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[Mibu no ookami]

We are not talking about a timed exclusive deal like FF where the devs get less sales from the other platform and the bigger platform gets the deal for less money. It stays the same.
Let's say Sony pays 100 millions for the marketing rights and some exclusive content and Microsoft offers the same. You would usually stay with your longterm partner. But if that partner ruined the deal of your life, you might change the partner. That's all i was saying. In the end it's of course all about business and the most money.

They aren't going to get the same deal with Microsoft, because it wouldn't be 100 million, it'd have to be 200, 300 million to make up for the lost revenue on PS5....

 

[mrmustard]

They aren't going to get the same deal with Microsoft, because it wouldn't be 100 million, it'd have to be 200, 300 million to make up for the lost revenue on PS5....

What lost revenue? Do you think people suddenly don't buy it anymore when Sony has no deal?

 

[SneakersSO]

I was thinking about this - not the thread, but the outcome of a failed acquisition.

First things first, I still expect this acquisition will go through - the question is how much compromise MS will make to get it over the line. The aftermath will just be more arguing about who "won"… <yawn>

But let's assume the apocalypse - the deal is blocked, MS don't like the compromises required and they pull out.

1. MS owe ABK money. The amount owed depends on when the deal is cancelled but its in the billions. The longer MS clings on, the more they have to compensate ABK when it collapses. Either way, MS is paying a decent sum to ABK.

2. The time is lost - over a year of both MS and ABK in limbo, unsure how or where to invest and what their product line up would look like. In an industry with AAA turnaround times exceeding 5 years, losing that time in limbo is very costly. Making and implementing a new plan will take time - probably this gen is over for MS before they get round to anything.

3. Phil. I think he has to go - nevermind the embarrassment, but he has even commented that he was not sufficiently aware of regulator considerations surrounding this deal. Almost anyone here on this forum could have told MS that a deal for ABK would be a majorly difficult thing to pull off and require a lot of compromises. Phil seems to have thought they just handover the cash, take the content exclusive to their platform and count the customer money they rack up from the docile masses just accepting the changes.

It's difficult to imagine a less competent head of xbox. Perhaps he's actually in the pay of Apple or someone.

If it were me, I'd get rid of Phil - his final service to MS is being the scapegoat for this - identify a replacement, restructure the Xbox division and conduct a kind of "soft relaunch", reinvigorated and under new management. They've got the resources to do well in gaming - they need to execute, not look for silver bullet acquisitions.

I posted a pretty detailed summary on what I believe will happen regardless of whether the deal goes through or not, so I figured lets keep the discussion going on someone else's posts on this.

So, lets talk point 1. From my knowledge, MS hasn't really minded how much Phil has asked them to invest into his vision of what Xbox could be, or rather, the service-ification of Xbox. The time table for evaluation that Phil and MS leadership has operated on is that it would take about a decade or so, and they are giving him that decade, which puts their evaluation timetable for all of this for sometime in 2027. Now, it has to be said that no one company wants to hand another company a few billion dollars over and get nothing for it, but they have had LOADS of wasteful spending thus far and MS hasn't batted an eye. For the larger US businesses, having a merger blocked will simply mark a sea-change in the corporate world; the impact of this block will spread to other sectors besides gaming.

As for point 2 - nothing much will change for ABK. Part of the reason the sale even happened was a combination of the civil suits and labor investigations that were happening on the back of missing release target windows for big titles and revenue targets for titles that were releasing. Since then, CoD has had a strong bounce back thanks to the initial reception of Modern Warfare 2 and Blizzard seemingly rediscovering how to ship some titles, but it seems the impact of both of these big releases ABK management was banking on is going to wind up being far more muted than they'd like (we'll really only see how this is gonna go sometime next year when we get the revenue totals for how well MW2 and OW2 do this year).

As for Phil, the corporate culture within MS is such that dropping Phil will be seen as a massive vote of no confidence in Xbox's direction and the entire division itself. Much like they did with Bonnie Ross, they will create a narrative that pushes him out and promote a typical MS sycophant from within to take his place. I've worked both with and for MS in the past, have loads of colleagues who have as well, and the number 1 thing that gets you ahead there is being a kool-aid guzzling corporate cheerleader. Its part of the reason why they are almost always out-of-touch when it comes to selling products to general consumers and not enterprise consumers.

