendo buying up huge companies? Honest question, if Nintendo achieved their market position on their own merits, without abusing their monopoly (do they have one?), would that fall in the jurisdiction of the FTC?
The PC gaming market is thriving thanks to Steam and indies.
Playstation is doing well. Switch is doing great.
Microsoft? Aside from providing Windows and DirectX, they're basically invisible. Xbox is just a cheap wannabe PC with no great games. It's a wonder they've supported it for this long. Maybe this acquisition gives them a fighting chance against Sony and Nintendo.
It's not like Activision and Blizzard are even particularly beloved, just pumping out endless sequels. They're steady but relatively soulless cash machines that don't really innovate anymore anyway.
Having Microsoft in control might improve their internal cultures, maybe make Blizzard games finally available on Steam, get more and Bethesda Xbox games on GeForce Now, etc. Maybe even make more games cross platform and with good controller support. Those all seem great. Meanwhile the real innovation will continue to come from indies while the behemoths just keep pumping out new graphics (which are often just Unreal anyway, which is again not Microsoft).
Microsoft is just too minor to be dominant in modern gaming, and Activision is a has-been that just keeps making filler titles. It's not some great loss to the industry. Now if someone acquired Valve, that would be a tragedy...
> Playstation is doing well. Switch is doing great.
For now. Fortunes change pretty quick in the console world. One generation you are on top, the next you are struggling for second place.
MS buying Activision is bad. This gives MS a long term advantage. It signals to companies like Sony and Nintendo that they shouldn’t bother competing since they can never counter the buying out of huge publishers as they aren’t worth 2.47 trillion USD like Microsoft.
That just isn't true though. Sony and Nintendo have no problem competing at all by the quality of their first-party and exclusive games. For every Call of Duty there is a Horizons or a God of War or Zelda or whatever. Xbox is the worst of all the platforms in terms of that. Even PC and mobile have more (good) games that aren't available on Xbox.
Has Microsoft has any major successes since Halo and Fable, years and years ago? They're desperate for games. Activision isn't going to suddenly make the dominant overnight. If anything, it would barely help stop the bleeding. Microsoft is so far behind right now it's not funny. I'd be way more afraid of competition dying because Microsoft gave up on it rather than buying Activision.
MS is playing the long game. They don’t care about this generation. They want to win all future generations.
3rd party support plays a big part in a console’s success. MS is effectively buying out one of the largest 3rd party studios denying its competitors their support.
The huge concern here is not that Microsoft can’t compete, because they can as they have far more studios than Sony does. The issue is their strategy overall which is top earning multi-platform companies, like Bethesda and ActiBlizz, to cut off revenue from competitors. Meanwhile Sony’s biggest acquisitions were studios that mainly focused on their platform to begin with.
Does Activision have any major titles on the Switch right now? Nintendo seems happy to be doing their own thing. It's not like they need to buy huge publishers, since they own all the important IP (Mario, Zelda, 1/3 or 1/2 of Pokemon, etc)
If Microsoft caught up by building up 1st party studios nigh from scratch - which is what Sony did - I would have no complaints because anyone could do that. May the best company win.
Buying up one of the biggest publishers though. What’s Sony and Nintendo, whose combined market cap is less than 7% of MS’s, suppose to do? I don’t see how allowing “big money Pay 2 Win without a fight” in anyway benefits the consumer.
I don't think Market Cap is an honest metric to use here. Microsoft's Market Cap is that high comparatively because theyre diverse products in computer, cloud, and tech.
How much of that MC is solely X-box and how much do MS , Sony, and Nintendo own of that respectively? MS studios has been struggling. Activision also has been struggling to land some hits and only recently with Diablo 4 they have got some relief. So buying Activision is not a golden ticket.
> Now if someone acquired Valve, that would be a tragedy...
Honestly I would cherish the moment. It would be the most likely path to actually seeing HL3 released. The one time the filthy capitalists manage to do a good thing...
Valve to me has become a pathetic, rent-seeking platform owner. No clue why the gaming community still holds them in such regard. Linux support and not being publicly traded must be a massive deal for some gamers I suppose. The indie developers who launch on their platform are much more deserving of your attention & praise. The guys who developed battle bit have done more to improve my gaming experience than anything all of Valve has done since Portal 2 was released over a decade ago.
> It would be the most likely path to actually seeing HL3 released.
The thought of seeing HL3 actually released makes me a little nervous. When I look at great game franchises that had a large time gap before another sequel is released, it seems pretty rare for that sequel not to be terrible.
I don't think it's fair to understate the impact Steam has had on indie game dev. We went from "maybe hearing about this shareware on the PC Gamer floppy if you're lucky" to spamware sites like Tucows to a huge centralized marketplace of phenomenal games because the devs had a way to let people discover their one-hit wonder, get great reviews, etc.
Yes, I want HL3 as much as anyone, but Alyx was pretty cool (still one of the better VR demos), the Steam Deck is innovative in its own way (and Aperture Desk Job is a fun HL universe spinoff), GeForce Now integration is really useful for some of us, Cloud Save is awesome, etc. Not to mention the sales... because of Steam sales and resellers (isthereanydeal.com) games are far more affordable than they ever were before, especially compared to the consoles.
The platform is WORTH paying rent for. If you want to see how bad it could be otherwise, it's not a hypothetical... Epic, Windows Games Marketplace (or whatever it's called these days), GOG, etc. are all far inferior in terms of ease of use, features, selection, pricing, etc. As someone who's been PC gaming since Lode Runner and Commander Keen, Steam is by far the best thing that's happened to it in three decades. It was even more transformative than 3DFX or DirectX in terms of the quality and quantity of games made available to gamers.
I hear what you're saying, and don't disagree. But Steam has become something I dislike enough that I stopped using it years ago. For me, it's GOG, unless I can get the game directly from the publisher.
If Valve is bought by the likes of Microsoft and HL3 is released I’m pretty sure it will be utter garbage. Hunt Down the Freeman is the HL3 we deserve.
Heck, I’m still mad that Microsoft caused DeusEx 2 to be downscaled and dumbed down for the XBox.
I don't think this is a very good take. People tend to see one big company buy another and instantly think it's harmful for the consumer. I think that this is beneficial. Activision feels like a stagnant company that just rehashes old titles and squeezes as much cash out of them as they can. Microsoft buying them provides an opportunity for better management and Microsoft can add their IP to gamepass, which I think could end up a very good product that allows consumers to play a wide selection of games without having to purchase each. This business model is needed in the gaming industry.
Just the UK CMA standing in the way then, with its flimsy decision resting almost entirely on speculation about the "cloud gaming" market.
Microsoft should be offering to to swear off cloud gaming entirely, they should be delighted. Game streaming is a lousy solution that requires enormous investment in specific infrastructure, it would be smart to ignore it and focus on their great subscription service that only requires a $500 Xbox.
Oh man, I hope they don't get rid of cloud gaming. It's been amazing, especially with their new partnership with GeForce Now (which IMO is the smarter move... rather than sunsetting xCloud entirely, just partner with Nvidia to make GFN the default since most cross platform Xbox/Windows games support controllers anyway).
Streaming games is an amazing convenience (and value) for those of us who don't want to be limited to an Xbox (poor graphics, limited mouse/keyboard support) but also don't want to shell out $3k for a RTX 4080 rig and all its associated noise and heat.
Where Stadia failed, GeForce Now, Luna, Shadow, and Xbox and PS streaming are still alive and well. And very useful!
I feel like it's only bad because it's still mostly a half-way house. Slapping existing AAA titles onto networked GPUs and calling it a day <> streaming gaming in my view.
Streaming gaming is actually a thing for me when someone builds a game using it that would absolutely not be possible using traditional technology. For example, an MMO so massive that the average player's network stack couldn't handle all of the events, so the only rational option is to render everything on some supercomputer and ship the final frames.
Consider also that you can get a lot of reuse out of a particular scene graph if multiple players are in the same one. Many such cases in streaming gaming. There are new, multi-server engine architectures that will not be possible until we start saying things like "this will be a streaming-only exclusive". That is probably the scariest proposal an MBA in any AAA studio could hear in 2023, so I don't expect you will see Blizzard or Sony playing in this flavor of traffic any time soon.
