That would be a very fair outcome, I think. It would create a level playing field and so I suspect MS would rather walk away from the ABK deal than agree to such terms.
Microsoft's acquisition of Activison Blizzard
- Thread starter Darth Vader
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That would be a very fair outcome, I think. It would create a level playing field and so I suspect MS would rather walk away from the ABK deal than agree to such terms.
It would be a death sentence for Xbox, as divestiture usually means that the new entity is given whatever profit it generated for the parent company for the last few years as a startup fund.
Xbox has not generated a profit, ever.
I don't think divestiture is something that would ever be proposed though. At most, they'll be asked to keep COD multiplat or promise not to eat up any more publishers for awhile.
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My fear is that if this goes through the FTC, CMA and EU will put concessions on future acquisitions going forward, fucking Sony and Nintendo. I don't want consolidation, but the others should be able to respond to this somehow.
Why would the regulators punish Sony and Nintendo for Microsoft's buyouts? I can't see a situation where Xbox are the only ones allowed to make purchases.
he means that after xbox buys acti, regulators gonna tighten regulations to purchase bigger companies or publishers. so, it would ''punish'' sony and nintendo if they want to grow accordingly.
It would have to be more than keeping cod multiplat. CMA have mentioned sub sevices and just keeping cod multiplat would still give MS massive advantage in that area.
But who knows where CMAs head is it at, i think preventing COD being put on gamepass for sometime like 10 years and keeping content on par would be a good concession.
I wouldn't go that far; the division has generated profit in the past. However, as for net profit? I strongly doubt it's ever generated net profit for Microsoft, even during the 360 era (the only reason I think it might have done a bit for net profit then is because of Kinect, but that would've only lasted for a couple of years).
The brand as a whole, I doubt has brought very much in net profit. And whatever it's done there, is nowhere near the amount they'd of needed as a division to finance an acquisition like ABK of its own (which makes the pleas from people to simply focus on MS's place in console gaming as a reason to let the deal go through hilarious, because it's MS's financial leverage from the non-gaming sides allowing them to even attempt acquiring ABK in the first place).
Considering Microsoft stated in court documents Xbox has never been profitable, and considering the consequences if they were lying about that, I'm willing to believe that whatever profits it generated were cancelled out by R&D costs, production costs, distribution costs, licensing costs etc. The whole nine.
Would MS be limited to only providing a divested Xbox, to Xbox profits? Or could they provide additional startup funds, just from a legal POV? Otherwise I guess all that talk about the rumors they were going to spin the division off years ago was really code for killing the division off.
I think those concessions (or maybe, phrase them as stipulations) do need to happen TBH, and need to be agreed upon by global regulators and written into law in some form. However, I don't think it would impair Sony or Nintendo from making acquisitions they planned, if the stipulations make sense and are fair.
Let's be realistic: Sony & Nintendo are never going to purchase companies as big as ABK in terms of market valuation. I even doubt they go after companies as big as Take Two or EA. There are ways Sony & Nintendo can respond without acquisitions, such as buying large amounts of shares into 3P publishers, or buying independent developers seeking acquisition.
But I doubt regulators would try stopping Sony from, say, acquiring Square-Enix or Capcom, if they approve MS acquiring ABK. But let's say they put a period of 5 years for MS to be able to make any other acquisitions higher than a certain minimum (like $10 billion market cap, valuation or higher). And that's only for MS being able to enter an M&A process, completely separate from them actually getting the acquisition approved.
If Sony bought say Square-Enix, maybe you place the cut-off cap in valuation or market cap to nothing over $1 billion for a period of, say, 18 months. And again, that's just in terms of entering an agreement, not in terms of them actually getting approval for the acquisition to clear. And in all these instances it'd have to pertain to companies in any industry, not just gaming. So, Microsoft can't enter M&A agreements with X company with a market valuation higher than $10 billion for a period of 5 years, regardless what industry that company is in. So on and so forth.
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Which is ridiculous and laughable, as there’s no legal basis for them to restrict company B and company C in disciplining company A.
This is because of the fact that Microsoft is the world’s biggest software publisher and Activision is the world’s biggest games publisher. Xbox doesn’t matter in the legal calculus of the case, except peripherally.
Oh I know, I just doubt regulators would stop Sony from buying a much smaller pub like Square for example if they let MS get something as massive as ABK.
They literally can’t do that, from a legal standpoint. A case against MS does not allow for any industry-wide regulation of video game companies, and it’s honestly childishly silly to think it would be possible. It isn’t how things work.
Nvidia is just back at them for participating in blocking ARM deal, i bet.
They need to tell the cma and EU this since they seem to be the ones with actual teeth.
How do you know they haven’t? The EU and UK authorities don’t have to make any information public during their investigation process, so they’ve probably already heard from those companies.
That doesn't read like much of a concern on Nvidia's part, they're just talking about open access .. which MS has never opposed...
Also, google being opposed to anyone else about anti-competitive behavior will never stop being hilarious.