Honestly, given that we are likely going to see one of the biggest investment shifts ever witnessed into AI in the next 2 years, I imagine MS will take the majority of the funds saved should this deal get blocked and re-invest all of it into pursuing AI applications and R&D in order to get them to start catching up to the big players in the space. We are on the advent of this tech completely changing our society the way the internet did in the 90s/2000s. MS is not where they should be relative to the bigger players. They are gonna seek to catch up and hard this year.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

So it's bad for consumers to pay $10 for Gamepass and getting new games included..........rather than pay $75 for each game? Your logic stinks.

It's bad for consumers to have less choice on where CoD ends up

It's bad for consumers that MS will lead by taking a loss on GP content only to increase it later on

It's bad for consumers that CoD quality will go down over time since the studios won't put in max effort to increase sales via quality, they will game the system for GP downloads and subs instead

Your logic sucks and is entirely shortsighted

 

[bitbydeath]

The hoops some of you will jump through to shit on anything that can be construed as a positive for MS, it's really sad but also very entertaining. Here we have one of the top MS execs saying it's profitable but he must be lying because he didn't provide some random journalist detailed internal documents and tax filings and bank information

There's no hoops, it's just how English works. "For Us" is a comparative statement. You could have X amount in your bank account be it 5K or 100K and you could say "That's rich for us." The "For Us" part doesn't mean you're rich, just comparatively it is good enough to pass an internal concept of feeling rich.

 

[SneakersSO]

We are not talking about a timed exclusive deal like FF where the devs get less sales from the other platform and the bigger platform gets the deal for less money. It stays the same.
Let's say Sony pays 100 millions for the marketing rights and some exclusive content and Microsoft offers the same. You would usually stay with your longterm partner. But if that partner ruined the deal of your life, you might change the partner. That's all i was saying. In the end it's of course all about business and the most money.

ATVI gives 0 fucks about this deal not working out and won't punish Sony for it. Kotick, back when he used to do public talks, specifically cited the reason they were doing marketing deals with MS then was simply due to the fact that they were the market leader in the strongest markets CoD sold in.

If the deal falls through, ATVI will have gotten a free $3b from MS. They won't care about it at all. As long as Sony remains the market leader in the markets that CoD sells strongest in, they will continue their marketing deals with them.

 

[Three]

I posted a pretty detailed summary on what I believe will happen regardless of whether the deal goes through or not, so I figured lets keep the discussion going on someone else's posts on this.

So, lets talk point 1. From my knowledge, MS hasn't really minded how much Phil has asked them to invest into his vision of what Xbox could be, or rather, the service-ification of Xbox. The time table for evaluation that Phil and MS leadership has operated on is that it would take about a decade or so, and they are giving him that decade, which puts their evaluation timetable for all of this for sometime in 2027. Now, it has to be said that no one company wants to hand another company a few billion dollars over and get nothing for it, but they have had LOADS of wasteful spending thus far and MS hasn't batted an eye. For the larger US businesses, having a merger blocked will simply mark a sea-change in the corporate world; the impact of this block will spread to other sectors besides gaming.

As for point 2 - nothing much will change for ABK. Part of the reason the sale even happened was a combination of the civil suits and labor investigations that were happening on the back of missing release target windows for big titles and revenue targets for titles that were releasing. Since then, CoD has had a strong bounce back thanks to the initial reception of Modern Warfare 2 and Blizzard seemingly rediscovering how to ship some titles, but it seems the impact of both of these big releases ABK management was banking on is going to wind up being far more muted than they'd like (we'll really only see how this is gonna go sometime next year when we get the revenue totals for how well MW2 and OW2 do this year).

As for Phil, the corporate culture within MS is such that dropping Phil will be seen as a massive vote of no confidence in Xbox's direction and the entire division itself. Much like they did with Bonnie Ross, they will create a narrative that pushes him out and promote a typical MS sycophant from within to take his place. I've worked both with and for MS in the past, have loads of colleagues who have as well, and the number 1 thing that gets you ahead there is being a kool-aid guzzling corporate cheerleader. Its part of the reason why they are almost always out-of-touch when it comes to selling products to general consumers and not enterprise consumers.