You can fit a ton of data down a consumer's pipe. Can you actually design a game that would have those network requirements? A single frame of video is a ton of data compared to traditional game state constructs.
What's more exciting to me the client doesn't need that data or assets you can actually make games thatb need to be discovered though the game. No peeking local files or state for what's possible in the game.
Pure data rate is not a fantastic example. I'd also offer up something like large or dynamic assets (I think flight simulator is a good current example of that) or a game that is simply extremely big and needs a shitload of dram or GPU memory to keep around effectively.
And the thing is, latency can be "good enough" for some games. I tried out the top end tier of GeForce NOW for a month just to see what it was like since I've always been skeptical of game streaming. I picked Last Epoch as a game since it has (had?) a reputation for being hard to run at 4k.
Even at 4k, I could play it and my views on game streaming have changed a bit. This was last year and I was using an i7 4770k based system. I can say pretty confidently that I found the local lag spikes from not having a high end gaming PC to be far more frustrating than the consistent 40ms of latency via streaming. Maybe it's because I'm getting older and don't have the same reflexes anymore, but I couldn't even really notice the latency via streaming.
I also think people are seriously overlooking the trend towards secure computing. What if you put a TPM in a video card? Then your video for the game stream can be encrypted and only gets decoded just before being sent to your HDCP compliant monitor. I think it's much harder to build cheats if the client side doesn't have any data to work with beyond video that gets decrypted as it's sent to your monitor.
Heck, even just a lack of local game data gets rid of most cheating, right?
> What if you put a TPM in a video card? Then your video for the game stream can be encrypted and only gets decoded just before being sent to your HDCP compliant monitor.
This is a fantastic idea. If you can get the GPU swap chain secured all the way from the datacenter's GPU, even the laziest cheaters would be forced to go buy specialized hardware to strip HDCP, and then find a way to get it back into the damn computer. What a fuckin nightmare, eh? It's almost like a job at that point. This is a massive barrier to entry and would likely eliminate 99%+ of "insecure" gaming experiences.
Could you do something even crazier like an HDMI pass thru terminal that detects the "secure gaming frame" via some signature and is able to decode it on the output? Sell em to gamers for $49.99 like it's a new kind of premium TV box? Doesn't change the security angle (can still break HDCP on the other side), and makes it so the gamer doesn't have to replace any PC hardware or software. Plug the box, load the streaming game website, enter your serial # to bind to your account, and off you go. You'd probably incur some extra latency using the external hardware, but with ASIC/FPGAs you could keep it right at 1-2 frames.
If I remember right this approach was a key pillar to the Xbox One at launch, with for example the Crackdown demo[1] using cloud for much more advanced physics/building destruction than the release game, with statements to effect of 3x the power of the console being available in the cloud.[2] With online only being a requirement when the One launched I think Microsoft tried something close to a streaming only exclusives, but at least at that point wasn't able to make it work.
Game streaming is a death sentence for game preservation. It will also be pretty bad for quality. Are your users playing a better older game? Kill it and replace with a worse more predatory one. And no one ever will be able to play the older game again.
>it would be smart to ignore it and focus on their great subscription service that only requires a $500 Xbox.
in the same way that nintendo thought it was smart to ignore online gaming for some 15 years, sure. It was true for a while. Until it wasnt
MS isn't doing this because it's immediately profitable. They feel it's the future, and they can iron out the technical issues. They want to be in the forefront when that arrives instead of playing catchup.
Also, more obviously: Gamepass is on Android and Android isn't playing those games natively. It's another way to target the mobile market.
When, not if Call of Duty and many others Activision Blizzard has goes Xbox and PC exclusive, some people are going to get pies and eggs on their faces that is for sure. Also more consolidation of the gaming industry isn't good in the long run as it clearly opens the door for the big players to buy up even more assets. I can clearly see Microsoft buy EA, Sega and Square Enix now as a example.
The FTC's incredibly low win rate in federal court should be a source of agency-wide embarrassment. The only place they reliably win is their kangaroo "administrative courts" in which they act as the judge, jury and executioner but those are probably on their way out. But it doesn't even matter anyways because the new strategy is going to be outsourcing enforcement to Europe.
Is the low win rate a surprise though? As a foreign observer, the US justice system seems to largely be based on who can spend the most - so large company > government > small company > citizen is pretty much the assumed outcome. I have a vague sense the order also wraps around (individual > large company) because of cases like the McDonald's boiling coffee, but in those cases headlines and bad PR are just acting as a proxy for money.
The FTC is still spooling anti trust enforcement back up from a nonexistent state. A lot of the rules governing mergers and acquisitions haven't been enforced since the 1980s due to regulatory capture.
Read up on developments in anti-trust in the last couple of years here:
I would expect the FTC to have a low win rate. Let's leave aside how atrophied enforcement of antitrust has been over the last 40 years, and the subsequent implications for case law, regulations and human skill of litigators.
This is a 75 billion dollar event between two giant companies. They can pay for legal advice. That legal advice is well incentivized to predict how the case will go, and signed off on it. I assume MS has to pay a hefty fee if the acquisition is blocked for antitrust reasons, in addition to the time and embarrassment for all involved.
Therefore, the only cases the FTC should expect to see are ones where highly paid lawyers said "we will probably win this case". They might be wrong (and the FTC does seem unable to stop too many cases), but no matter how tough the enforcement gets, I would expect the FTC to usually lose at trial. The standards will just be applied pre-merger announcement (or probably pre-offer).
It might be an exciting couple of years when the FTC regrows its backbone and the lawyers assessing mergers have not caught up yet.
Microsoft still needs more studios to make Game Pass a “Netflix for Gaming” service. WoW and CoD and the rest of the ActiBlizz back catalog help but Microsoft still doesn’t have enough studios to be pumping out a new major release every month.
The idea of subscribing to get games (movies and TV shows) instead of buying to own them Netflix is certainly still doing. Constant, consistent revenue by having people subscribe instead of paying a bunch to market to them and hope it is a blockbuster, to me at least, seems far more sustainable for publishers and developers.
Maybe it's just sour grapes from me, but it feels like a lot of these acquisitions are for has-been companies that were great 10+ years ago but haven't had much success lately. Bethesda, Double Fine, and now Activation Blizzard.
No comment on Bethesda or Activision, but Psychonauts 2 had an average Metacritic score of ~90. Not sure how their financials look but Double Fine seems to be doing OK. Their previous two titles had shakier scores but don't look like they were big failures or anything.
Activision isn’t successful? They own several of the biggest franchises in console, PC and mobile. 2022 was a record year for them - over $7b in revenue - and that was before Diablo IV shipped.
The game Blizzard just released, Diablo 4, was the “best-selling opening in Blizzard’s history, crossing an auspicious $666 million in global sell-through in the first five days following its June 6 launch”. https://investor.activision.com/news-releases/news-release-d...
I don't think I've heard sell-through used before as a metric in that way, typically I recall seeing it as a percentage such as 80% of units shipped to stores have sold through to consumers. Units sold is what I typically see, like Diablo 3 at 30mil. Maybe sell through here means people buying platinum/cosmetics as well?
This is weird. The judge says that because there won’t be any anticompetitive effects in the next 10 years (because MS made a pinky promise), this merger is fine?
What about after those 10 years? What about anything not Call of Duty?
Call of Duty, Diablo, World of Warcraft, StarCraft, and Overwatch are some of the most popular games in the world. They may not be to your liking or mine but this is objectively not true.
Im hoping Microsoft will altruistically stop producing these addictive “games”.
As a new console player, the differences between a game like Halo Infinite and Overwatch (FPS 4v4/5v5) are enough to put me from playing and in control to binging.
Here’s a tangent:
The most popular sports leagues in the world are mimicked by people all over the world who play casual and team sports. The game itself is not proprietary.
Why can’t we make popular open source video games? If games were not owned by a single entity, anyone could host tournaments and leagues, more similar to baseball, basketball, and football. We could all play the same game.
> Why can’t we make popular open source video games?
Well, there are some. Check out Bitburner, Battle for Wesnoth, 0 A.D, etc.
