It's free market capitalism, who is anyone to say who can and cannot be purchased especially when it's agreed upon by both parties. It's asinine to advocate for this crap.
PlayStation: Xbox's Call of Duty offer was "inadequate on many levels"
- Thread starter Eternal_Wings
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UK CMA, for one
Governments used to regulate large transactions to maintain an open and fair market and free capitalism as opposed to crony monopolistic capitalism.
It's asinine to defend a trillion dollar company that accumulated its fortune through the normalized practice of extortionate software pricing. Puts those complaints regarding 70 bucks games in perspective, doesn't it?
You're not making any point, as usual. Sharp as a bowling ball you are
They haven't done anything, and they're not going to do anything, and even if they try they'll get sued into oblivion and lose.
They have no legal position or standing to block this sale. It may put Microsoft into the leading position in the games industry however it doesn't stifle growth elsewhere nor does it severely impact competitors.
You guys are betting on a long shot, you want it to happen which is disgusting. The greatest part of it is even if they tried to block it they would inevitably fail.
I really don't see what you have to gain by holding your views. Xbox will be getting the Activision games anyway, regardless of whether the acquisition goes through or not, but whatever, you do you.
It's just sad to see you spend so much time, energy and money on gaming, which means you clearly have a passion for it, but yet could support such a massive corporation in systematically destroying so many beloved franchises for millions of other gamers. It's truly baffling, but again... you do you.
Oh everybody knows the deal can't be blocked.
They're just expressing why it should be blocked.
Because it is disgusting.
Ten bucks @DynamiteCop supported the Borg and not the Federation Alliance.
As a result of this guess where Activision's games are coming back to? Steam. The deal hasn't even gone through yet and they've already bettered the game market.
Microsoft is not only bringing back better ways of acquiring their games, they're bringing in a new way to consume them. This is positive on all fronts as far as I'm concerned.
Obvious response would be GamePass. This acquisition adds loads of games to console and PC.
Activision games were getting released on Steam long before the buyout. MS had nothing to do with that.
Imma go with the FTC, CMA, etc since, you know, it's part of their job.
Wow, so much denial and false justification for our hobby getting ransacked and bled dry of every ounce of passion left in it.
"Better ways of acquiring their games"... everywhere and anywhere but PlayStation.
"new ways to consume them"... and old ways like PlayStation are thrown to the wayside.
That shit is cold as a motherfucker.
Excellent posts. These break down pretty well the environment these massive acquisitions from MS are spurring on the macro side of things. It's decidedly different than, say, Embracer Group buying these developers or publishers because Embracer have no console or gaming service of their own to push, so they would have every single intent to support the open market as it currently exists and either bring all those games to as many consoles as possible or sign exclusivity agreements for select games on select platforms for some period of time.
I guess all I can say is a personal perspective on MS intending further acquisitions: I'm not in support of it, at least for a few years. Said a few times already but, they (Microsoft) really need to show they can produce some real results with what they already have, before trying to go out for yet another publisher. Deathloop, Psychonauts 2, Outer Worlds, and Ghostwire Tokyo don't count because those are all games which were already very far along and had very little creative guidance or input from Xbox management whatsoever. They just threw those teams their money to fund the games through to the completion line.
It's games like State of Decay 3, Starfield (mostly), Hellblade II, Avowed, Outer Worlds 2 etc. that will be those tests in the short term, games like Project Midnight through the mid term and stuff like TES VI over the long-term, that will show what non Halo/Gears/Forza games fully developed under Microsoft's ownership will actually be capable of. Will those games be better than they would've been if those studios stayed independent? Will those games be industry-defining in any way WRT gameplay, graphics, storytelling, or be leaders in their respective genres? Will any of those games be any of those things?
We're going to need like 5 - 7 years in order to really see that over a stretch of time and, if MS can accomplish that, THEN I wouldn't have too much a fuss if they decided to buy another big publisher like Sega, for example. But wanting to jump out and eat more when they haven't even finished the plate they started in 2018 is just greedy IMO. Just because they have the money to buy more, just because they may even have the legal support to do so by agencies like DOJ/FTC etc., doesn't mean they should.
It’s only free, till it’s no longer free.
Free market means competition, which leads to innovation & competitive pricing.
A single entity that has too much control stifles competition, pushing existing players out & making it impossible for new player to enter. This is why there are anti competitive laws to ensure a fair playing field. Similar to how sports clubs have salary caps - so the big ones cannot simply amass all the top players and kill the sport.
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That's not a balanced proposition. An exclusive cod for XB/GP would be taken away from the larger player base ratio
I was gonna say he's like Bob Arum or Don King (boxing promoters), but your comparison works better
Man, I'm debating if I even wanna do this. You already said you don't read anything
MS getting into a leading position (in terms of annual gaming revenue) by BUYING UP PUBLISHERS AND INTEGRATING THEIR REVENUE INTO XBOX'S, is exactly the kind of "competition" agencies like the DOJ, FTC, CMA etc. are against. Any company that uses their financial resources to buy their way into bigger revenue percentages & streams, in ways that lock out competitors in a fair & open market, rather than earn that increase in revenue through putting out superior products that customers end up buying and investing into with their money, IS anti-competitive and up for anti-trust investigations!!
