Microsoft's acquisition of Activison Blizzard
- Thread starter Satoru
- Start date
Seems like there's an update to this whole charade. Since the link below is pay walled, I'm copying the text from reddit:
Microsoft’s Offer to Sony for Call of Duty Includes Subscription Service
Regulators in the US, UK and EU are concerned Microsoft’s bid for Activision could lock up game serviceswww.bloomberg.com
That's some major bullshit right there. COD entries already joined PS+ in the past.
Furthermore, if it's about day 1 releases, then neither Activision nor Sony have been attracted by the idea of losing day 1 sales.
Not even talking about that whatever MS offered, surely wasn't for free, but probably in exchange of the expected sales losses.
What we have now is a test to Microsoft, how committed are they to attempting to get this through?
This drags it out until possibly 2025, which is excellent for Sony... if they come away with an enforced 10 year or more contract, that brings them up to 2035 or later. By then, who knows how relevant COD will even be or the rest of ABK for that matter?
Microsoft also have to pay several billion over the time that the deal has not passed, so that is an added sting in the tail and on top of that it keeps Microsoft from buying more for the next few years. While Sony can make 'moves' freely...such as large investments and partnerships and discuss possible acquisitions that would be held until the ABK deal is resolved.
In essence, I think this deal was a huge mistake for MSFT and has them tethered to it for basically all the generation and possibly into the next one. While Sony can pump out PS5's and focus on making games and if they are clever, they will start having shows like PSX and start some outreach to their fans and build the trust and loyalty up the the best they can be and that will stand to them next gen too...
This drags it out until possibly 2025, which is excellent for Sony... if they come away with an enforced 10 year or more contract, that brings them up to 2035 or later. By then, who knows how relevant COD will even be or the rest of ABK for that matter?
Microsoft also have to pay several billion over the time that the deal has not passed, so that is an added sting in the tail and on top of that it keeps Microsoft from buying more for the next few years. While Sony can make 'moves' freely...such as large investments and partnerships and discuss possible acquisitions that would be held until the ABK deal is resolved.
In essence, I think this deal was a huge mistake for MSFT and has them tethered to it for basically all the generation and possibly into the next one. While Sony can pump out PS5's and focus on making games and if they are clever, they will start having shows like PSX and start some outreach to their fans and build the trust and loyalty up the the best they can be and that will stand to them next gen too...
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I don't think MS will necessarily need to pay billions if the deal is delayed. After the final cut off they have to pay a couple of billion, sure, but that's only if an extension is not agreed. Of course extensions need to be accepted at least by the ABK board, but if they are... I don't see a problem. I don't think ABK will try and take it down, as the offered price is really high compared to their historical valuation.
I have a feeling this deal will be dead before the trial date, carrying through to the bitter end is too potentially damaging to Microsoft for them to risk another tangle with the FTC, especially with the current climate of tech companies being seen as untrustworthy and needing to be brought under control.
Well I think Hoeg was saying the 3 billion was split into parts that were payable on dates if the deal had not gone through.... so could be 1 billion if it isn't gone through by the end of 2023. But maybe I am misremembering....
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Yep, that sounds about right:
I'm not a lawyer, but the above seems to show that if no extension is negotiated then MS has to pay ABK a sum of 3B, pretty much.
One difference would be that the COD games that were Plus giveaways were only made available for a month. Activision got a ton of money for those games being offered up, and the economics for ongoing availability Vs a one-shot deal are probably not as instantly lucrative to them.
Monthly PS Plus games get the publisher a set payment per download, much like digital sales of the title would, while being added to the subscription library for the higher tiers would get a licensing fee that would be pre-negotiated and may be less per download.
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Yeah all they are saying is Sony has an option to put the games on psplus than they will charge done ridiculous price
That is what is commonly know as a "Fuck off" estimate.
You say you're willing to sell something, but price it so insanely high that nobody would ever agree to it. Technically, it IS for sale, but realistically, it is not going anywhere. The bonus is, should someone actually agree to that price, you have made too much money to care.
It doesn't benefit sony at all to put cod on ps+ so of course they rejected the deal. That's microsoft's strategy, to actively harm sony's financials using an unsustainable pricing strategy. Even Activision itself admitted recently that they would never even consider putting cod on a subscription service day 1.