The serious answer is that it's very hard work that requires a multi-year development cycle and a diverse variety of talent (design, art, etc) in addition to software engineering.
In addition, a lot of the tools and game engines used to create AAA titles are very expensive (and closed-source).
If you've got a team working on a game in just their spare time, it's going to be very dated by the time it actually launches.
This shows a sad ignorance to how little leagues and the like actually work. The games may not be proprietary in the computer sense, but they are very much beholden to the major players for more than makes sense.
While some decent examples have been provided in another response, it is kind of telling when most Libre/open multiplayer FPS titles are still built on Quake 3 engine. And they are not exactly to most vibrant communities. But it will run on almost anything form the last 20 years I guess.
I think a part of it is that the video game industry is good at absorbing a lot of people with talent. Game folks are at the intersection of arts and technology but it also isn't firmly in either camp, so people can be poached away fairly easily from open projects if they have a lot of talent.
That’s a silly analogy. All you need to play soccer is a ball. A game takes years and tens of thousands of man-hours to make. In your analogy the soccer ball manufacturers are the game companies.
>Why can’t we make popular open source video games
Nothing is stopping anyone and there are a few. Nothing as big as COD but they exist. But I imagine the result will be similar to how traditional sports work. There will be one big definitive organization for a sport (let's say COD or this example), a few large minor leagues (some knockoff CODs that are fun but nowhere near as popular), and then some small pickup games in a field (the indie games some single dev makes that no one will find).
As a complete tangent, the Touhou series is famously loose in its license and many fans and companies alike have utilized the IP to make games and every other kind of media.
10 years is also nothing in game development. Games now can take up to 7 years from conception to release, and then there is post release content. Based on the “10 years”, that would mean like what, 1 game out of each series would be cross platform? And for Sony, they would need to start developing a competent competitor to Call of Duty immediately. Or Sony could just buy EA and create a Titanfall 3 since I guess it’s okay for big ass companies to buy one another now.
This is why market capitalisation is not always the best of metrics.
AT&T assets are valued at almost twice of T-Mobile (~$400B vs ~$211B). AT&T is also ahead of Verizon (~$377B) by a nice margin. It’s also right behind Verizon in revenue, and ahead of T-Mobile ($136B for Verizon, $120B for AT&T, and $80B for T-Mobile).
> since I guess it’s okay for big ass companies to buy one another now.
Thats not really the case, no. Sony is the monopoly market leader in the console space right now.
It would be more likely to be illegal for Sony to do this, and it is not illegal for microsoft to do the same, because Microsoft is not the monopoly market leader in the console space.
I get your point for the industry at large. For example, Skyrim 2011. ES6, 2026? Maybe? But CoD, I swear, you sneeze and there's a new title. CoD: Modern Warfare 2: Black Ops: 2023 reboot. For the record, I'm mostly being tongue in cheek here, but the franchise does seem to release unusually frequently.
There has been a major Call of Duty release 19 of the last 20 years, they only missed 2004 between the original in 2003 and 2 in 2005. 10 year commitment means 10 CoD games for Sony.
It depends on the engine but indy studios are frequently able to port to all of the major platforms: PC, Xbox, PlayStation, and Switch.
The exclusive addressable market for each is definitely big enough to outweigh porting costs.
A good first step would be to ban exclusivity agreements, rather than mandate cross platform availability and to fine both parties heavily for suspected foul play.
Exclusivity agreements are a great example of something that is directly harmful to consumers. It removes choice, increases cost, encourages electronic waste, and leads to an inferior experience.
It's not illegal to make publishing deals in any way. And Square isn't beholden to anyone in particular. They have made deals with Nintendo and even Microsoft for various games, promotional material, etc.
And that's not even getting into their game-adjacent deals (AMD, various cloud services) and the dozens of crossovers with the stragest companies (remember when Final Fantasy 13 released some Louis Vuitton fashion line?)
Microsoft don't need to make Call of Duty an exclusive. They only need to put new CoD games on Gamepass and Sony are screwed. It'll make Sony's platform look much more expensive.
I hear what you're saying but also understand that putting games on gamepass costs money to microsoft in lost sales. It's like Disney - if all their movies go directly to disney+ they're training customers to not spend $60-80 on buying new games and instead wait for them to come to the cheaper monthly subscription. That isn't free - they still have to develop the game, and the return on the game is lower.
You can't pretend moving to a monthly recurring revenue model thats still profitable is dumping, at least not honestly.
My point was that just releasing everything day one on xbox live cannot be a long term sustainable strategy as you're only making $15/month or whatever from that user, but it isn't dumping.
I never said it is dumping, I made an analogy to dumping. Dumping is not a long term sustainable strategy either, and yet governments decided to make it illegal (well some forms of dumping at least).
Either they will just break the deal and pay the fines (I'm not sure of the exact details of the punishment) or they will just give themselves enough technical advantage to make the competition versions unfavorable.
I mean, we don't question a Tiger when it eats someones face - it is just what a Tiger does. This is just how Microsoft and big business works.
I was thinking the same thing. So much emphasis on Call of Duty. Did a quick search of Activision's most profitable games and Call of Duty is definitely #1 by nearly 3x the next, but there are plenty of other heavy-hitters to make it diversified.
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[ 5.3 ms ] story [ 927 ms ] threadI work in gaming at Microsoft and I really enjoy it. I think Microsoft gives us a ton of space to explore and make our own impact and I am a huge fan* of Phil Spencer.
> Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision has been described as the largest in tech history. It deserves scrutiny. That scrutiny has paid off: Microsoft has committed in writing, in public, and in court to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation for 10 years on parity with Xbox.
How does this make anyone feel any better? What happens after 10 years? Microsoft has been around for 4x that long.
What happens in less than 10 years if they don't abide by it?
Does Activision get split back out? I doubt it.
We're long past the point where you can just set rules/laws and companies will abide by it. We need to be at the point where we also list the punishment ahead of time.
Likely nothing. I don't understand why people believe in these things.
> We're long past the point where you can just set rules/laws and companies will abide by it.
What's the rule / law here anyhow? There are always workarounds, e.g. it says it will keep it in parity with xbox... well what if they called a new console something else?
If they write up a contract with penalty provisions, this could able be guaranteed through civil court.
It is not some crazy unsolved question as to how to get a company to commit to something in the future.
No kidding. They could just introduce a new game franchise called "Duty of Call - Warfare That's Modern" and make that Xbox exclusive instead. Or any number of other workarounds and sneaky tactics.
Likely Sony will take them to the cleaners.
Would they just build a COD that is dependent on specific MS tech so they cannot release it on competing systems? Why not try and rebrand Call of Duty so that it isn't in violation? Just call it 'Duty'. It starts to get very grey very quickly.
We're not, but this is pretty nebulous stuff. The state blocking freely agreed transactions because it can foresee some damage is not exactly a clear cut good, other than for people who are reassured by the idea of the state as a benevolent, all-knowing mom and pop, and for the lawyers who get paid a fortune to debate past and future hypotheticals.
What about this: allow the merger, and if the harm is done, the company must pay, but if the harm is not done, the state must pay?
Companies with more resources than small countries are often too big to regulate because they capture the regulators and/or the judiciary.
Prevention is cheaper than treatment, especially when treatments have proven so ineffective.
Regulatory capture is entirely the fault of the regulator. They don't have to be captured. They choose to be. A government body, funded by taxes, that decides to be captured, is a complete disgrace. People work hard to pay taxes, and they shouldn't be spent on employing people who choose to align with those they should be regulating.
> Prevention is cheaper than treatment, especially when treatments have proven so ineffective.
The same state that has the power to prevent has the power to treat. It chooses not to. Switching approach won't help. Getting regulators to do their jobs will.
Anyone who has worked at large corporate bureaucracies knows they are just as slow and rule bound as government departments and in many ways worse. At least there are some well motivated people in government.
Government is us. The people. We’ve delegated it to an elite class that gets more and more cut off from the common politik as time goes by.
I see no easy solution . Power does not willingly give up power.
The FTC identified not having CoD on multiple platforms as a large issue. What payment is justified if Microsoft doesn't allow CoD on multiple platforms?
