Breaking: Microsoft to acquire Activision-Blizzard in near 70$ billion deal

chromatic9 said:
It is pathetic how they just buy up the industry after struggling to even beat Sony's small gaming division. people keep saying bidding war, this is simply MS buying the gaming industry so there's only one box for you to buy. Sony is not bidding for EA, Activision, Zenimax. All Sony can do is secure some tiny companies or individual exclusives to ride the wave a little longer.
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Not true. The games are always on PC too. And possibly through cloud streaming or whatever. And it's not like MS stopped Minecraft and Bethesda games on other platforms.

Now if you really want to see multiplatform support dropping, just look at any studio Sony buys who made games on many platforms. Once they buy someone all they make goes 100% Sony PS.
 
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MonarchJT said:
Gabe will not stay at the head for much long (imho) and I am convinced that if he sells to someone it will be to Ms. Ms will never let Epic take Steam market share on their owned OS ..given their incredible investments in the world of gaming.
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Would be a full circle move. Wasn't Steam looking to be officially supported by Windows as part of the base OS in the beginning?
 
This is a serious look at how big my dick is move on MS part. Not sure how bad this is but its definitely not good. Reports are that they are still going to publish games on Sony's platform but seriously why would you? Then again you do have to recoup some of that $75 billion.... wait they paid more for this shit than Disney paid for Star Wars. GOOD FUCKING LORD.
 
Imagine what MS will do with IP's like Starcraft, Warcraft, Call of duty, Diablo, WoW, etc.
A fucking game changer.
That 70 billion will be back in no time.
 
Rumpleforeskin said:
You don't pay $70 billion to release those games on another platform.
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Yeah not "pulling communities" means still supporting Warzone.

I could see MS continuing to support their "perpetual" cash cow on Playstation, while releasing their yearly games exclusive to Xbox/PC.

If Warzone ever gets usurped by Warzone 2, then that'll get revisited.
 
Halo
Doom
Call of Duty
Hearthstone
World of Warcraft
Warcraft
Starcraft
Overwatch
The Elder Scrolls
Fallout
Quake
Wolfenstein
Crash Bandicoot
Spyro the Dragon
Candy Crush
Diablo
Age of Empires
Forza

Only a few of the properties Xbox now owns.
 
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Microsoft pretty much owns majority of American 3rd party developers. This could be a checkmate especially once they start adding call of duty games to gamepass. Seems like in the future it's going to be the machine for First person shooters. A huge win for Xbox and PC gamers.
 
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SteelCurtain 59 said:
I just don't know what could be bigger than this that's even remotely feasible
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I guess this is why MS has been reluctant to invest in VR just yet... They are focused on buying huge publishers/devs first. Unless that includes Valve, which could solve their VR deficiency in one fell swoop. Among other things.
 
In the long term MS owning everything is the worst thing that could ever happened, we are truly fucked, Gaming is doomed.

But as far as near future goes Xbox n Gamepass gamers ll have some wild times with insane value proposition.
 
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DragonNCM said:
Imagine what MS will do with IP's like Starcraft, Warcraft, Call of duty, Diablo, WoW, etc.
A fucking game changer.
That 70 billion will be back in no time.
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They also don't have to make the 70 billion back, same with the 7 billion from Bethesda.

They bought assets, for a price.. that price is actually in line with the true "value" of Activision if you remove the scandal from them as it's a lower price than Activision was a year ago, market cap wise and gaming has done well in the past year. Buying Activision a year ago probably would have cost north of $120 billion.

Bethesda they "overpaid" but that's still a bunch of assets they own.

Those assets increase the value of MS as a whole, they are things MS can sell in the future if they want to.. but even w/o selling them.. the value of MS goes up.

You don't buy a $1 million house and become $1 million poorer.. you now have an asset worth that much, which if the market is good, will be worth more in a year.

The market, for gaming.. is good.
 