Imagine for a second that you have supermarket A and supermarket B, both sell steaks at $5.99/lb because the meat comes from a supplier and costs $2/lb wholesale. The average customer buys 10 lb of meat per month, or $60 worth of meat. Supermarket B says "we have a new subscription shopping service, pay $15/month and you get unlimited* meat!" (*10lb of meat that we pick) Then goes around and buys the biggest meat suppliers, despite losing money on it. Imagine thinking thats anything but anticompetitive behavior designed to drive supermarket A out of the business.
Imagine for a second that you have supermarket A and supermarket B, both sell steaks at $5.99/lb because the meat comes from a supplier and costs $2/lb wholesale. The average customer buys 10 lb of meat per month, or $60 worth of meat. Supermarket B says "we have a new subscription shopping service, pay $15/month and you get unlimited* meat!" (*10lb of meat that we pick) Then goes around and buys the biggest meat suppliers, despite losing money on it. Imagine thinking thats anything but anticompetitive behavior designed to drive supermarket A out of the business.
I just love the idiotic argument that Xbox being in third means MS shouldn't be restricted in doing whatever uncompetitive money-throwing they feel like, as if it is somehow unfair to MS that they aren't on top.
Biggest concern is MS having a monopoly on western RPG’s and FPS’s
This isn’t just about games, as much as MS wants to paint it that way.
They want all software to be turned to subscription business models, and they want to be the ones who sell the subscriptions.
The only reason they didn’t throw in the towel on XBox after the Bone is because Phil convinced Nadella that the history of gamers bending over to pay for Live Gold showed he could force everyone into a paid subscription for Xbox full stop.
That’s why they bought up all the Team Green indie devs like Double Fine, and why, when that produced no results, they went up to buying publishers. It’s ok if their own studios have jack shit to show for the last five years of work if the companies producing games are all behind the green wall.
And nothing they have ever done with XBox has been morivated by profit, or the experiment would have been dead after one generation.
That is the picture the regulators are looking at now, not just Xbox Vs PlayStation.
Especially since Microsoft is in 3rd because of gross incompetence. More resources, studios and money than PS and Nintendo and they are still in 3rd because they squander what they have and make fcking terrible choices
Look at the Red Ring of Death.
MS knew that the switch to lead-free solder would present challenges, and designed a system board that SHOULD have been fine, then Sony announced their switch to Bluetooth wireless controllers, and Ballmer demanded the 360 have wireless controls. Did they go Bluetooth? No, they went with a proprietary solution that had to have multiple chips to support it.
Those chips had to be shoehorned into a completed mobo design that was already at risk of thermal failure, and the change was made months after the board design had been finalized, but before testing equipment for the factories was finished.
If anyone DOESN’T immediately see what a disaster they were setting up, NOBODY in their right mind changes a board less than 6 months before full production, for good reason. The first iPod was prototyped in late 1997 for a product that launched in 2001, so they would have something they absolutely KNEW was reliable and performant.
Microsoft was so desperate that they revised the motherboard 3 months from shipping date to hastily add chips to a finalized design, just so they wouldn’t appear to be behind. And the consumer paid, and lots of them were so fucking stupid that they fell for MS’ lies about failure rates and bought replacements at full price.
And then there’s the hilarious reason for calling it the Xbox 360. Sony was launching PS3, and Ballmer didn’t want people to think MS was behind by releasing Xbox 2. JFC
I was thinking about this too, sony can kind of move freely behind the scenes while all of this is happening. Id hope theyve invested in square enix, invest more in fromsoft, expand their teams they already have, and im sure theyre going scorched earth on third party deals and contracts too. And worst case scenario for sony the deal goes through they still get cod for 10 years.
Sony has an investment in SquEnix and has 14% of From directly, as well as owning somewhere around 30% of Kadokawa Publishing, which owns the majority of From.
The big thing SONY has going for them with Japanese publishers is that they provide more technical support to third-party devs than the others do, while not handcuffing them to contracts that will hurt their potential income from other platforms or treating them as competition.
That argument, and the people who use it (especially MS), conveniently ignores the fact that Sony earned their market share. It didn't happen overnight but is the end result of a sensible strategy - of which one of the keys is releasing great games. After seeing all that's gone on recently with the acquisition debacle, I doubt MS will ever get the memo about this. Blaming Sony for their inability to dominate the market is just so pathetic given all the mistakes they've made and are making.