It's easy to say "if harm is done, the company must pay" but look how long we've know leaded gasoline was harmful, look how long we've know abestoes was harmful, look how long we've know pfas was harmful, look how long we've know cigarettes are harmful. And then look how long it took for any company to pay after fighting tooth and nail saying it wasn't harmful despite their _own_ internal research saying the contrary.
Sure, CoD is not in the same scope as leaded gasoline. The point still remains, a harm has been identified and I don't think they should be allowed to merge so long as the punishment for that harm occurring isn't pre-determined.
What perspective has been applied to this?
We don't have to debate past and future hypotheticals - that's an invention of the "consumer welfare" theory of antitrust. The one that said it's entirely fine for, say, Apple to have a monopoly on iOS software as long as they have a prosocial justification for it. Apple's specific argument is that their monopoly protects from malware... or, in other words, they're big enough that they can make and enforce their own laws.
A better and simpler rule is this: being big is illegal, period. That's how antitrust used to work. If a business deal would give you the capability of becoming your own sovereign state, you don't get to execute that deal. If you knock out all your competition, we break you up into competing companies.
This is the sort of thing that triggers free market types, I know. My argument is specifically that large businesses get to write their own rules, and the only way to prevent them from doing that is to make them small enough that they cannot execute political power equivalent to that of a monarch. Right now, we live in this comedic parody of free market liberalism where the business owners have centralized power to themselves, turning themselves into de-facto states, and gotten the de-jure state drunk on surveillance tech to avoid scrutiny.
I'm sure Phil Spencer will be interested to know that he can fit into a can :)
2 years after release they released a copy of the first game because all the work was done. Nothing from the rest of the series.
A more than 2 year delay for the first game and never getting the rest of the series is a major downside for existing customers. That’s exactly the kind of monopolist behavior you are supposed to block mergers for. Waiting 2 years cost Microsoft a little revenue directly, but pushed XBox sales which was far more valuable.
Halo would have been a flop if it was Mac exclusive.
Keep in mind, this was back in the year ~2000. Mac market share in the home user market was a rounding error. Schools were full of iMacs, but at home, it was all Windows.
“Due out in the first half of 2000, Halo will have a simultaneous release for PC and Mac, with multiplayer compatibility between the two operating systems. While you'll need a 3D card and a powerful system to take full advantage of the game's features, it'll be scalable so you can play it on less powerful machines.” http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9907/26/halo.idg/
Things got delayed ~18 months so Microsoft could port it to XBox thus waiting till November 2001. Then tacked on another 2 years to release it on Mac.
https://www.halopedia.org/Halo:_Combat_Evolved_for_Macintosh
First Halo was delayed to port it to windows and XBox on top of that two years after its initial release they let the already working Mac version out the door. That’s a huge fuck you by any standard.
On top of this Halo 2 etc was XBox and Windows exclusive fuck PS owners, fuck Mac owners, and fuck the free market.
I'd try a modern evolution of SOCOM 4 or Killzone 3 on PS4/PS5.
(Microsoft can keep their Cod B.O.)
Maybe Microsoft should argue this point instead. But they didn't. They argued that they would allow CoD on multi-platforms so it's only reasonable to expect people to respond to that point.
It's a bit similar to how some people said that the posts deserved to be deleted while others said those people should just make their own twitter. Depending on whose talking and their argument you need to change your response. Using a response that the posts shouldn't've have been deleted to somebody who said you should make your own twitter is a non-sequitor.
That's just basic business. If I buy a shoe factory, I'm going to say of course I'll sell them to Canadians! I wouldn't say "Eh, stuff it Canada, go make your own shoes!" even if my own internal plans didn't prioritize exports.
Perhaps you may feel that Canadians can be responsible for making their own shoe companies that sell to Canada. Then bring up that as your argument instead of having "oh yeah, I'll totally sell to you" as your argument.
But from what I remember is that you were accusing people of being dishonest because they said that Twitter could have an alternative but people aren't saying that Sony can just make a CoD alternative.
And I'm saying its not dishonest because A) its different people and B) Microsoft made a claim and these response are directly in response to that claim.
Remember, MS is in business to make money, not to win the console wars. Buying the CoD (etc) IP at an inflated price and then immediately cutting off more than half of the revenue would be so mind-boggingly stupid, almost to the point of malpractice. This is why they really don't even need to be forced into saying they'll maintain it for 10 years on PS.
It's all about moving gaming to a recurring revenue model. So you don't care about if the consumer made a one time purchase of your console (in fact, you might even prefer they didn't if you're losing money on each one!), but you do care about the fact that they're playing your games.
Ben Thompson put it better than I could:
> Notice that this is for games that are purchased, and keep in mind that Microsoft’s goal with the Activision acquisition is not to gain exclusive games to sell but rather games to subscribe to. As I’ve argued the only way this acquisition makes sense is the extent to which it makes possible a new business model for gaming; simply buying exclusives via established titles like Call of Duty would be hugely value destructive.
>What is notable about Microsoft’s subscription push is that it aligns the company’s Xbox division with Microsoft’s overall push towards cloud computing and subscription services. What is interesting to consider are two questions:
>First, would Microsoft have ever gone down this path absent the investment in its original (failed) Xbox strategy? I would argue the answer is no; this is a reasonable leveraging of Xbox assets, but I do wonder if Microsoft could go back two decades if they would even bother.
>Second, if regulators were to kill this deal (Microsoft still needs approval from the UK and the US) would Xbox be long for this world? It’s hard to see how the division makes sense if Microsoft has the current business model dictated to them, given just how dominant Sony is with said business model.
https://stratechery.com/2023/uk-blocks-microsoft-activision-... (paywalled)
I just don't really get the argument of "We won't do this for 10 years". OK, what about after that?
Case in point: Sony PlayStation is one of Azure’s largest customers
It’s strange for Nintendo not to see this
Skyrim has supposedly sold around 60 million copies over the span of 12 years. Let's be generous and say those sold at an average of $60 each (probably less in practice due to sales, etc.)
That's $3.6b USD in raw revenue. Pretty sick!
On the other hand, as of 2022 (Skyrim numbers are 2023), Call of Duty as a franchise had generated over $31b USD in raw revenue. 10x that of Skyrim, Bethesda's biggest title.
So in terms of scale, I don't see how making Starfield exclusive can possibly be on the same level as the idea of making the whole CoD franchise exclusive. Certainly it would be impactful but I can understand treating them differently.
Microsoft are REALLY good at playing the long game.
My disagreement would be that you're comparing an installment with a franchise. The whole of the Elder Scrolls is bigger than Skyrim, although Skyrim was the biggest standalone seller. Elder Scrolls online has I think about 750k MAUs, at $10-$15/mo.
And, I suppose more fundamentally, why would MS turn down a good chunk of $3.6b for the dev costs of making a Playstation version of Starfield?
funny thing is that if you compared the last 15 years of COD to Elder scrolls, you're still comparing some dozen COD games to Skyrim and ESO. And I guess that one mobile game? 15 years ago is still a year after Oblivion launched.
So why are Redfall and Starfield Xbox exclusives? Wouldn't they make more money by releasing them for Playstation too?
CoD on the other hand is already a huge name, that releases every year (i.e. recurring revenue, even if it's not a subscription per se), and MS is paying a huge premium for it. Forcing people over to game pass in that case isn't worth taking the hit to reliable revenue you're virtually already guaranteed to get from PS owners.
To be clear: I think it's less important to worry about this as less of a PC/Xbox exclusive than a Game Pass exclusive/available. I'd be willing to bet if Sony approached MS to bring Game Pass to PS, MS would be super willing to do it. Not that Sony would given their business model, but that's basically the point. It's not HW platform exclusivity, but store/subscription exclusivity.
Fair if you want to posit that VR is a niche market. But.... honestly, so is the entire Xbox market.
Microsoft's subscription push can't work without winning the console wars since Sony isn't about to let them put GamePass on PS since that kills Sony's revenue model. (That would itself be a very interesting antitrust case.)
