Microsoft's acquisition of Activison Blizzard

[Cool hand luke]

This guy seems very neutral was tweeting live everything that was happening. Although he dipped out for a bit so some bits of the trial may not be in his tweets.

https://twitter.com/MActon93

That's a good one but sadly incomplete.

Thoughts typed as I read through:

• FTC accurately preempts the red herring claim that the issue is not simply about full foreclosure, while Beth Wilkinson seemed unprepared to counteract partial foreclosure claims in her opening statement.
• Microsoft shows legally privileged docs and seems to be banking on Jim Ryan's internal confidence boost statements to be a victory for them despite again not addressing partial foreclosure strategy MS could employ and without the context that it was written at a time predating the offers MS tried to push onto them - that Jim refused them later is a testament to their inadequacy and the irrelevance of his comments then to his stance now.
• Did Sarah Bond say COD will come to Nintendo for the first time or is the tweet author editorialising? She's either ignorant or lying and I hope she was called out for it.
• FTC laying the groundwork that the deals struck were opportunistic. Bundling in Xbox 1st party with ABK into the Nvidia etc. deals should count for nothing as they could have done this absent the acquisition.

 

[AshHunter216]

Seems like the FTC's lawyer is better than the CMA's lawyer was.

Also, media are ignoring everything and focusing on the Jim Ryan email.

 

[Plextorage]

Also, media are ignoring everything and focusing on the Jim Ryan email.

But it won't do shit. It is well known what Phil Spencer said after that

 

[ksdixon]

I'm far too stoned atm to follow everything at once. Is there a summery bullet pointed list of all the bits? Like these are the 4? odd games turned exclusive, this is the context/timing of Ryan's cod email. Please.

 

[FatKaz]

According to Benji that was a solid day 1 for ms. I think i entered a different universe. Of course not a single good argument why he thinks that.

Instead he says this




Well done Microsoft astroturfers you did your job well.

 

[Gediminas]

According to Benji that was a solid day 1 for ms. I think i entered a different universe. Of course not a single good argument why he thinks that.

Instead he says this




Well done Microsoft astroturfers you did your job well.

Some said here, that he is not m$ shill

 

[gokuss4]

These ms shills are so funny lol
The ftc exposed ms lies
And the give the cma lots of ammo too

 

[FatKaz]

Some said here, that he is not m$ shill

Honestly I don't think his a ms shill. Just surrounded by shills so fell for their talking points.

He says people who think the FTC did well are in the minority, well of course that is the case, it's no damn secret the shills are out in force to support the deal on places like twitter.

 

[AshHunter216]

According to Benji that was a solid day 1 for ms. I think i entered a different universe. Of course not a single good argument why he thinks that.

Instead he says this




Well done Microsoft astroturfers you did your job well.

That's a pretty pretty weird take. I thought Benji was more reasonable than that.

I guess the pr strategy now is gaslighting.

 

[Cool hand luke]

What a red hot shit take from Benji. He must've stuck his head in the Reee echo chamber to come to that conclusion.

Fuck that small minority shit. That's the way we paint supporters of the deal - they're the minority amongst gamers, top regulators, and devs.

I forgot one crucial point where MS was decimated. The FTC got Sarah Bond to admit they had to cut an unusual revenue share to keep COD on Xbox, which in and of itself is an admission of the criticality of COD as an input for a high end gaming console, despite MS' protestations otherwise.

 

[Danja]

That's a pretty pretty weird take. I thought Benji was more reasonable than that.

I guess the pr strategy now is gaslighting.

Benji is an Xbox guy, he's just acts neutral because he wants to build a brand.

 

[Cool hand luke]

FTC v. Microsoft: all the news from the big Xbox courtroom battle

Microsoft won its case against the FTC on June 11th.

www.theverge.com

Maybe?

Reading through and he's unfortunately editorialising as much as I do. The "bombshell" email from Jim Ryan is a real nothingburger, and if the rest of his editorialising is true, it's very strange to me that MS continues to focus on Sony in their defences because Sony has nothing to do with the deal being blocked everywhere. The FTC, EU and CMA all share cloud gaming concerns and none of them are collaborating with Sony.

What it does do is publically betray their obsession with competing with and beating Sony at all costs.

“I think we’ve seen that while content is absolutely important to a strategy, it really isn’t a durable advantage that others can enter a field and others can build a content library relatively quickly.”

His example is Disney Plus competing with Netflix — where he argues Disney has been able to ramp up its library quickly.

Lolwut. Disney was able to do this by monopolising Marvel and Star Wars content (sans Spiderman) and locking it to its platform. Disney had to buy Marvel, Lucasfilm, and Fox (in a hugely controversial merger that even Reee says was anticompetitive) to make it happen.

This is an own goal if the FTC's citation of the Kimberley-Clark ruling that states 'mergers where competitors must merge/engage in acquisitions to remain competitive is an argument against an acquisition, not for one,' is true and the judge agrees.

 

[Loy310]

This reminds me about BD vs HD DVD situation 15 years ago. Avsforum was biiig HD-DVD shill. Paid actually. Banned everyone who was against it on the forum. BD actually won in the end

Yeah, i remeber that. BD got disney exclusively and dudes thought after that HD DVD stood any chance.

 

[Gods&Monsters]

According to Benji that was a solid day 1 for ms. I think i entered a different universe. Of course not a single good argument why he thinks that.

Instead he says this




Well done Microsoft astroturfers you did your job well.

And some people were arguing Benji is not a MS shill. He's always doing damage control for them.

He gives some good stats sometime but tbh you can just get them yourself. He's just tweeting what you can read yourself on a slide. Useless reporter.

 

[Airbus]

 

[CloudStrife]

Yet this still completely ignores the CMA.

I swear if MS bulldozes this through, I just can't see it going well for them in the long run. At all.

Pretty much this. If they forcefully push this through, how will the world view future acquisition attempts from them? Almost feels like they are betting the farm on this acquisition working out for them.

 

[Cool hand luke]

The more and more I read the more it looks like a slam dunk case for the FTC. Microsoft offering Sony 10 years of COD doesn't mean shit for future competitors in the high end console space, which regulators also mean to enable. Would MS offer the same to a new entrant or withhold it? An independent ABK would at least ensure the new entrant has a fair chance to acquire what MS themselves have now established is critical content.

We'd be living in a bizarro world if MS got away with this.

 

[Sleepy Brown]

Lol bro u been wrong every step of the way. You went silent after your prediction didn't come to fruition. It's dead, deal with it!

I got banned for saying the truth. That the deal will go through. That's the reason why I "went silent".
Wait and see.

 

[Ezekiel]

I got banned for saying the truth. That the deal will go through. That's the reason why I "went silent".
Wait and see.

What makes you so sure?

Seems to me like they got a pretty big hurdle with the UK blocking the deal.

 

[Shmunter]