Microsoft / Activision Deal Approval Watch |OT| (MS/ABK close)

Do you believe the deal will be approved?

  • Yes, will be approved without changes.

    Votes: 221 24.9%

  • Yes, will be approved but with structural changes to ABK.

    Votes: 102 11.5%

  • Yes, will be approved but only with behavioral concessions.

    Votes: 262 29.6%

  • No, will not be approved.

    Votes: 301 34.0%
  • Total voters
    886
  • Poll closed .
Status
Not open for further replies.
splattered said:
Which they didn't have access to, so in essence Microsoft giving life to the gaming community as a whole. Generous angels they are
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They would have been able to get access to the games just as much as anyone else would have been able to. The same goes for Bethesda and any other companies that have been swallowed up in this recent period of mass consolidation.

Now it's all capped at 10 years when it was previously as long as Activision Blizzard make games.

If left untamed, all of this makes it increasingly prohibitive for any new players to enter the industry. Microsoft taking away something that was once permanent and then offering it back to select companies at their discretion in a time-limited fashion is not "giving life", it's birth control.
 
lefty1117 said:
anybody know when SPiderman 2 is going to be released on xbox?
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Two things
1. It's Spider-Man not Spiderman or SPiderman
2. Microsoft while having a partnership with Insomniac rejected an offer from Marvel for exclusive use of any IP. If anything, Spider-Man by Insomniac was sloppy seconds for Sony.
 
lefty1117 said:
anybody know when SPiderman 2 is going to be released on xbox?
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Back here again are we?

Cracking Up Lol GIF by Rodney Dangerfield
 
GHG said:
They would have been able to get access to the games just as much as anyone else would have been able to. The same goes for Bethesda and any other companies that have been swallowed up in this recent period of mass consolidation.

Now it's all capped at 10 years when it was previously as long as Activision Blizzard make games.

If left untamed, all of this makes it increasingly prohibitive for any new players to enter the industry. Microsoft taking away something that was once permanent and then offering it back to select companies at their discretion in a time-limited fashion is not "giving life", it's birth control.
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Capped at 10 years huh?
 
Lulu when her female employees are being sexual harassed, to the point of depression and one commits suicide:

Lulu when Activision is forced to pay millions in damages for running a heinous and oppressive workplace culture:

Lulu when a journalist misquotes her:
giphy.gif
 
splattered said:
Capped at 10 years huh?
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If you can show me where they are offering companies more than 10 years then that will be great.

There are simpler ways around this if they really wanted to make sure call of duty and Activision blizzard's catalogue remained 3rd party and available to all industry players as it is today.
 
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splattered said:
Which they didn't have access to, so in essence Microsoft giving life to the gaming community as a whole. Generous angels they are
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It is absolutely amazing how altruistic MS has been the past couple of years. The amount they have gotten done in between their big AAA game launches has been beyond anything we could have reasonably hoped for. For all the talk about case by case basis, they just expanded access to all of the Bethesda games instead. And despite being busy on a second acquisition, they still launched bean bags and controller sweaters. Hell, you can even get a Series S that looks like junk food, or junk food shaped like controllers now. And that's just the beginning. Even while they diligently figure out how to get 150 million more people playing COD, they take time to prop up game devs in Ukraine I hear. Generous angels is an understatement. And you just watch. Pretty soon we we all recognize that the way to cure cancer is to get COD on GP.
 
splattered said:
If you can show me where the contracts are a one time non-renewable offering that would be great.
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They shouldn't need to be "renewable". Renewable implies that both sides of the table need to come to an agreement, that shouldn't have to be the case, it's not how it currently works outside of marketing deals.
 
mansoor1980 said:
one of the factors that had made Google decide to close the book on original game development
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Right, because it was unsuccessful and they decided not to dump a ton of money into acquisitions or first party studios etc. Not really anyone else's fault but Google, it just didn't work out as they had hoped.
 
lefty1117 said:
anybody know when SPiderman 2 is going to be released on xbox?
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Maybe ask Phil Spencer?

https://www.gameinformer.com/2022/0...ke-marvel-games-according-to-marvel-executive

The book, Steven L Kent's The Ultimate History of Video Games Vol 2, houses an excerpt where Ong explains this deal and how it led to Marvel prematurely terminating a contract it had with Activision to make Spider-Man games. Ong says in the book that Marvel was unhappy with Activision's Spider-Man titles and the two companies came to an agreement to end the licensing deal early. Ong said that Activision then asked him, "What are you going to do with this IP after you get it back?" Ong said, "I'm going to find a better home for it," to which, Activision replied, "Good luck finding your unicorn."