So they still want to win the console wars, they just want to monetize that victory differently. But pulling things like Starfield - and eventually COD - off of other platforms is 10000% still aligned with "making as much money as possible."
because at this point, even if Xbox's weren't profitable, ending the Xbox brand would harm confidence in Gamepass.
Not that Xbox isn't profitable. But even in the worst case they have negative incentive to pull out.
Embrace the business (with money), extend the functionality (Xbox exclusive features), Extinguish the competition (drop support).
"The slow blade penetrates the shield."
They're clearly "Ok, we have more room to legally get away with XYZ now so LETS GO FOR IT!!!!".
Feels like these kind of issues are what anti-trust should have handled.
That lock in of the 90's never really stopped, they just figure out how to make it look better. The only times they gave up on the lock in was when it was starting to look really bad and even then they just pivot the messaging and then try to lock themselves in. Look at MS with "We love Linux", it didn't slow Windows down one bit.
https://www.khronos.org/blog/you-can-use-vulkan-without-pipe...
Which is refreshing.
Most games rely on engines that support Vulkan better now (like UE5), so there is not much of an interest I guess.
I’m surprised people didn’t wake up with the One era lies he kept pushing, and given HNs general distaste for “marketer talk”, how can one be a fan of a dude that every time he opens his mouth, it’s marketing talk (when it’s not a lie). This dude would constantly say shit like “the console wars are stupid. We need to all get along”. And then when pressed about “hidden DGPU” that he knew didn’t exist, he lies and responds “we are not letting Sony have a hardware advantage”. This dude is a scumbag.
He’s been terrible for Xbox, and now his horrid management of Xbox has led to being terrible for gaming in general.
Big fan? Nah.
None of it really matter though, because even forgetting Phil obviously constantly fanning the console wars, he’s presided over Xbox for what like 10 years? In that time, what he’s managed to do is be a baby, and complain that his ineffective management is leading to their console having no games.
To me it's incomprehensible how they managed to f-up Halo Infinite, then just stand there in silence and then say, yeah we are sorry for not having a lot of interesting titles on Xbox, but here's what's coming next year.
If I were a game dev at Microsoft, I'd be furious!
Yeah, heard that one before.
> Oh but we promised Call of Duty and this is Duty Called, so we don't have to care about anything we have promised before.
I mean, this is Microsoft.
Optimistically, Sony utilizes their Bungie aquisition and makes something worthy as a competitor. I imagine the 10 years is less a promise and more of a timer, and 10 years is enough for a AAA company to get at least a few attempts.
Pessimistically, MS drives Activision to the ground and COD isn't even a valuable IP anymore. Bigger icons have fallen from grace faster.
You say that as if it means that this acquisition then isn't monopolization. The solution is to sanction Sony, not to make things even worse.
Past a certain size, it absolutely is. E.g. a food producer will have a much harder time entering (or staying in) a vertically-integrated market (as an independent entity), where all the grocery chains privilege offerings by producers they own.
Using other near-monopolies as argument for why new ones should be allowed to form will lead to a very consolidated market, which is exactly what anti-trust is supposed to prevent.
The solution isn’t to sanction Sony because it’s not clear that Sony has done anything illegal to obtain its market position. It’s not illegal to have a monopoly. The solution is to let competition arise from the market and increase consumer choice either by driving down prices or providing more options for consumers. In the market for grocery stores, Microsoft buying Activision is anti-monopolist and pro-competition.
Speaking of spreading misinformation, do you have anything to back that claim up?
Pay special attention to the theories of harm advanced by the FTC and note that the harm focused on by the FTC is that done to a foreign company (Sony) rather than US consumers.
Microsoft offered direct evidence of this acquisition being good for US and global consumers (including “willfully” entering into agreements to preserve consumer access to their products via their competitors’ platforms). FTC offered “evidence” that Sony’s monopoly position would be (only slightly) eroded by this acquisition and then hand-waved that this is bad for competition and then hand-waved that this is bad for consumers. Further, the FTC’s own expert (who provided the “evidence” of Sony’s monopoly being eroded) couldn’t even support his chosen inputs/assumptions beyond more hand-waving that amounted to “well that’s what I think would happen.”
So you’ve got a poorly (if at all) supported tertiary-effect on the only people that should actually matter to the FTC (domestic consumers). That’s why the court found that FTC had “not shown a likelihood it will prevail on its claim this particular vertical merger in this specific industry may substantially lessen competition.” The FTC shouldn’t be throwing US consumers under the bus in order to protect a foreign company’s dominant market position, especially with such flimsy evidence. If this was the first or second time this happened with the New FTC? Maybe that’s a coincidence. This many times? Well, that’s enemy action.
Where is your evidence that the FTC’s meritless case is anything other than the FTC working at the behest of a foreign monopolist? Who gains from this FTC action other than Sony?
It’s fine that you dislike my argument or conclusion. That doesn’t mean that my evidence doesn’t back them up.
You believe Microsoft's claims that this will be good for consumers. I don't. I believe the FTC's claims that "bad for their main competitor" = "bad for consumers." You don't. Fine.
But their actions here are entirely consistent with their stated platform and you haven't provided a shred of evidence that there's any of the behind-the-scenes bullshit you claim.
Given that Sony has an overwhelming lead, it really is not a problem for microsoft to do this acquisition.
We don't need to inflate an already bighead corporate oligarch.
And using monopolistic profits from other tech businesses like Enterprise software/cloud. And maybe in the future AI profits with OpenAI.
We've had enough of a future controlled by Big Tech. The goal in all cases should be to make them smaller, not more powerful.
"Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> Stormgate® is a _free-to-play_ real-time strategy PC game...
This is especially bad for multiplayer where you need high player counts so people can get into matches quick. Indie multiplayer games HAVE to be free or very inexpensive.
But I'm definitely down for MS to release another great RTS title.
On 5 May 2023, the CMA made an Interim Order pursuant to section 81 of the Act preventing each of Microsoft and Activision and all members of their Groups of Interconnected Bodies Corporate from acquiring in the other any interest conferring control within the meaning of section 26 of the Act
[0] https://www.gov.uk/cma-cases/microsoft-slash-activision-bliz...
[1] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6465ec16e1407...
https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/11/23791149/microsoft-activi...
The merger has been approved by EU and now US regulators.
The UK market might be small enough compared to the US and the EU that Microsoft and Activision might find it worthwhile to just leave the UK console game market if they had to choose between that and not being able to complete the merger.
"FTC: We've heard about the harms to Sony...
Judge: This is about the harms to the consumer not to Sony. Let's take a break until 4:05."
I still wonder what all of this is worth given that the merger was blocked in the UK.
> MLex also reported last month that Microsoft was exploring options to close the deal despite the UK block, which could have involved closing over the UK decision and potentially carving out Activision in the UK. That’s a messy process, and it looks like both parties are now willing to negotiate to avoid it.
The way things are looking in the UK assets their might not have a long shelf life
It might turn around if their government changes after the election, but who wants to bet on that? It is looking really dismal
Meanwhile I do expect more Xbox exclusives - which will ultimately harm consumers.
I own nothing and am so grateful. /$
Is Microsoft going to buy Steam and delete my game library there next?
Gabe's not gonna live forever. Never know what will happen in some 15-20 years if he retires and/or is simply unable to manage Valve.
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/kotick-expected-to-leave-activ...
https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/23/23771828/microsoft-bethed...
I love Nintendo but they compete more with Apple and Google than they do with Sony and Microsoft.
If Microsoft exits game consoles next generation Sony won’t have any real competition and that will be very bad for consumers.
Microsoft needs their own heavy hitting exclusives and they need them sooner than they can home grow them. This acquisition is one of the only ways they can do that.
I’d rather we don’t allow bad M&As, even for good reasons.
It competes like a Honda Civic competes with a Chevrolet Corvette.
Both in 2017:
7:13.9 - Chevrolet Corvette C7 Z06 Christian Gebhardt.
7:43.8 - Civic Type R, Honda didn't name the driver.
Having said that the Nintendo Switch competes against the Series X in my home for time. It has some seriously good titles that my son loves to play.
https://www.motortrend.com/news/2023-honda-civic-type-r-nurb...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_Civic_Type_R
I eventually ended up with an electric car instead (Tesla LR3), but spent hours looking at this - and the Subaru WRX.
