Microsoft's acquisition of Activison Blizzard

nongkris

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14 Feb 2023
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Square Enix would be such a useless pointless acquisition that I don't know why people continue to obsess over it, the company is basically exclusive to Playstation already, and nothing they make sells that well to keep it exclusive. It would just invite pointless regulatory scrutiny.
 

AshHunter216

Banned
8 Jan 2023
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Square Enix would be such a useless pointless acquisition that I don't know why people continue to obsess over it, the company is basically exclusive to Playstation already, and nothing they make sells that well to keep it exclusive. It would just invite pointless regulatory scrutiny.
I think the worry is that if Sony don't secure them, Microsoft will buy them and take them away.
 
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Cool hand luke

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14 Feb 2023
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I think the worry is that if Sony don't secure them, Microsoft will buy them and take them away.
That was indeed the worry. Now, however, Microsoft has been neutered. The CMA has blocked them from making any and all acquisitions through the language used and precedent set by this decisive block. Sony can coast safely along and the market can decide, increasingly, to abandon Xbox until it's shut down.
 
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Nhomnhom

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25 Mar 2023
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They wouldn't sell to MS. I don't see ANY japanese big publisher selling to MS. They don't like americans. They wouldn't sell to them.
I could see Sega doing it.

Square Enix would be such a useless pointless acquisition that I don't know why people continue to obsess over it, the company is basically exclusive to Playstation already, and nothing they make sells that well to keep it exclusive. It would just invite pointless regulatory scrutiny.
It makes some sense since Sony has so few Japanese devs working for them and their IPs have a huge untapped potential, not only for games but also for cross media stuff. Nintendo is turning into the next Disney and Sony needs some big IPs of their own too.
 
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Sircaw

Pro Flounder
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20 Jun 2022
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One of the worst Xbot shills out there. So bad he was banned from Gaf.

I spoke to him a few times in private, he actually has a good sense of humor, unlike our very own @Sleepy Brown.

Joe Biden Reaction GIF by CBS News
 

Loy310

Veteran
14 Aug 2022
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Era is desperate and thinks Prime users having access to Fortnite is some kind of counterpoint to the CMA. These people have no idea of what is going on, do they? They're still having a hard time grasping the reasons why the deal was blocked lmao.
Funny too cause the Amazon deal is exactly the type of market dynamic and feature that the cma is trying to protect.
 

AshHunter216

Banned
8 Jan 2023
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What thread? Xbox?

They want MS to buy everything and Sony is suppose to just sit there and not try to buy anything? That fanbase is comical.
They prefer a situation where Sony watches helplessly while MS buys multiple publishers and pulls all of their games off of Playstation going forward. Luckily the reality appears to be different from their fantasy. I remember when all of this started, they tried to gaslight us by arguing that MS should be allowed to buy multiple publishers because Sony had timed exclusive deals and timed deals do more damage than publisher buyouts due to some flawed logic they used.
 

Swift_Star

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2 Jul 2022
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They prefer a situation where Sony watches helplessly while MS buys multiple publishers and pulls all of their games off of Playstation going forward. Luckily the reality appears to be different from their fantasy. I remember when all of this started, they tried to gaslight us by arguing that MS should be allowed to buy multiple publishers because Sony had timed exclusive deals and timed deals do more damage than publisher buyouts due to some flawed logic they used.
Oh I remember that Walltext meltdown…
I’m quoting here on spoiler.

It's hardly just a couple of moneyhats though. Sony have been signing exclusivity deals relentlessly all last generation, and they've done them largely unanswered as a result of both Xbox having a weaker market position making it cheaper for them to do, but also because the practice of signing them is widely accepted for them, but not for MS.

There's a reason why something like Final Fantasy sells so disproportionately on PlayStation... it's because these exclusivity deals reinforce (or in some cases disrupt) audiences on a given platform, and as time goes on that becomes more difficult to undo. Sony's had Final Fantasy in their corner for a long time now, going back to Final Fantasy 7, but the series DID eventually come to Xbox day and date beginning with Final Fantasy XIII, and was starting to cultivate an audience within that ecosystem that had a desire to play JRPGs. That Final Fantasy 7 Remake got moneyhatted (for what is still an uncertain length of time in regards to Xbox) isn't a random coincidence. This type of moneyhat is a precisely targeted one to cause an entire genre of game not be viable on the platform.

There are some IP that within their sphere carry so much weight that they cause ripple effects across the genre. Sony's Street Fighter V moneyhat effectively buried the entire fighter genre on Xbox, because nobody invested in that genre was going to opt for a console that lacked Street Fighter.. and as a result other titles that weren't (or at least I'm not aware of being) moneyhats would start to skip the console also, because if nobody that's invested in that genre is opting for that console, why should the smaller, more niche IP target that console either, right?

So yes... timed exclusives very much can be used to push a competing platform out of the market, and Sony was routinely targeting games that would be the most crippling across the spectrum. Whether that be Final Fantasy (and possibly Persona?) in the JRPG space, Street Fighter in the fighting game space, the year (or two) long exclusive content deals for Destiny, and the exclusive map content for COD in the FPS space, etc... the goal was to make it so Xbox as a platform wasn't a viable choice for the majority of the market. And quite frankly, it was working and working well... hence the situation in 2016 where MS bowing out of the market entirely was a very real possibility.