Honestly, given that we are likely going to see one of the biggest investment shifts ever witnessed into AI in the next 2 years, I imagine MS will take the majority of the funds saved should this deal get blocked and re-invest all of it into pursuing AI applications and R&D in order to get them to start catching up to the big players in the space. We are on the advent of this tech completely changing our society the way the internet did in the 90s/2000s. MS is not where they should be relative to the bigger players. They are gonna seek to catch up and hard this year.

Who are the big players in AI? Their investment into openAI I think has them covered there.

 

[Mibu no ookami]

What lost revenue? Do you think people suddenly don't buy it anymore when Sony has no deal?

They might still buy it, but maybe they don't feel like having to buy it right away. If they wait to buy it for cheaper, there is lost revenue...

Also you'd have to expect that Sony not heavily marketing the game will result in fewer sales, otherwise... why would they advertise at all, if just the exclusive content was enough.

There's a Call of Duty PS5 bundle that probably doesn't happen without their deal... Ps4 as well iirc

 

[Mibu no ookami]

ATVI gives 0 fucks about this deal not working out and won't punish Sony for it. Kotick, back when he used to do public talks, specifically cited the reason they were doing marketing deals with MS then was simply due to the fact that they were the market leader in the strongest markets CoD sold in.

If the deal falls through, ATVI will have gotten a free $3b from MS. They won't care about it at all. As long as Sony remains the market leader in the markets that CoD sells strongest in, they will continue their marketing deals with them.

Their stock price is going to drop significantly more than 3B, I think they'll still be pissed. That 3B could be used as stock buy back, but it won't make up the difference.

 

[ToadMan]

Unless the CMA comes out and surprises us with smaller than expected caveats, I think this deal is now closer to getting nixed than getting approved.

With that said, I think there's a lot of merit to your post, my big thing in it though, is the part about Phil, the man has had a decade at the helm, and spent billions on acquisitions, which got the new gen of consoles sales tracking LESS than the Xbox One did at the same time, which is utter madness considering how much they had to give up in terms of revenue to make Game Pass appealing. This deal is his last roll of the dice and I can see him losing his job if it fails.

If MS don't make further concessions yeah - the "mood music" from the regulators does sound negative.

But in truth what MS has so far compromised on is very little - a time limited non-exclusivity deal for COD. There's a long way to go before they'll throw the towel in - there's pride at stake for MS, not just cash.

 

[mrmustard]

They might still buy it, but maybe they don't feel like having to buy it right away. If they wait to buy it for cheaper, there is lost revenue...

Also you'd have to expect that Sony not heavily marketing the game will result in fewer sales, otherwise... why would they advertise at all, if just the exclusive content was enough.

There's a Call of Duty PS5 bundle that probably doesn't happen without their deal... Ps4 as well iirc

The usual COD player gets it day one, no matter what. Sony wants that deal, because they want new players to buy into their eco system. That's it. Activison does not care if those players play on Pc, PlayStation or Xbox. It's the same money, i don't see any lost revenue. But we are discussing here about a very unlikely scenario, that most likely will never happen, because Sony would simply outbid Microsoft.

 

[ToadMan]

I gave two examples of announced games that after the acquisition still released on PlayStation contrary to the comment that MS was removing games from PlayStation.

2 games with pre-existing arrangements in place.

Exactly what MS isn't providing with ABK and didn't with Zeni.

 

[Mibu no ookami]

The usual COD player gets it day one, no matter what. Sony wants that deal, because they want new players to buy into their eco system. That's it. Activison does not care if those players play on Pc, PlayStation or Xbox. It's the same money, i don't see any lost revenue. But we are discussing here about a very unlikely scenario, that most likely will never happen, because Sony would simply outbid Microsoft.

I can tell you that isn't the case but from the perspective of friends that I know, but also by the presence of COD on the charts months after release...