Thank you!
That's not true. Both sides have made handhelds as well as full gaming consoles.
Just because Nintendo's current focus is the handheld switch and Sony dropped their handheld for now doesn't mean things won't change.
Quality of games doesn't matter so much. If someone is spending hours playing Tears of the Kingdom, that's time not spent on playing games on another console.
Even with your analogy there will be some people who can afford 2 cars and drive them for different occasions but others only dedicate to just one. And even then a person can only drive one car at a time.
Two words: Sega Dreamcast.
Microsoft is seriously behind this generation and I just don't see them continuing next generation if they can't make up some ground this one.
Activision is a terrible company whose iron grip on their beloved IP (bought from Blizzard and Infinity Ward) has been absolutely stifling to the industry. They are almost singlehandedly responsible for everything that sucks about gaming now.
It's more like if MD had bought Boeing. One can only dream.
How is the Switch not a console?
Even then, there are a ton of games that are available across all platforms, including some AAA ones: Mortal Kombat 11 The Witcher 3 Assassins's Creed (multiple) Skyrim Resident Evil (multiple) Monster Hunter Rise Overwatch 2 etc...
The reason Microsoft and Sony sign exclusive deal is mostly the keep games off each others platforms. Graphics-intensive “AAA” games aren’t going to run on the switch. Nintendo undeniably operates in a distinct segment, even if it’s capable of supporting some limited amount of overlap with the other vendors.
There’s a plethora of articles stating the exact opposite, such as this one:
https://afkgaming.com/esports/guide/is-call-of-duty-coming-t...
It’s something MS has been saying numerous times, including in the FTC court case.
The number of games that are exclusive to a platform that are paid to be that way is actually quite small. Almost all platform exclusives come from companies that are subsidiaries of their respective platform company (343 Studios, Naughty Dog, etc).
The argument of graphic capabilities as something that defines the Switch to be in a different market that’s that of Sony/MS is a straw man argument, IMO. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere in these comments, it’s still competing for peoples’ video game time.
> As I’ve mentioned elsewhere in these comments, it’s still competing for peoples’ video game time.
Penguin and Scholastic are both competing for peoples book reading time, yet they quite clearly compete in different market segments. Your argument is contrived and ignores the fact that consumers understand how these products are differentiated to appeal to different preferences.
Is Sony monopolizing the God of War market because God of War fans understand how those games are differentiated to appeal to their preferences?
The FTC's case that PS and Xbox exist in their own "high-performance console" market is the contrived argument. Honestly, it's dated to even consider consoles their own market. Product planning practice in the games industry these days pretty much looks at 2 markets: the mobile market and the "HD market" (PC + console).
The Switch simple can’t do the same things that an Xbox or PlayStation can do. Many of those consoles top selling games would not be playable on a Switch, because they’re high performance games that require high performance hardware, and the Switch simply isn’t a viable substitute for that. Even for the most graphically demanding games that can run on a Switch, they can only do so with comparatively low resolution and frame rate, which in case you didn’t know, are major selling points for the segments that Microsoft/Sony are competing in.
If you don’t want to accept these plainly obvious facts, why don’t you go and inform r/NintendoSwitch that it’s a viable substitute for a PS5, and see how many people you can convince?
Absolutely no one is arguing this and it's not the point. You should give the commentators on this forum more credit than thinking we aren't aware of the power/capabilities differences.
The "high-end console gaming market" is what is what people are taking issue with. It's such a limiting segmentation and is arguably not a very good definition. There's a console gaming market as a whole, with a subset of it being high-end, that competes on user's gaming time. In my view, that's how it should be defined. There's also the mobile gaming market. Are we to now say the Switch shouldn't belong in the mobile gaming market because of screen size and power capabilities? It doesn't make sense to define the Switch in its own, standalone market. What would it be? Mid-tier portable gaming market? One that has no competitors and it has a monopoly in? That's not practical nor reflective of gaming purchasing habits.
Segregating the market based on capabilities breaks down in many ways. The argument shouldn't be that the Switch should belong in its own category because many people who own an Xbox or a Playstation also happen to own a Switch. Nearly half of Xbox owners also happen to own Playstation console (myself included) so does the fact that there's an overlap now mean that Xbox and PlayStation should be somehow in their own category? Of course not. Nor should the argument be about how it's played. One can that the Switch can be played in a portable manner but I just as easily play on my Playstation or Xbox through my iPad locally or even the cloud. Yes, it's not a popular option but the capabilities are there. All that's left is arguing about whether or not something can play AAA games in higher fidelity. If fidelity is something a gamer is truly after, they'd be buying a PC.
> The FTC insists the Nintendo Switch’s pricing, performance, and content make it an improper substitute at least for purposes of its preliminary injunction motion
I have to kinda agree with the FTC. I consider the Switch to be a very different device than the XBox/PS with different uses as far as the gaming experience I expect. The XBox or PS, on the other hand, I expect to have similar experiences.
As I understand it, but the rest of this is based on skimming the ruling, the judge has to take into account whether the merger will help or hinder customers. MS said "Call of Duty isn't even on all the consoles now, it's just on Playstation and XBox. Let the merger go through and we will port it to the Switch. See how we don't play favorites for our console.". The FTC's response was "there isn't real market for console players of games like COD released on Switch, the Switch isn't a competitor to the XBox for this game"
They do this again later on in regards to the FTC's arguments that cloud gaming and multi-game subscription services are functionally separate markets.
I can't play Pokemon on my PC or Gran Turismo on my Xbox or WoW on my PS5. What will change "very bad for end consumer in long term"?
(1) https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/28/23777003/microsoft-square...
But as long as you throw enough money at the judges and bribing regulators, perhaps you do get away with monopolistic practices. Microsoft will never change and cannot be trusted.
They will continue their horizontal integration of games studios and apply their lock in with their game-pass platform over a so-called 10 year pinky promise which they can make all other new games exclusive anyway afterwards.
I'm not sure if they'd be willing to do so for the game assets (the room/item descriptions/etc) – it would remove one of the main legal barriers to a competitor creating their own game set in the Zork universe. The Fortran 77 version of Zork has long been available under a "non-commercial use only" license, so they might be willing to release the game assets under such a license too (or maybe a more modern equivalent such as CC-BY-NC or CC-BY-NC-SA)
Having a public domain or MIT licensed Dungeon/Zork would allow to fix bugs and not worrying about licenses on any Linux/BSD distro.
The TOPS-20 versions of ZILCH (and ZAP) don't seem to be available.
The ITS version of ZILCH from MIT has been recovered, but (from what I understand) it is an earlier version, and the TOPS-20 version which Infocom used later isn't publicly available, and that later version had added features.
In any case, its copyright status is murky, Microsoft could clean up that murkiness.
Am I totally off base here? Can anyone explain to me why this case is so critical?
Again -- am I thinking about this wrong? What is the consumer harm that could result from the moving of IP from one company to another? A truly dedicated fan has to buy a different console to play their favorite game? Non-truly dedicated fans play one of the hundreds of other FPS games on the market that work with their console of choice?
There is always phones and PC for "open platform" at least.
When (tech) corporations are too big, I can think of many ways it can cause destruction to society. Only have to look at Facebook in the 2016 election. And tech companies will continue to grow, and become too big to fail, unless reigned upon as with past crises, like with banks. Only this time, they have all your information, can surveil you, etc, and with AI pretty soon.
Sure. Becuase they aren't even a monopoly in the gaming space to begin with. If you could simply outspend to become a major gaming competitor, Amazon should be #1 by now.
It's clearly not that simple so I'm not concerned about Sony suddenly declining. And meanwhile, Nintendo sits in its own throne above Sony/MS as if it's watching two children on a playground.
> I can think of many ways it can cause destruction to society. Only have to look at Facebook in the 2016 election.
Do you really think a loosely historical shooter game most people use to compete against one another will be used to control information for national elections? I simply don't see it, but who knows?
Even if so: the big issue with that comparison is that your grandparents aren't playing COD. Mine were on FB around that time.
Then play a different game.