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splattered said:
I guess this is why MS has been reluctant to invest in VR just yet... They are focused on buying huge publishers/devs first. Unless that includes Valve, which could solve their VR deficiency in one fell swoop. Among other things.
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This is what i am afraid off, gaben is getting older and he isn't that healthy, he could nail PC gaming tommorow and buy valve up if gaben sells. And i bet he will sell if they offer him some absurbt amout of money.

It will be a absolute shit show for PC gaming in general.
 
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Kenpachii said:
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A huge chunk of Playstation's success financially is from Call of Duty, Madden, FIFA, and games like that, because it brings with it hordes of casual players that subscribe to PS Plus.

Gonna be interesting to see if their growth slows down in the next year, as I assume casual players are gonna start to lean Xbox now.
 
Current landscape of gaming is trash. I hate to be negative, but MS throwing money at everything won't save the Xbox.

PlayStation being cocky and complacent has allowed this to occur.

Console gaming looking bleak IMO. Been trending this way.

Makes me appreciate Nintendo a lot tbh.
 
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I don't think this is the last of the big purchases from Microsoft. They are likely eyeing Take Two, EA, or UBI once this one closes.

If the Bethesda acquisition wasn't enough this should give a clear signal to Sony that they need to spend some capital here or MS will eat their lunch.
 
Huge news for sure. I don't think making CoD an exclusive is going to have as big an impact as some people in this thread think, 10 years ago sure, but CoD has gone downhill big time the last few years. I was a huge CoD guy, clocked countless hours into MW2, BO and MW3. B02 was still decent but this is where I felt the franchise started to go downhill. I think the last CoD I bought day one was Ghosts and that's only because it was a launch title for PS4, but I quickly dropped it for BF4 which was phenomenal, to the point where for the first year, my PS4 was just a BF4 box. Sadly BF has steadily been going downhill since BF4 as well. None of my friends who were big on CoD still play it either. Warzone is still pretty big but I doubt they would shoot themselves in the foot by taking a huge chunk of the market away from a F2P game. We'll see though I guess...
 
0neAnd0nly said:
Current landscape of gaming is trash. I hate to be negative, but MS throwing money at everything won't save the Xbox.

PlayStation being cocky and complacent has allowed this to occur.

Console gaming looking bleak IMO. Been trending this way.

Makes me appreciate Nintendo a lot tbh.
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Yes Xbox is dead, its all over for Xbox 🤣
 
thicc_girls_are_teh_best said:
Well after the VR thread I could prob do that to win some points with Team Green for the upcoming Console Representative Presidential Election 😜

Jokes aside, like I've said a ton of times I won't cry about an acquisition or drag my feet in the mud as if that'll change anything. If a deal's gonna happen, it's gonna happen. That said, these deals always tend to follow the books, have consenting parties, and don't infringe on anyone's civil or human rights (Acti's reported workplace problems aside).

And like with the Sony acquisitions, I'm an optimist. These deals tend to do a lot of good, and for this one I'm actually more interested in what it does for the Acti/Blizzard teams. Not just in getting some of the problematic stuff out of some of the studios, but freeing a lot of them up so they can work on IP besides COD. And of course it'll have a lot of benefits for MS too, not just for traditional gaming but mobile too...same as a lot of Sony's acquisitions including whichever ones they do in the future.

...hopefully kept that to 100 words, I save the pages for thread OPs 👍
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We shall see

I would only be optimistic if this leads to there being no exclusives at all, and Microsoft/Sony come to some sort of arrangement like the Blu-Ray days before for movies

It almost seems like it's too big for it to not maybe force Sony's hand into allowing GamePass, and possibly Sony releasing their service on Xbox

I'd honestly love it if that happened and think it would be good for the industry

These games are too big and expensive to be walked off
 
Negotiator101 said:
Yes Xbox is dead, its all over for Xbox 🤣
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Not at all what I meant. I have been in the industry and respect all 3.

What I mean is that MS buying everything won't make the Xbox #1 again. They just haven't had a solid run in a while of producing hits from inside the MS umbrella. Not consistently at least. I didn't mean save as a literal term. I think MS knows this, which is why they started the whole "cross play" and "pc hybrid" drum last generation.