Sony can't outbid Microsoft on anything, the price is just different for Microsoft.

 

[Evil Calvin]

Didn't I read that MS can close the deal regardless if CMA or FTC don't approve the deal?

 

[Edmund]

A lot of people keep saying Activision will be mad at Sony... that's not how business works. Sony is their biggest customer the degree in which they can be upset at Sony goes as far as their need to make money by working with Sony.

What about Lulu Cheng Meservey? She be mad at Sony!!!

 

[3liteDragon]

Didn't I read that MS can close the deal regardless if CMA or FTC don't approve the deal?

Yes, they can turn these countries into third-world countries so there's that.

 

[Three]

Didn't I read that MS can close the deal regardless if CMA or FTC don't approve the deal?

Yes and threaten to plunge the UK into chaos as they remove excel from hospitals!

/s

If they still close if the deal is legally blocked they can't operate in the country. I think MS would have to be crazy to not operate in the US and UK based on this Activision deal.

 

[Heisenberg007]

Didn't I read that MS can close the deal regardless if CMA or FTC don't approve the deal?

They technically can, but then FTC and CMA can "block" it after MS has closed it, and that's a whole other set of problems and complications that no company wants to get into.

That's why companies get acquisitions approved by regulatory bodies before they formally close them.

 

[analog_future]

It's bad for consumers to have less choice on where CoD ends up

It's bad for consumers that MS will lead by taking a loss on GP content only to increase it later on

It's bad for consumers that CoD quality will go down over time since the studios won't put in max effort to increase sales via quality, they will game the system for GP downloads and subs instead

Your logic sucks and is entirely shortsighted

1. If Microsoft acquires ABK, Call of Duty will be coming to more platforms, not less. Hence the Switch announcement. And Microsoft has communicated ad nauseam that they have no intention of removing it from any platforms (and why would they? It would be a foolish business decision).
2. Microsoft has stated several times that Game Pass is already profitable and has been for years now.
3. There's nothing to substantiate your claim here that Game Pass incentivizes developers to make worse games. Regardless, Call of Duty games have been scoring worse and worse over the years as is (75 average on Modern Warfare II, 72 average on Vanguard, 75 average on Black Ops Cold War). If anything, new and rejuvenated leadership could very well increase the quality of COD, as clearly the franchise needs some type of new direction from a critical standpoint.

Your logic is blinded by bias.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

1. If Microsoft acquires ABK, Call of Duty will be coming to more platforms, not less. Hence the Switch announcement. And Microsoft has communicated ad nauseam that they have no intention of removing it from any platforms (and why would they? It would be a foolish business decision).
2. Microsoft has stated several times that Game Pass is already profitable and has been for years now.
3. There's nothing to substantiate your claim here that Game Pass incentivizes developers to make worse games. Regardless, Call of Duty games have been scoring worse and worse over the years as is (75 average on Modern Warfare II, 72 average on Vanguard, 75 average on Black Ops Cold War). If anything, new and rejuvenated leadership could very well increase the quality of COD, as clearly the franchise needs some type of new direction from a critical standpoint.

Your logic is blinded by bias.

1. If this is the case why do they keep restricting the timeline? It's shady and nobody should take them at their word

2. Microsoft has fudged the numbers to claim profitability, when not accounting for first party dev costs. It is not profitable taken as a whole, and certainly less so when offering CoD on the service

3. Microsoft is not a good steward of dev studios, almost every first party project has major issues. Why should we trust it will get better under MS, especially when the titles will be delivered to drive gamepass engagement metrics rather than sales?

 

[ToadMan]

So it's bad for consumers to pay $10 for Gamepass and getting new games included..........rather than pay $75 for each game? Your logic stinks.

I suspect the argument is that its bad for consumers to have a reduction in choice of where and how to consume content.

There's nothing stopping MS and ABK reaching a deal where all there content is on GP day 1 without the need for an acquisition.

The acquisition step removes (or at least gives MS the power to remove) that content from other platforms thereby reducing consumer choice.