If at some point consumers have to pay more than they would in a more competitive market, how is that not harm? If you believe that this is a move that will result in less consumer choice and more possibility for MS to extract more $$$$, then you don't like it.
No one HAS to pay for entertainment. It's a pure luxury. There's tons of things you can do with your free time besides playing video games (let alone brand-new AAA console titles): go outside, take a hike, play an instrument, take up a hobby, socialize, learn to cook, write your own software, I could go on and on. You can even do other forms of entertainment with your time: watch a movie or TV series, watch YouTube, watch a sports game, actually play in a sports game, play retro video games on archive.org or in an emulator, etc. All these things compete with (modern Activision) video games for time.
Of course not. They'd just play another game, or watch a movie or something.
If someone wants to play video games, they can do it for free on archive.org, and all they need is a web browser.
Because it's not a material good that gets in the way of my ability to live. And I say that despite working in entertainment. If a dam breaks down or is owned by some coporate entity that means people may not have access to water.
If Disney owns every single videgame/movie/music/etc and I detest Disney... I find some other pasttime. Hell, maybe I just focus more on foreign media. Sucks for my work but I can find a new job outside of the Mouse. It's a relative minor impact.
>If at some point consumers have to pay more than they would in a more competitive market, how is that not harm?
that's my exact issue. If I can't pay for insulin, I die. if I can't afford COD 2025... what? I don't get to play a video game? Is that "harm" in the traditional sense?
> If you believe that this is a move that will result in less consumer choice and more possibility for MS to extract more $$$$, then you don't like it.
Me not liking something =/= harm. I don't like mushrooms but I wouldn't say they harm me. I just don't like the texture or taste.
How is Lina Khan "pro-foreign-corporation" ?
The last Call of Duty game crossed a billion dollars in 10 days
Microsoft is also getting ready to eat Steam’s lunch for a while on the PC side. Will that be allowed to go through?
Why not? What would it matter to the players on these consoles? Is demand for certain titles so price insensitive that Microsoft could then jack up the price by 100% and people would still buy them? Even if that's true (it's almost certainly not) the barriers to entry in the video game business are extremely low, so this would just create an enormous opportunity and pissed off consumers would jump to a newly created platform.
The gaming business, sure. The rest of Sony is still HQ'd in Japan and in fact manages many semi-needed and needed busineses, so there's zero chance MS buys Sony as a whole.
>Microsoft is also getting ready to eat Steam’s lunch for a while on the PC side
Didn't go too well last decade. Best of luck this time.
If Microsoft is ever in a position where a single merger will materially threaten to catapult them over Sony or Nintendo, then that would be the time to block the deal. In the meantime, I would prefer if the FTC doesn't kill off deals because someday, in the far distant future, the companies involved may be in a more dominant position.
If anything, blocking this deal does nothing but protect Sony's already dominant position from one of their sole competitors making up even a small amount of ground.
While Microsoft has promised to keep Call of Duty on the Playstation, I think it would be totally ok if they stopped doing that in the future, as any other Activision-Blizzard game; after all, Uncharted and Last of Us aren't available on the XBOX either.
Maybe both Microsoft and Sony could develop good products that consumers and publishers want to pay money for, rather than make unrelated, restrictive business deals!
I thought you wanted to put aside the superficial sports-team rivalries?
No casual consumer cares about the deals, they care about the games. If this makes better games, cool. If not, not cool. We'll see how history goes this time around.
All the other games built in the same engine by the same studio are released on Xbox and PC.
The producer of Bloodborne doesn't even work at Sony anymore. There's a multitude of reasons Sony is dragging their feet there, unrelated to aquisitions.
>If the Court was the final decisionmaker on the merits, it would likely find Nintendo Switch part of the relevant market. But it is not. Instead, on a 13(b) preliminary injunction, the FTC need only make a “tenable showing that the relevant market” is Gen 9 consoles. Given the plethora of internal industry documents and the acknowledged differences, the FTC has met its preliminary injunction burden to show the Switch is not included in the relevant market.
>Nintendo made “technical decisions to enable an experience that they thought their customers would want to have, and it’s the best selling console right now in the market. So when I — when people try to tell me it’s not competition — competitive, for any number of reasons, I don’t believe that because I just look at what’s selling
The PC gaming market is thriving thanks to Steam and indies.
Playstation is doing well. Switch is doing great.
Microsoft? Aside from providing Windows and DirectX, they're basically invisible. Xbox is just a cheap wannabe PC with no great games. It's a wonder they've supported it for this long. Maybe this acquisition gives them a fighting chance against Sony and Nintendo.
It's not like Activision and Blizzard are even particularly beloved, just pumping out endless sequels. They're steady but relatively soulless cash machines that don't really innovate anymore anyway.
Having Microsoft in control might improve their internal cultures, maybe make Blizzard games finally available on Steam, get more and Bethesda Xbox games on GeForce Now, etc. Maybe even make more games cross platform and with good controller support. Those all seem great. Meanwhile the real innovation will continue to come from indies while the behemoths just keep pumping out new graphics (which are often just Unreal anyway, which is again not Microsoft).
Microsoft is just too minor to be dominant in modern gaming, and Activision is a has-been that just keeps making filler titles. It's not some great loss to the industry. Now if someone acquired Valve, that would be a tragedy...
For now. Fortunes change pretty quick in the console world. One generation you are on top, the next you are struggling for second place.
MS buying Activision is bad. This gives MS a long term advantage. It signals to companies like Sony and Nintendo that they shouldn’t bother competing since they can never counter the buying out of huge publishers as they aren’t worth 2.47 trillion USD like Microsoft.
Has Microsoft has any major successes since Halo and Fable, years and years ago? They're desperate for games. Activision isn't going to suddenly make the dominant overnight. If anything, it would barely help stop the bleeding. Microsoft is so far behind right now it's not funny. I'd be way more afraid of competition dying because Microsoft gave up on it rather than buying Activision.
3rd party support plays a big part in a console’s success. MS is effectively buying out one of the largest 3rd party studios denying its competitors their support.
Buying up one of the biggest publishers though. What’s Sony and Nintendo, whose combined market cap is less than 7% of MS’s, suppose to do? I don’t see how allowing “big money Pay 2 Win without a fight” in anyway benefits the consumer.
How much of that MC is solely X-box and how much do MS , Sony, and Nintendo own of that respectively? MS studios has been struggling. Activision also has been struggling to land some hits and only recently with Diablo 4 they have got some relief. So buying Activision is not a golden ticket.
Honestly I would cherish the moment. It would be the most likely path to actually seeing HL3 released. The one time the filthy capitalists manage to do a good thing...
Valve to me has become a pathetic, rent-seeking platform owner. No clue why the gaming community still holds them in such regard. Linux support and not being publicly traded must be a massive deal for some gamers I suppose. The indie developers who launch on their platform are much more deserving of your attention & praise. The guys who developed battle bit have done more to improve my gaming experience than anything all of Valve has done since Portal 2 was released over a decade ago.
The thought of seeing HL3 actually released makes me a little nervous. When I look at great game franchises that had a large time gap before another sequel is released, it seems pretty rare for that sequel not to be terrible.
Yes, I want HL3 as much as anyone, but Alyx was pretty cool (still one of the better VR demos), the Steam Deck is innovative in its own way (and Aperture Desk Job is a fun HL universe spinoff), GeForce Now integration is really useful for some of us, Cloud Save is awesome, etc. Not to mention the sales... because of Steam sales and resellers (isthereanydeal.com) games are far more affordable than they ever were before, especially compared to the consoles.
The platform is WORTH paying rent for. If you want to see how bad it could be otherwise, it's not a hypothetical... Epic, Windows Games Marketplace (or whatever it's called these days), GOG, etc. are all far inferior in terms of ease of use, features, selection, pricing, etc. As someone who's been PC gaming since Lode Runner and Commander Keen, Steam is by far the best thing that's happened to it in three decades. It was even more transformative than 3DFX or DirectX in terms of the quality and quantity of games made available to gamers.
Heck, I’m still mad that Microsoft caused DeusEx 2 to be downscaled and dumbed down for the XBox.