I just don't like that all major studios and publishers are getting bought out by the few major players. I really miss the ingenuities of the PS2/ XB —> Ps3/ 360 days.

I just don't like the outlook. It isn't a negative sentiment towards XB. Not here to console beef.
 
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chromatic9 said:
It is pathetic how they just buy up the industry after struggling to even beat Sony's small gaming division. people keep saying bidding war, this is simply MS buying the gaming industry so there's only one box for you to buy. Sony is not bidding for EA, Activision, Zenimax. All Sony can do is secure some tiny companies or individual exclusives to ride the wave a little longer.
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While Sony might not have nearly as much money as a Microsoft, Apple, etc., they are far from being broke, and they could've purchased Zenimax if they really wanted, without taking out loans. They could even do so with a Take-Two, even post-Zygna purchase, also without taking out a loan (though they'd deplete the vast majority of their cash-on-hand to do so).

Also where are you dudes at every time Tencent or especially Embracer Group buys up yet another studio? MS does something like this once every few years and the world is supposedly doomed. Tencent and Embracer make acquisitions regularly throughout the year and most people pay them no never mind. They're all acquisitions; scale doesn't matter in the world of business. If you have more money, you can buy bigger.
 
RoyalLaFlame said:
But MS now has COD. MS has Warcraft. MS has Halo. MS has Doom. MS has fucking Overwatch. MS has Fallout. MS has Starcraft.

These franchises are very well known. Sony does have quality games, but they need more now. As good as GoW and TLOU are (fucking amazing games), but are still not the same league as a COD or Overwatch.

All I'm saying is that if Sony keeps doing what they are doing, they will become the third console that people might buy. They need to move, that's all. Expand, cover more genres, stop raising prices, and create even more franchises that associate with your brand.

True, they sell well. But how much did Playstation win by having COD on their platform? Why did they spend so much money on exclusive maps and all that stuff, if it didn't help them? Now they lost it. They can't be happy with just two or three of their games selling 10-20 million. And these games sold during a time where this acquisition didn't take place. How many of them were on PS4? Will those PS4 owners jump to PS5 after this? Or will they go to Xbox? Saying that a game sold 20 million doesn't mean it will continue selling if the landscape has changed. Many PS4 owners might jump ship because of these acquisitions. And it's not correct to assume that people bought a Playstation console mainly for the exclusives (unlike Nintendo).


The PS5 is having a really good momentum, created by their PS4 performance. Good exclusives and they ended the generation with a bang, this won't change for a while. But when people start seeing COD exclusive, Warcraft, Overwatch, I'm pretty sure the interest on Xbox will rise exponentially. Sony is already realizing this, that's why the Project Spartacus is a thing. They need to find a way to keep the momentum going, to keep that interest high. And consoles sold isn't the only thing they care about. You can buy a PS5 and an Xbox Series after, and if you don't spend money on your PS5 then it's no use to Sony.

Regarding the subscriptions numbers, I guess you are right, but this will strongly depend on how Sony will approach this.

All I want is Sony to react, to do something. Man, I'm having a blast with my PS4 Pro, but these acquisitions have been pushing me to the Xbox side. Like me, there's a lot of people for sure.


They have the money for expansion. Don't worry about it, they don't need to compete directly with MS on studio acquisitions by buying a big publisher or creating a subscription service. They need to expand their teams, and focus on diversity and not being greedy cunts like raising their games prices.


EDIT: Holy shit, my Mac is getting old. Writing all of this took me longer because of how slow my Mac was acting.
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Sony games were selling more than the MS ones before the Zenimax deal. If Zenimax games sold around 50M on PS4 being generous, they weren't even a 3% of the over 1700 million games sold for PS4 a few years ago (plus more games that will be sold until it dies, so very likely will end being a way smaller percent).

So the Zenimax deal was going to have a little impact on PS, specially considering that part of these sales were due to featurings and exclusivity or marketing deals with Sony, that Sony now will make with other publisher as they could do with the spare games from Activision that Sony supported, as recent Crash or Tony Hawk. The Blizzard games are mostly PC stuff that didn't affect PlayStation.

