Unless you're the CEO of activision. If you're bobby kotick you got 40 million reasons to want to be bought out, since you're gone either way.
Breaking: UK's CMA investigation has provisionally concluded that "Microsoft’s proposed acquisition of Activision could result in higher prices, fewer
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That’s the funniest misconception in all of this, the people who think Kotick isn’t out on his ass when this deal dies.
Between the abuse investigations and being responsible for a failed merger, he won’t be long for his desk when this is wrapped up.
I’ll be watching that sawed-off runt’s cv go up in smoke after this deal goes up in flames with great interest.
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While true, it's also before MS knew what the concessions actually were. Reckon MS expected them to be light but the CMA called their bluff and went for the jugular instead.
Yes. I assume MS already was expecting something like that but maybe only with consoles, because cloud gaming it's still a tiny portion of gaming that still is a decade or two of maybe -or maybe not- becoming something relatively mainstream or really meaningful for the gaming industry.
I think CMA overvalued the cloud gaming market and the importance of CoD in consoles, but they had the real market data, internal numbers, estimates and opinions from related companies so they must have a more accurated opinion based on factual data than us.
Who knows, maybe now MS upgrades their behavioral remedies to make CoD available forever to rival consoles and cloud gaming platforms in a convincing way without later turning it into a match 3 game and release a separate Xbox exclusive 'unrelated' Duty Calls FPS.
Didn't MS say they want to keep CoD multi and bring it to more players and more platforms? If it wouldn't be yet another PS bullshit quote from MS, then they could make it for real and the CMA wouldn't be changing their plans and ideas that much.
Also, MS said to the regulators that to keep CoD exclusive wouldn't make financial sense to them so they planned to keep it multi, etc.
Spencer also said that CoD wasn't that the most important thing of the deal for them, that the acquisition had more to do with growing on mobile thanks to King or something like that. In that case, I think they shouldn't have a big issue divesting CoD or making it available for real to the rival consoles and cloud gaming platforms.
In any case, I think MS will figure out some way to make the regulators happy and complete the acquisition even if they have to make some sacrifices. I assume MS alread had planned and studied all the options, so I assume that CMA, UE and FTC won't surprise them and already expected something like that and have actions ready.
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@Yurinka for Sony it's not just about having COD available on PS; Sony knows that if MS owns the IP, they will never be able to get marketing rights to COD again after the current contract expires. Not saying Sony are entitled to those marketing rights, just looking at this from their POV. And they also know what goes with marketing rights (because they've seen it happen with not just PS4, but the 360): exclusive cosmetics, XP bonuses, maps, guns, early beta and campaign access etc. All of which have helped massively boost COD's presence on the consoles with the marketing deals historically (360, PS4, PS5).
COD's biggest audience is in the West, particularly US & UK, the two markets where Xbox is relatively strong in even during their bad years of the XBO (for example, XBO apparently sold roughly ~ 32 million in the US; I don't think PS4 sold that many more in the US beyond that number, even if they did > 2:1 globally). It doesn't take a lot to figure that if MS get marketing rights to COD in the US & UK, and go for the jugular to throw it into Game Pass Day 1, Sony's going to figure they lose those markets, and they're two of the largest in the industry.
Even if MS offers Sony the privilege to put COD in PS+ Day 1, that does nothing for Sony for three key reasons. 1: the cost for Sony to get PS+ Day 1 rights may end up being prohibitively expensive. 2: Sony leaves a LOT of money on the table in lost direct sales revenue due to putting the game into PS+ Day 1, when they rely on the games revenue for their bottom line WAY more than Microsoft does. 3: Putting COD on PS+ Day 1 will inevitably create the expectation by many PS gamers for even MORE big 3P AAA Day 1 releases, and even 1P AAA Day 1 releases (live-service and non live-service) into PS+ Day 1, at the current sub prices. And if Sony starts going by that game, they start training their audience to not buy games Day 1, which can be catastrophic for their bottom line if they have to stop putting big AAA Day 1 games into PS+ (because they keep losing tons of money), and direct sales don't pick up again to reverse that.
Those three things are the key reasons why I don't think the deal passes with behavioral remedies. MS said what they said about COD to regulators to try appeasing them with behavioral remedies, but at least the FTC and CMA have seen beyond that and don't agree with that approach. We'll have to see where the EC lands, but I'm expecting similar pushback to that approach.
COD's biggest audience is in the West, particularly US & UK, the two markets where Xbox is relatively strong in even during their bad years of the XBO (for example, XBO apparently sold roughly ~ 32 million in the US; I don't think PS4 sold that many more in the US beyond that number, even if they did > 2:1 globally). It doesn't take a lot to figure that if MS get marketing rights to COD in the US & UK, and go for the jugular to throw it into Game Pass Day 1, Sony's going to figure they lose those markets, and they're two of the largest in the industry.
Even if MS offers Sony the privilege to put COD in PS+ Day 1, that does nothing for Sony for three key reasons. 1: the cost for Sony to get PS+ Day 1 rights may end up being prohibitively expensive. 2: Sony leaves a LOT of money on the table in lost direct sales revenue due to putting the game into PS+ Day 1, when they rely on the games revenue for their bottom line WAY more than Microsoft does. 3: Putting COD on PS+ Day 1 will inevitably create the expectation by many PS gamers for even MORE big 3P AAA Day 1 releases, and even 1P AAA Day 1 releases (live-service and non live-service) into PS+ Day 1, at the current sub prices. And if Sony starts going by that game, they start training their audience to not buy games Day 1, which can be catastrophic for their bottom line if they have to stop putting big AAA Day 1 games into PS+ (because they keep losing tons of money), and direct sales don't pick up again to reverse that.
Those three things are the key reasons why I don't think the deal passes with behavioral remedies. MS said what they said about COD to regulators to try appeasing them with behavioral remedies, but at least the FTC and CMA have seen beyond that and don't agree with that approach. We'll have to see where the EC lands, but I'm expecting similar pushback to that approach.
I think the fate/terms of this deal all come down to whether or not Microsoft can convince regulators that the licensing deal they keep touting is good enough to alleviate all of their concerns. If the CMA are aware of the factors you mentioned, I doubt all but the harshest of remedies would persuade them. There seems to be so many ways to legally skirt around behavior remedies to give yourself an unfair advantage without technically breaking the terms that they just dont seem good enough/enforceable enough to be a solution in this case, which is why I'm a lot more on the fence about what will happen with this deal.
I think Sony already planned to move away from marketing CoD to market their own shooters because they seem to be working on a ton of 1st party/2nd party since several years ago.
Years before MS started negotiations to acquire CoD in December 2021. Even the Sony negotiations to acquire Bungie started before that. I'm pretty sure MS saw that coming and thought that the only way they had to compete against the Sony of the future was not only buying Zenimax, but also ABK.
So I think the reaction move was MS going after ABK, not Sony doing other stuff. Now that MS is trying to acquire ABK, what Sony will try will be to try to secure they continue having CoD with same conditions than in Xbox at least until they released all most of these shooters they are working on. And if possible, forever.
Basically all multiplatform AAA games are more played on PS, including the popular shooters, not only CoD. If these players know that CoD continues on PS, none of them will move away from PS even if MS gets the marketing rights. And pretty likely most of them -including the most of the around of 10% of PS MAU who buy CoD- won't move to Xbox or PC even if Sony loses CoD somewhere in the future.
Sony could lose what, 2 or 3%, maybe 4% of their current MAU if CoD goes exclusive? This is nothing for them specially when they will grow now a lot after getting rid of the chips shortages.