Microsoft should be offering to to swear off cloud gaming entirely, they should be delighted. Game streaming is a lousy solution that requires enormous investment in specific infrastructure, it would be smart to ignore it and focus on their great subscription service that only requires a $500 Xbox.
Streaming games is an amazing convenience (and value) for those of us who don't want to be limited to an Xbox (poor graphics, limited mouse/keyboard support) but also don't want to shell out $3k for a RTX 4080 rig and all its associated noise and heat.
Where Stadia failed, GeForce Now, Luna, Shadow, and Xbox and PS streaming are still alive and well. And very useful!
I feel like it's only bad because it's still mostly a half-way house. Slapping existing AAA titles onto networked GPUs and calling it a day <> streaming gaming in my view.
Streaming gaming is actually a thing for me when someone builds a game using it that would absolutely not be possible using traditional technology. For example, an MMO so massive that the average player's network stack couldn't handle all of the events, so the only rational option is to render everything on some supercomputer and ship the final frames.
Consider also that you can get a lot of reuse out of a particular scene graph if multiple players are in the same one. Many such cases in streaming gaming. There are new, multi-server engine architectures that will not be possible until we start saying things like "this will be a streaming-only exclusive". That is probably the scariest proposal an MBA in any AAA studio could hear in 2023, so I don't expect you will see Blizzard or Sony playing in this flavor of traffic any time soon.
You can still do the AI screenscrape mouse bots, but there are clever statistical+active hybrid approaches that can catch those assholes too.
Even at 4k, I could play it and my views on game streaming have changed a bit. This was last year and I was using an i7 4770k based system. I can say pretty confidently that I found the local lag spikes from not having a high end gaming PC to be far more frustrating than the consistent 40ms of latency via streaming. Maybe it's because I'm getting older and don't have the same reflexes anymore, but I couldn't even really notice the latency via streaming.
I also think people are seriously overlooking the trend towards secure computing. What if you put a TPM in a video card? Then your video for the game stream can be encrypted and only gets decoded just before being sent to your HDCP compliant monitor. I think it's much harder to build cheats if the client side doesn't have any data to work with beyond video that gets decrypted as it's sent to your monitor.
Heck, even just a lack of local game data gets rid of most cheating, right?
This is a fantastic idea. If you can get the GPU swap chain secured all the way from the datacenter's GPU, even the laziest cheaters would be forced to go buy specialized hardware to strip HDCP, and then find a way to get it back into the damn computer. What a fuckin nightmare, eh? It's almost like a job at that point. This is a massive barrier to entry and would likely eliminate 99%+ of "insecure" gaming experiences.
Could you do something even crazier like an HDMI pass thru terminal that detects the "secure gaming frame" via some signature and is able to decode it on the output? Sell em to gamers for $49.99 like it's a new kind of premium TV box? Doesn't change the security angle (can still break HDCP on the other side), and makes it so the gamer doesn't have to replace any PC hardware or software. Plug the box, load the streaming game website, enter your serial # to bind to your account, and off you go. You'd probably incur some extra latency using the external hardware, but with ASIC/FPGAs you could keep it right at 1-2 frames.
[1]https://youtu.be/EWANLy9TjRc?t=594
[2]https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/05/how-the-xbox-one-draw...
in the same way that nintendo thought it was smart to ignore online gaming for some 15 years, sure. It was true for a while. Until it wasnt
MS isn't doing this because it's immediately profitable. They feel it's the future, and they can iron out the technical issues. They want to be in the forefront when that arrives instead of playing catchup.
Also, more obviously: Gamepass is on Android and Android isn't playing those games natively. It's another way to target the mobile market.
When, not if Call of Duty and many others Activision Blizzard has goes Xbox and PC exclusive, some people are going to get pies and eggs on their faces that is for sure. Also more consolidation of the gaming industry isn't good in the long run as it clearly opens the door for the big players to buy up even more assets. I can clearly see Microsoft buy EA, Sega and Square Enix now as a example.
Read up on developments in anti-trust in the last couple of years here:
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/
This is a 75 billion dollar event between two giant companies. They can pay for legal advice. That legal advice is well incentivized to predict how the case will go, and signed off on it. I assume MS has to pay a hefty fee if the acquisition is blocked for antitrust reasons, in addition to the time and embarrassment for all involved.
Therefore, the only cases the FTC should expect to see are ones where highly paid lawyers said "we will probably win this case". They might be wrong (and the FTC does seem unable to stop too many cases), but no matter how tough the enforcement gets, I would expect the FTC to usually lose at trial. The standards will just be applied pre-merger announcement (or probably pre-offer).
It might be an exciting couple of years when the FTC regrows its backbone and the lawyers assessing mergers have not caught up yet.
This places it among the fastest selling video games of all time (https://vgsales.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_fastest-selling_vide...) so yes, it’s just sour grapes from you.
What about after those 10 years? What about anything not Call of Duty?
Tim has recently said he has the full source code to the original and the design doc to the planned sequel...
Here’s a tangent:
The most popular sports leagues in the world are mimicked by people all over the world who play casual and team sports. The game itself is not proprietary.
Why can’t we make popular open source video games? If games were not owned by a single entity, anyone could host tournaments and leagues, more similar to baseball, basketball, and football. We could all play the same game.
OpenTTD is a cult classic and has no mass market appeal.
It takes thousands to produce the simplest video games.
Well, there are some. Check out Bitburner, Battle for Wesnoth, 0 A.D, etc.
The serious answer is that it's very hard work that requires a multi-year development cycle and a diverse variety of talent (design, art, etc) in addition to software engineering.
In addition, a lot of the tools and game engines used to create AAA titles are very expensive (and closed-source).
If you've got a team working on a game in just their spare time, it's going to be very dated by the time it actually launches.
I think a part of it is that the video game industry is good at absorbing a lot of people with talent. Game folks are at the intersection of arts and technology but it also isn't firmly in either camp, so people can be poached away fairly easily from open projects if they have a lot of talent.
Nothing is stopping anyone and there are a few. Nothing as big as COD but they exist. But I imagine the result will be similar to how traditional sports work. There will be one big definitive organization for a sport (let's say COD or this example), a few large minor leagues (some knockoff CODs that are fun but nowhere near as popular), and then some small pickup games in a field (the indie games some single dev makes that no one will find).
As a complete tangent, the Touhou series is famously loose in its license and many fans and companies alike have utilized the IP to make games and every other kind of media.
Unfortunately that’s just the standard. I mean look at AT&T.
AT&T assets are valued at almost twice of T-Mobile (~$400B vs ~$211B). AT&T is also ahead of Verizon (~$377B) by a nice margin. It’s also right behind Verizon in revenue, and ahead of T-Mobile ($136B for Verizon, $120B for AT&T, and $80B for T-Mobile).
Thats not really the case, no. Sony is the monopoly market leader in the console space right now.
It would be more likely to be illegal for Sony to do this, and it is not illegal for microsoft to do the same, because Microsoft is not the monopoly market leader in the console space.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_of_Duty
Let’s hope for Sony, and the sake of growth and creativity that by 2033, we are moving past CoD onto newer, fresher, better games.
Sony does not own Square-Enix.
How much do ports normally cost? How many units would they need to move to hit even?
The exclusive addressable market for each is definitely big enough to outweigh porting costs.
A good first step would be to ban exclusivity agreements, rather than mandate cross platform availability and to fine both parties heavily for suspected foul play.
Exclusivity agreements are a great example of something that is directly harmful to consumers. It removes choice, increases cost, encourages electronic waste, and leads to an inferior experience.
And that's not even getting into their game-adjacent deals (AMD, various cloud services) and the dozens of crossovers with the stragest companies (remember when Final Fantasy 13 released some Louis Vuitton fashion line?)
My point was that just releasing everything day one on xbox live cannot be a long term sustainable strategy as you're only making $15/month or whatever from that user, but it isn't dumping.
Either they will just break the deal and pay the fines (I'm not sure of the exact details of the punishment) or they will just give themselves enough technical advantage to make the competition versions unfavorable.
I mean, we don't question a Tiger when it eats someones face - it is just what a Tiger does. This is just how Microsoft and big business works.