When Sony bought timed exclusivity or marketing rights for, say, RE Village, NOTHING prevented Microsoft from either outbidding them for those rights, or for buying marketing rights to RE 4 Remake. But guess what Microsoft chose to not do? Notice the key word there: chose. As in, they had the option to get those marketing rights, exclusivity deals etc. If they'd of had to pay a bit more, then that's their fault for their console selling less. The fact remains though, the option was still there. Microsoft simply decided not to do so.
In fact, they've yet to prove that Sony in any way prevented 3P partners from negotiating deals with Microsoft for 3P exclusivity, timed 3P exclusivity, marketing deals etc. It's the 3P publishers and developers who draw up the initial terms of the deals, that can cover a single game, a group of games, a time period etc. But they aren't just ONLY taking these offers to Sony, or Sony aren't locking those 3P developers/publishers to ONLY negotiate those deals with them. If they are, Microsoft have failed at demonstrating that with any proof, and if they have such proof, they better get ready to use it sooner rather than later. And IF in fact Sony are doing such things, THEN I maybe can see this whole thing from Microsoft's POV because yeah, that type of stuff would make it extremely difficult for MS to ever have an even playing field in securing such content as exclusive to their platform.
But ultimately, this is all stuff up to Microsoft to have figured a plan for, and it's not like they weren't making deals of their own with the 360. Other users have already mentioned this ITT, you're just not paying attention to what they're really saying. And quite a lot of MS's exclusivity deals during 360 were harsher than almost any of the stuff Sony did during PS4 generation. Even crazier is when some folks act like what Sony's been doing is in any way comparable to being the worst ever in this industry. Those people obviously don't know about Nintendo's history during the NES era, where they outright not only limited 3Ps to how many games they could even publish per year, but completely prevented them from releasing ANY games for non-Nintendo consoles! I don't see Sony doing that, they've never done that, and they're never going to do it.
But actually, here's the thing about people justifying these massive acquisitions as the only suitable response, and why that's laughable. Again, go back to 360. When Sony were getting locked out of multiple Western AAA IP that gen, getting sloppy hand-me-down ports, being outright ignored in some cases and getting curb-stomped in NA and UK, what did they ultimately do? They turned to their...first party. They focused on upping the variety and quality of their games. They focused on pushing their games to be the best they could be, and that's how they were able to start regaining mindshare and market share. That's what helped feed into the PS4 when that system launched.
Microsoft could've done exactly the same thing. In fact, they seemingly were going to do so; even tho they purchased a few 3P devs, most were small teams and weren't going to shake up feelings on the other side one way or another. But at some point, MS saw that several of the games from both their original 5 studios and the 2018 pickups weren't progressing fast enough or looking very good, saw that 3P publishers just were not wanting to put their games into GamePass Day 1, saw they didn't really have much of a unique factor going into this gen as a result, and decided they needed to do something drastic. That's why the purchased Zenimax and are now attempting to buy ABK.
Had Microsoft taken Sony's approach, Scalebound wouldn't of been cancelled. Phantom Dust reboot would've been released. Bleeding Edge would've gotten more time. Everwild might've already been released, same for Hellblade II. They would've done more for Flight Sim when they brought it to Xbox consoles (why no Crimson Skies quest expansions? DLC? C'mon!). I've already mentioned this to you before, but I'm repeating it again in hopes you're reading this time. All Microsoft really had to do...was just focus intently on their first party games during that 2017 - 2021 timeframe.
That, though, would require patience, and talent at the leadership level to cultivate, curate, and guide the studios to be bigger and better. The exact same type of leadership that has always been at question with Xbox and is still up to debate as to if it's going to be any good. And that was just with five studios. Now it's 30+ studios; is Matt Booty going to push the XGS teams to be better than they would've been outside of Microsoft? Is Pete Hines going to push the Zenimax teams to be better than they would've been if they stayed 3P? Is the guy who'll manage the ABK teams going to do the same for those studios? Is Phil Spencer going to ensure those three are, in fact, pushing/encouraging/supporting those teams to be better than they've ever been before?
Because let's be honest, there isn't a lot to go by to suggest that will in fact be the case. Halo Infinite is dead. Forza Horizon 5 is a great racer but it's almost so similar to 4 that it could be called a DLC expansion. Gears is just kind of hanging on, it's a bit better than Halo but not by magnitudes. So what does this really entail for the other games? We haven't had anywhere near enough time to know, so until then MS just kind of have to hold a small L and have those doubts persist until results finally begin clearing them away.
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