He accepted the offer because he's legally required to work in the best interests of the ABK shareholders, not the ABK company.
Microsoft's acquisition of Activison Blizzard
- Thread starter Darth Vader
- Start date
It is clearly in the interests of Xbox fanboys, and that is all that counts to some.
But did he really, though? The deal was a great way out for him personally but IMO Activision could have got through the scandal easily with it's value quickly rebounding after games started hitting the market and selling. Legally, I think the shareholder case is a much stronger one than Sony's antitrust case.
You know damn well what I mean. We can literally read Sony's arguments against the merger in the UK version of it.
there is no sony's antitrust case. it is FTC, EU or CMA case against merger. it is not per se Against, it is more investigation about diminishing the opponents and monopoly.
The persecution complex on Team Green is strong.
Not that I ever saw, but Xbox fanboys are a special breed. As in hockey helmet at all times special is many cases.Did anyone called microsoft antitrust case against Nvidia and ARM merger?
It's fuzzy, but didn't MS create a new sub company called Vault, around the time of Bethesda purchase?
Yep, I remember that. Vaguely.
An article on it. Interestingly it's mentioned as a subsidiary, seemingly created so they could acquire Zenimax. After the acquisition, the Vault subsidiary was absorbed into Zenimax, now falling under Microsoft's ownership.
I'm guessing, reading the article briefly, that Vault was made so that MS could have Zenimax independent from Xbox Game Studios. It may've also been in pertains to Microsoft Gaming, which is their newly created branch, where we know Xbox Game Studios and Zenimax both operate under. And, from what was mentioned, ABK would as well if they are acquired.
The heads of all three are supposed to report to Phil Spencer.
Eh, TBF to Nvidia, they do have a near monopoly on discrete GPUs, but that's because they've managed to navigate that market better than competitors. They didn't ruin their own chances like 3Dfx or Cyrix; AMD's been trying to beat them for years but still have things to do in order to beat years of mindshare Nvidia have gained in the GPU market. And if you're also factoring in iGPUs, Intel leads Nvidia by a landslide in market share.
I don't know if Nvidia buying ARM would have been approved if they had Radeon's market share, because ARM is SO ubiquitous with mobile CPUs. Nvidia buying them would be like when Intel were the sole holders of the x86 license, which they were forced to eventually give licenses to companies like AMD. If Nvidia got ARM, they'd of been forced to do the same, most likely. That would've been a massive concession and one Nvidia probably would've been really upset about.
The whole stuff with monopolies is weird because AFAIK, regulators don't really care if a company has a monopoly in a space. It's how they got the monopoly that matters. Like, Sony have a monopoly in console gaming (they have more than 50% of the home console gaming market), but they earned that market share by having a product appealing to the majority of customers versus their direct competitors. They were never found guilty of price dumping, price fixing, predatory pricing etc. or illegal exclusionary contracts, stuff like that.
So I think while that may by some definition be a monopoly, it's a legal monopoly because it's just the customer market rewarding who they feel earned the most of their money, and that's Sony/PlayStation. Steam would fall under a similar definition: they own almost all of the PC gaming market in terms of storefronts, but that's mainly because they catered to a market when it was still young, grew it, and have built up loyalty through having what many consider the best storefront on that platform for gaming.
Microsoft has a history of buying their way to majority market share in some markets, or buying their way to huge revenue increases, by just purchasing smaller companies. In some ways that's what it looks like they're doing again, this time in gaming having bought Zenimax and now trying to buy ABK, and that method is probably more what would have regulators concerned rather than a scenario where Microsoft has majority market share or revenue over a competitor. If they earned that by selling a product that most customers deemed superior and therefore purchased over rivals, that wouldn't cause any issues. That's just capitalism at work.
Buying large publishers and folding their revenue streams into your own gaming division's though, in ways that could then be immediately leveraged for big market plays, deals etc. (but not necessarily "earned" by gamers buying more of your product leading to the revenue increases in the first place)? That could potentially be an issue.
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peter42O
Guest
The only difference is that when it comes to gaming, Microsoft doesn't have a monopoly in any aspect and chances are, never will. Sony and Nintendo are way too strong. Both would have to collapse and at the same time which is highly unlikely to happen any time soon if ever.
OP
OP
Xbox managed to fight tooth and nail for one full generation. They were on the up. They fucked up themselves. If they want to grow, all they have to do is release products ie games, and not fridges, nail polish, Oreos...
But that seems to be too much to ask from a company that has what, 25 studios already?
It's almost like even the purchases pre Zenimax were just intended to deprive the competition of content.
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peter42O
Guest
They fought tooth and nail for one full generation and STILL ended up last.
They've released 9 games including Age of Empires 2 later this month. Stop acting like they haven't released anything just because YOU don't like Microsoft, Xbox and/or their games.
bro. i was playing age of empires 2 in high school. they need new material that isn't super niche (and yes, aoe2 is niche especially nowadays)
imagine be proud of AoE 2 release
RTS is very much niche at this point. it wasn't back in the day, there was plenty of it and most was popular.
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peter42O
Guest
Okay. Fair enough. And I played Uncharted 4 5+ years ago. I played TLOU a decade ago. Don't act like you guys don't count these old remastered games because you do so only one side can do that? And even if you subtract AOE 2, Ghostwire Tokyo in late March will be #9. So the end result is still the same.