PS4 sold almost 120M consoles. Every CoD game sells around 20-30M copies, and a good chunk on PS, let's say around 10M. So less than 10% of the PS4 users buy CoD. And in case CoD leaves PS (something very likely) we should see which % of them would leave PS because of that.

Part of these sales were also thanks to marketing partnerships with Sony, that one will be assigned to other companies, so part of these sales will be compensated with this. And PS has been growing during years, so this growth will compensate the remaining.

So the impact on PS hardware and software sales won't be that important, they will barely notice it. PS will continue selling the double of the amount of consoles than Xbox does, and will continue selling a shit ton of games more for it than Xbox does. Sony's gaming division makes more revenue than the Xbox gaming division+AB, and this is counting that now AB gets a ton of revenue from PS which pretty likely won't be there in the future.
 
jshackles said:
Potentially includes these IPs:
  • Blur
  • Caesar
  • Call of Duty
  • Candy Crush
  • Crash Bandicoot
  • Diablo
  • DJ Hero
  • Empire Earth
  • Gabriel Knight
  • Geometry Wars
  • Guitar Hero
  • Gun
  • Hearthstone
  • Heroes of the Storm
  • Hexen
  • Interstate '76
  • King's Quest
  • Laura Bow Mysteries
  • The Lost Vikings
  • Overwatch
  • Phantasmagoria
  • Pitfall
  • Police Quest
  • Prototype
  • Quest for Glory
  • Singularity
  • Skylanders
  • Solider of Fortune
  • Space Quest
  • Spyro the Dragon
  • StarCraft
  • Tenchu
  • TimeShift
  • Tony Hawk's Pro Skater
  • True Crime
  • World of Warcraft
  • Zork

I'd love to see new entries into things like True Crime, Prototype, Singularity, Blur, etc. Activision was sitting on a pile of unused IPs. PC gamers would welcome a revival of the old classics like King's Quest, Caesar, Phantasmagoria, Police Quest, Quest for Glory, Gabriel Knight, Laura Bow, and Zork. Pitfall could be the next Uncharted clone. On a personal note, I'd love to see a Guitar Hero revival.
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Does Activision own Sekiro?
 
Karonoth said:
Bullshit. Nothing could be bigger than this other than some major corporation buying Sony/Nintendo or something like that.
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I'd say only Take Two out of the big publishers is as big as Activision. EA is small fry compared to Activision, their biggest game is FIFA which Microsoft would still have to release on all platforms.
 
fallingdove said:
I couldn't agree more.

Fuck consolidation, especially when the intent is to exclude certain customer populations.
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So you're basically saying "fuck consoles, I'm just going to build a high end PC and continue to support Sony and Microsoft by buying all their games." So they lose out on what... $500 once from you while you continue supporting them in other ways?

This way of thinking makes no sense... People might as well just say "I don't like this. Games are dead to me. I quit."
 
Rat Rage said:
Provided this deal goes down...

Please someone explain to me one thing: How the fuck does Microsofts Xbox business make any sense? I mean, isn't the goal of a company to actually make money and be profitable?

If they buy them for 70 billion, then that's money that they have spent, not made (duh).

In 2021 Activion Blizzard had a net income of 639 million U.S. dollars. In order to just break even (provided Activison Blizzard continues to generate a net income of 700 million to 1 billion every year), they would need 70 years to do so.
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I'm sure that they look at Activision as an asset that has value. There are a lot of ways that MS can increase the value of that asset, both in gaming and beyond (TV deals, etc.) just like they can with Zenimax.

Plus, both of these were profitable businesses.
 
DragonNCM said:
Imagine what MS will do with IP's like Starcraft, Warcraft, Call of duty, Diablo, WoW, etc.
A fucking game changer.
That 70 billion will be back in no time.
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To make back that 70 billion,
Microsoft would have to sell 1.2 billion video game copies at $60,
or have an average of 60 million Game Pass subscribers a year for 10 consecutive years.
And that does not account for the cost invested in making new games or Xbox Live revenue.
 
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