Microsoft's acquisition of Activison Blizzard

AshHunter216

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8 Jan 2023
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Patcher keeps telling lies to xbots, and they keep eating them:



Season 6 Episode 601 GIF by Paramount+

Pachter went from a simple hack to a straight up fanboy.
 

Gods&Monsters

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21 Jun 2022
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Next step is for sony is to work on their own cod competitor and possibly put marketing deals into xdefiant, they have all the time in the world to do this now.

Time to slowly choke out COD and put abk in the dustbin.
Ubisoft XDefiant and EA Battlefield QUICK before MS gets them. GTAVI marketing for 5 years and DON'T RENEW COD IN 2025.

Let Lulu and Kotick choke.

7jjlg9.jpg
 

Swift_Star

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2 Jul 2022
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Next step is for sony is to work on their own cod competitor and possibly put marketing deals into xdefiant, they have all the time in the world to do this now.

Time to slowly choke out COD and put abk in the dustbin.
It would be good, yes, if they could replace CoD with something else.
 
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Dabaus

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Assuming Activsion comes crawling back to sony for marketing deals, sonys about to extend that contract for decades so nothing like this can happen again and go back to getting a thirty percent cut.
 
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Yurinka

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21 Jun 2022
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You are so off base it's not even funny. Microsoft not only owns the second biggest cloud provider in the world, they also have a bigger cloud market share than Sony.
You forgot to mention they also own an Xbox fridge, it's as relevant to this topic than MS being a cloud provider.

Sony has their own cloud gaming platform that doesn't need MS at all, and their own servers that doesn't need MS at all. In fact, some time after the acquisition ends it's something that Jim Ryan could consider: to remove them access or to highly increase MS the money they ask for allowing them to use them.

But since Xbox cloud gaming is a PS Now ripoff, for the existance of Xbox cloud gaming MS has to pay Sony to get their approval for using Sony's cloud gaming patents. So if desired Sony could block MS access to the usage of these patents, meaning that MS cloud gaming market share would go to 0%.

And who cares if MS has more cloud gaming market share in UK, globally Sony has twice the game subbers and generates way more money from game subs than MS. And game subs are only 7-9% of the global market revenue and cloud gaming must be a very small fraction of that. Cloud gaming market isn't relevant at all.

Assuming Activsion comes crawling back to sony for marketing deals, sonys about to extend that contract for decades so nothing like this can happen again and go back to getting a thirty percent cut.
As of now, pretty likely Activision will continue on Microsoft's side appealing this decision in the court during a few years. Until then, once the marketing deal ends with Sony, I think pretty likely will sign them with MS instead but without signing console exclusivity.

Even if the acquisition ends failing totally even after the appealing, I think Activision will side with Microsoft since MS will have paid them several billions as compensation for not having been able to close the acquisition.

Also, Sony won't want deals with Activision because won't trust them. Sony won't want to invest in brands that may end locked by their direct competition in console/game sub/cloud gaming markets. Sony willl prefer to invest instead in their own shooters they are developing at Bungie/Firewalk/Deviation/etc.
 
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OP
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Satoru

Satoru

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Also, for those that don't understand why blocking a merger on a small market is a good idea vs waiting where it will all fall:
  • Small nascent markets drive a lot of innovation. They are fast-paced, things change rapidly, and competitors come in thick and fast
  • Most of them will die, and the market will slowly consolidate around a handful of competitors
  • This is the point where the market will reach maturity, innovation will slow, and prices stabilise/start to increase
  • Preventing a massive corporation like Microsoft from not only gobbling up tons of IP that was to be available for multiple competitors on that market (as stated by the CMA), but also from consolidate even more services into their own cloud offering, which is absolutely massive and spans multiple market sectors, they are preventing the entry barrier for this market to be increased.
  • If you want to think of a market whose entry barrier is super high think no further than the console market itself. You can only compete if you start a company with a massive amount of cash, which limits the entry barrier to already established multi-market conglomerates.
There, that's it. Anybody that argues against whats on the above hasn't lived on planet earth for more than 5 minutes and has absolutely no knowledge of basic economy.

Finally, the CMA didn't block based on a console SLC because they thought Microsoft wouldn't have the incentive to foreclose Sony by removing CoD, for example, since that game is such a massive money maker. The problem is, IMO, that they ignored that Microsoft has done this before with Bethesda, and that a company that spends 70B in a publisher, which is ~65% of its main competitors own market cap, is beyond losing money just to foreclose a competitor.
 
OP
OP
Satoru

Satoru

Limitless
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You forgot to mention they also own an Xbox fridge, it's as relevant to this topic than MS being a cloud provider.

Let me treat like as if you're very dumb.
  • Microsoft owns the second biggest cloud service provider (Azure)
  • Microsoft owns the biggest Cloud Gaming Service (XCloud)
  • Microsoft controlling IP that sells tens of millions of copies per year to stick them in their cloud service impacts not only the gaming market, where they would control the price of admission for that IP, but also the Cloud market, since they would be able to move hundreds of millions of users that rely on online services to enjoy ABK products, to their own cloud service provider, boosting its numbers.
The cloud SLC not only causes issues in the gaming landscape, but also the cloud landscape overall
 

Nhomnhom

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25 Mar 2023
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All the CMA needs to do now is ask for MS to make those Gamepass numbers public and how they want to make money out of it and MS will give up on the acquisition.
 
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FatKaz

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16 Jul 2022
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All the CMA needs to do now is ask for MS to make those Gamepass numbers public and how they want to make money out of it and MS will give up on the acquisition.
Hopefully we get some leaks from the FTC.

They are asking for a lot of docs, which the judge approved.
 
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