When that didn't occur, Sony looked to land killer blows right away at the start of this generation. Hence the announcement of Final Fantasy XVI's timed exclusivity ahead of the consoles being released, and the murmurs of a whole slew of others to be revealed in time. And the general response here was just that it was a foregone conclusion that PS5 would just continue to build on PS4's momentum largely unimpeded. And considering the shit MS took back in 2015 when they dared to land a single comparable exclusivity deal with Rise of the Tomb Raider, that avenue of retaliation was clearly not available to them. Look how quick the clarification of the duration of exclusivity of RoTR was forced out of MS and SquareEnix, and then contrast that with Crash N'Sane Trilogy, Nier Automata, Final Fantasy 7R, KOTOR remake... or any of countless other deals where their eventual Xbox release was happily left vague as hell. That's how we're here today, because MS were either gonna commit fully and land some true heavy blows that made a real difference to the current landscape, or they were inevitably going to see their platform marginalised to the point where they had to drop out.

If people didn't want to see the level of escalation we're seeing now today... well, they shouldn't have been so comfortable commending the ever increasing frequency and severity of deals Sony was making to cripple their primary competition. "Final Fantasy sells 80%+ on PlayStation anyways, so they may as well" and by extension "of course it makes sense for game X to skip Xbox, because the audience is all on PlayStation". Well, congrats... now they won't all be. The rampant desire for the glory days of PS2-era domination has led us here, and so cries about how unfair it is ring hollow.

Cringiest “poor trillion dollar company” meltdown take ever.
 

AshHunter216

Banned
8 Jan 2023
4,556
7,628
Oh I remember that Walltext meltdown…
I’m quoting here on spoiler.

It's hardly just a couple of moneyhats though. Sony have been signing exclusivity deals relentlessly all last generation, and they've done them largely unanswered as a result of both Xbox having a weaker market position making it cheaper for them to do, but also because the practice of signing them is widely accepted for them, but not for MS.

There's a reason why something like Final Fantasy sells so disproportionately on PlayStation... it's because these exclusivity deals reinforce (or in some cases disrupt) audiences on a given platform, and as time goes on that becomes more difficult to undo. Sony's had Final Fantasy in their corner for a long time now, going back to Final Fantasy 7, but the series DID eventually come to Xbox day and date beginning with Final Fantasy XIII, and was starting to cultivate an audience within that ecosystem that had a desire to play JRPGs. That Final Fantasy 7 Remake got moneyhatted (for what is still an uncertain length of time in regards to Xbox) isn't a random coincidence. This type of moneyhat is a precisely targeted one to cause an entire genre of game not be viable on the platform.

There are some IP that within their sphere carry so much weight that they cause ripple effects across the genre. Sony's Street Fighter V moneyhat effectively buried the entire fighter genre on Xbox, because nobody invested in that genre was going to opt for a console that lacked Street Fighter.. and as a result other titles that weren't (or at least I'm not aware of being) moneyhats would start to skip the console also, because if nobody that's invested in that genre is opting for that console, why should the smaller, more niche IP target that console either, right?

So yes... timed exclusives very much can be used to push a competing platform out of the market, and Sony was routinely targeting games that would be the most crippling across the spectrum. Whether that be Final Fantasy (and possibly Persona?) in the JRPG space, Street Fighter in the fighting game space, the year (or two) long exclusive content deals for Destiny, and the exclusive map content for COD in the FPS space, etc... the goal was to make it so Xbox as a platform wasn't a viable choice for the majority of the market. And quite frankly, it was working and working well... hence the situation in 2016 where MS bowing out of the market entirely was a very real possibility.

When that didn't occur, Sony looked to land killer blows right away at the start of this generation. Hence the announcement of Final Fantasy XVI's timed exclusivity ahead of the consoles being released, and the murmurs of a whole slew of others to be revealed in time. And the general response here was just that it was a foregone conclusion that PS5 would just continue to build on PS4's momentum largely unimpeded. And considering the shit MS took back in 2015 when they dared to land a single comparable exclusivity deal with Rise of the Tomb Raider, that avenue of retaliation was clearly not available to them. Look how quick the clarification of the duration of exclusivity of RoTR was forced out of MS and SquareEnix, and then contrast that with Crash N'Sane Trilogy, Nier Automata, Final Fantasy 7R, KOTOR remake... or any of countless other deals where their eventual Xbox release was happily left vague as hell. That's how we're here today, because MS were either gonna commit fully and land some true heavy blows that made a real difference to the current landscape, or they were inevitably going to see their platform marginalised to the point where they had to drop out.

If people didn't want to see the level of escalation we're seeing now today... well, they shouldn't have been so comfortable commending the ever increasing frequency and severity of deals Sony was making to cripple their primary competition. "Final Fantasy sells 80%+ on PlayStation anyways, so they may as well" and by extension "of course it makes sense for game X to skip Xbox, because the audience is all on PlayStation". Well, congrats... now they won't all be. The rampant desire for the glory days of PS2-era domination has led us here, and so cries about how unfair it is ring hollow.

Cringiest “poor trillion dollar company” meltdown take ever.
That's the one. What's even worse is how many people on there clapped and cheered for such a ridiculous and biased take.
 
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