 

[vj27]

It's bad for consumers to have less choice on where CoD ends up

It's bad for consumers that MS will lead by taking a loss on GP content only to increase it later on

It's bad for consumers that CoD quality will go down over time since the studios won't put in max effort to increase sales via quality, they will game the system for GP downloads and subs instead

Your logic sucks and is entirely shortsighted

Jesus Christ are we still doing the ole gAmEpASS dECrEaSes QuAliTy argument? Thought we got past this dumbass argument.

 

[bentanchorbolt]

It's bad for consumers to have less choice on where CoD ends up

For this deal to go forward the writing on the wall suggests CoD will remain on existing platforms and future platforms, in perpetuity.

It's bad for consumers that MS will lead by taking a loss on GP content only to increase it later on

It's at best a dick move and reflective of standard industry procedure. The prices of everything go up over time, and that includes standalone game purchases, either via outright price hikes or pay walling content behind DLC and season passes, etc.

It's bad for consumers that CoD quality will go down over time since the studios won't put in max effort to increase sales via quality, they will game the system for GP downloads and subs instead

I don't think this point has any merit tbh. Nothing thus far suggests that being day and date on GP is inferior quality for it, and if the games are still sold outside of that ecosystem, that doubly makes it lack merit.

 

[Bumblebeetuna]

There's no hoops, it's just how English works. "For Us" is a comparative statement. You could have X amount in your bank account be it 5K or 100K and you could say "That's rich for us." The "For Us" part doesn't mean you're rich, just comparatively it is good enough to pass an internal concept of feeling rich.

ThAts HoW eNgLisH wOrKs

I guess, if you've never heard of a comma. You're also using a shitty example to make a comparison. Rich can be relative. Profitable is not relative. It either makes money or it doesn't. By your silly definition, everything MS does that isn't Azure is profitable, for them.

Not to mention Spencer is bound to shareholders and would need to prove these things he's saying.

Like I said, sad, but entertaining.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

Jesus Christ are we still doing the ole gAmEpASS dECrEaSes QuAliTy argument? Thought we got past this dumbass argument.

It's not dumb

Everything in this world is based on the incentive structure that exists

We have already seen this play out on streaming services for TV/Movies

 

[bentanchorbolt]

1. If Microsoft acquires ABK, Call of Duty will be coming to more platforms, not less. Hence the Switch announcement. And Microsoft has communicated ad nauseam that they have no intention of removing it from any platforms (and why would they? It would be a foolish business decision).
2. Microsoft has stated several times that Game Pass is already profitable and has been for years now.
3. There's nothing to substantiate your claim here that Game Pass incentivizes developers to make worse games. Regardless, Call of Duty games have been scoring worse and worse over the years as is (75 average on Modern Warfare II, 72 average on Vanguard, 75 average on Black Ops Cold War). If anything, new and rejuvenated leadership could very well increase the quality of COD, as clearly the franchise needs some type of new direction from a critical standpoint.

Your logic is blinded by bias.

The bolded one is what I don't actually understand. If ABK is by far the largest 3rd party publisher of videogames on the planet, why would being bought out by a company that has a vested interest in their own platform actually increase the number of platforms those games appear on? And if its because of cloud gaming, that doesn't really work.

Without concessions, its almost a forgone conclusion that all of ABK becomes console exclusive to MS, even CoD.

 

[Bumblebeetuna]

It's not dumb

Everything in this world is based on the incentive structure that exists

We have already seen this play out on streaming services for TV/Movies

Streaming content is perfectly fine, as good or better than it's ever been. Episode three of Last of Us was some of the best television I have ever seen and it's tied to a subscription.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

Streaming content is perfectly fine, as good or better than it's ever been. Episode three of Last of Us was some of the best television I have ever seen and it's tied to a subscription.

It is not exclusively tied to a subscription, regardless, outliers exist

Movie quality has see a huge dip

 

[Mibu no ookami]

What about Lulu Cheng Meservey? She be mad at Sony!!!

Most of the Activision employees probably have stock options. She stands to lose A LOT of money if this deal doesn't go through.

I'd be mad too, but you still have to work with your business partners.

 

[reksveks]

Streaming content is perfectly fine, as good or better than it's ever been. Episode three of Last of Us was some of the best television I have ever seen and it's tied to a subscription.

Severance, The Boys, Sandman as well.

This argument is rather tired by now but people can't move on.

 

[analog_future]

The bolded one is what I don't actually understand. If ABK is by far the largest 3rd party publisher of videogames on the planet, why would being bought out by a company that has a vested interest in their own platform actually increase the number of platforms those games appear on? And if its because of cloud gaming, that doesn't really work.

Without concessions, its almost a forgone conclusion that all of ABK becomes console exclusive to MS, even CoD.

For the same reason Minecraft has been kept multiplatform. It makes more money that way.

Keeping COD multiplatform and ushering in the billions of dollars of sales that come with that, while having the COD brand association be with Xbox AND to be the sole platform where the games come to Game Pass for "free" is such an obvious business win for Microsoft. It's a no-brainer. There is literally no reason for them to take COD away from other platforms. They'd lose sales, they'd lose brand impact of COD, and they'd sour general opinions towards both COD and MS. It will never happen.

Single player, story focused games? Sure, we'll definitely see more of those exclusive to the Xbox/Game Pass ecosystem.

 

[bentanchorbolt]

For the same reason Minecraft has been kept multiplatform. It makes more money that way.

Keeping COD multiplatform and ushering in the billions of dollars of sales that come with that, while having the COD brand association be with Xbox AND to be the sole platform where the games come to Game Pass for "free" is such an obvious business win for Microsoft. It's a no-brainer. There is literally no reason for them to take COD away from other platforms. They'd lose sales, they'd lose brand impact of COD, and they'd sour general opinions towards both COD and MS. It will never happen.

Single player, story focused games? Sure, we'll definitely see more of those exclusive to the Xbox/Game Pass ecosystem.

Ok fair point, but that only covers the part about it becoming console exclusive. Which I am inclined to agree with based on the points you've made -- but why would the series see more platforms? If ABK can already release games wherever they want, to the point of yearly releases across the main platforms as well as CoD Mobile, why would MS taking over mean the came would come to more platforms? Because they said it would?

 

[vj27]

It's not dumb

Everything in this world is based on the incentive structure that exists

We have already seen this play out on streaming services for TV/Movies

Nah we got stranger things, Wednesday, Witcher season 1, the last of us, invincible, inside job (all in all minus Velma adult animation has been KILLING IT), etc etc. It's like you're going out of your way to be a negative Nancy looking at only the bad shit. Regardless I watch more tv than I ever did with cable, why? The same for most people, CONVENIENCE. Almost like gamepass can offer CONVENIENCE AND OWNERSHIP PURCHASES at the same time. Gamepass didn't stop hi fi rush from beating out AAA games on steam, same with sea of thieves selling gangbusters for literal years, or grounded from bringing in a huge player base that started off as a team with 10 fucking people.

It's absolutely assinine to still have that, *checks notes*, dumbass argument lol. Streaming beat out cable because it offered things people wanted in a format that let them choose how to consume it. The same thing happened to enterprise work with windows 11 in the cloud, same thing happened with freaking books, same thing happened with music. Ignoring all of those FACTS is just crazy, I get Ignorance is bliss but dear lord my guy you must've reached Nirvana or something lol.

Edit: I'm also not saying you HAVE to like streaming/subscriptions. But to knock it's take-over of almost every industry is just false.

 

[analog_future]

Ok fair point, but that only covers the part about it becoming console exclusive. Which I am inclined to agree with based on the points you've made -- but why would the series see more platforms? If ABK can already release games wherever they want, to the point of yearly releases across the main platforms as well as CoD Mobile, why would MS taking over mean the came would come to more platforms? Because they said it would?

The series will see more platforms because Microsoft and Nintendo have jointly announced that it's coming to more platforms.

No speculation needed. It's been announced. Call of Duty didn't used to be on Nintendo hardware, and now it will be.

 

[bentanchorbolt]

The series will see more platforms because Microsoft and Nintendo have jointly announced that it's coming to more platforms.

No speculation needed. It's been announced. Call of Duty didn't used to be on Nintendo hardware, and now it will.

We will see. I suspect and worry they are counting "more platforms" as game streaming.

 

[DeepEnigma]

I'm just randomly browsing twitter and this shows up on my timeline (I'm not even following the person who quoted the tweet).

#shill #ad

 

[NickFire]

The series will see more platforms because Microsoft and Nintendo have jointly announced that it's coming to more platforms.

No speculation needed. It's been announced. Call of Duty didn't used to be on Nintendo hardware, and now it will be.

Red herring.

 

[Heisenberg007]

The series will see more platforms because Microsoft and Nintendo have jointly announced that it's coming to more platforms.

No speculation needed. It's been announced. Call of Duty didn't used to be on Nintendo hardware, and now it will be.

"Microsoft is committed to helping bring more games to more people – however they choose to play."

That's very nice of Microsoft actually. But I don't think I can play Zenimax games like HiFi Rush, Redfall, and Starfield -- which were already in development before Microsoft acquired them -- on a PlayStation? Why is that?

 

[bentanchorbolt]

#shill #ad

He makes a good point tho

 

[Heisenberg007]

He makes a good point tho

He didn't mention 3 important points:

1. Sony resolved all the potential anti-competitiveness of the deal even before any regulatory body could raise concerns about it.
2. Microsoft was offered the same opportunity by the CMA before they entered Phase 2 of the investigation. The CMA asked, but Microsoft chose not to submit any remedies.
3. Microsoft was also allowed to buy Zenimax (a 200% more expensive purchase than Bungie with 6+ more studios and a dozen more IPs) without any concessions. Their behavior after acquiring Zenimax -- making all their games immediately exclusive -- however made regulators more cautious about Microsoft's acquisition strategy. Zenimax is a big reason why Activision's acquisition is facing so many problems.

 

[bentanchorbolt]

He didn't mention 3 important points:

1. Sony resolved all the potential anti-competitiveness of the deal even before any regulatory body could raise concerns about it.
2. Microsoft was offered the same opportunity by the CMA before they entered Phase 2 of the investigation. The CMA asked, but Microsoft chose not to submit any remedies.
3. Microsoft was also allowed to buy Zenimax (a 200% more expensive purchase than Bungie with 6+ more studios and a dozen more IPs) without any concessions. Their behavior after acquiring Zenimax -- making all their games immediately exclusive -- however made regulators more cautious about Microsoft's acquisition strategy. Zenimax is a big reason why Activision's acquisition is facing so many problems.

You make a good point tho

 

[DarkMage619]

2 games with pre-existing arrangements in place.

Exactly what MS isn't providing with ABK and didn't with Zeni.

Name the announced PlayStation games MS canceled.

MS has offered Sony, Nintendo, and Steam assurances that CoD would remain or be added to their platforms. It does not sound like you know much about this deal at all.

 

[Bumblebeetuna]

It is not exclusively tied to a subscription, regardless, outliers exist

Movie quality has see a huge dip

Since when does HBO not require a subscription?

 

[bentanchorbolt]

Name the announced PlayStation games MS canceled.

MS has offered Sony, Nintendo, and Steam assurances that CoD would remain or be added to their platforms. It does not sound like you know much about this deal at all.

Starfield, Hi Fi Rush, etc.

 

[DeepEnigma]

Bro my comment was just for fun I have no place in this

 

[Thirty7ven]

Microsoft only thought of giving assurances once regulators showed concerns, which Microsoft absolutely was not expecting by the way.

Either kill the deal or tell them to kill the hardware business. Either works out for the industry.

 

[DeepEnigma]

The usual suspects

 

[Daniel_Mallorca1985]

 

[SneakersSO]

Who are the big players in AI? Their investment into openAI I think has them covered there.

There are an absolute crap load of people invested in OpenAI besides Microsoft, including Peter Thiel, Musk, etc. If their only AI position is OpenAI, then they are not covered for this at all. Google has their own proprietary AI solution, and loads of other big tech groups do as well. MS is going to need their own, not just be invested in with an external partner.

 

[Riky]

If the deal fails then I presume MS can sign a deal with Activision once the Sony deal expires to bring Call Of Duty to Gamepass day one going forward.