As we now know, that unicorn wasn't going to be Xbox because it turned down the offer after Marvel Games reached out asking, "We don't have any big console deals with anyone right now, what would you like to do?" PlayStation, however, bit.

"I sat down with these two execs from PlayStation third-party, Adam Boyes [now co-CEO of Iron Galaxy Studios] and John Drake [now vice president of business development for Walt Disney Games], in August 2014, in a conference room in Burbank," Ong says in the book. "I said, 'We have a dream that this is possible, that we could beat [Rocksteady's Batman Arkham franchise] and have one game at least and maybe multiple games that could drive adoption of your platform."
Click to expand...
 
wolffy71 said:
Lol that's such a cop out by Google. As if they would have made if they could have just sold more copies of skyrim. Literally have to be an idiot to believe that.
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Google is doing MS a solid favor if they blame lack of content. If they just blamed the practical limitations of game streaming it would shine a bright shiny spotlight on what COD players already know about the theoretical possibility of streaming COD on Switch.
 
lefty1117 said:
Good .. so you can see how stupid this whole debate is.

Wonder when FF16 is coming to Xbox? Wonder when Gears is going to Playstation? The whole debate is stupid. The horse left the barn long ago.
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If Microsoft went to Activision and managed to get a 3rd party exclusivity deal with them for COD or any other game (or even to co-develop a game for them) then this thread doesn't exist and we don't even have this discussion.

However they didn't do that, the decided to go for the nuclear route, so here we are and now we must suffer your false equivalences.
 
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Pelta88 said:
Lulu when her female employees are being sexual harassed, to the point of depression and one commits suicide:

Lulu when Activision is forced to pay millions in damages for running a heinous and oppressive workplace culture:

Lulu when a journalist misquotes her:
giphy.gif
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Hmm, seems very personal lol.

She only just assumed her position in October of last year. Prior to that she was just added to the Board of Directors somewhere around April of the same year.
 
ulantan said:
What debate?
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The "debate" that timed exclusives, 3rd party exclusives and even games/IP developed by a company's own first party studios are the same as going out to market and wholesale purchasing any major 3rd party publisher possible.
 
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GHG said:
The "debate" that timed exclusives, 3rd party exclusives and even games/IP developed by a company's own first party studios are the same as going out to market and wholesale purchasing any major 3rd party publisher possible.
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Well if I close my eyes and ignore all context I can see how you could see they were the same thing
 
Dick Jones said:
Microsoft while having a partnership with Insomniac rejected an offer from Marvel for exclusive use of any IP. If anything, Spider-Man by Insomniac was sloppy seconds for Sony.
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I've actually wondered if MS rejected the Marvel offer because they wanted to make a Spider-Man game, but wouldn't have been able to without the approval of Sony, due to the media licensing rights?
 
Pelta88 said:
Lulu when her female employees are being sexual harassed, to the point of depression and one commits suicide:

Lulu when Activision is forced to pay millions in damages for running a heinous and oppressive workplace culture:

Lulu when a journalist misquotes her:
giphy.gif
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She's right to do so. The media is just full of liars, and I'm not just talking about gaming media... Nobody in journalism seems to fact check anything before writing about it these days.
 
Duchess said:
I've actually wondered if MS rejected the Marvel offer because they wanted to make a Spider-Man game, but wouldn't have been able to without the approval of Sony, due to the media licensing rights?
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Nah Activision had that license before Sony.

Sony only had the tv and film rights.

EDIT: Actually Sony doesn't even have an exclusive license for games, Spiderman appears in Midnight Sons which is multiplat.
 
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Mr Moose said:
The top 20 best-selling games of 2022 were:
  1. Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare II
  2. Elden Ring
  3. Madden NFL 23
  4. God Of War: Ragnarök
  5. LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga
  6. Pokémon: Scarlet/Violet
  7. FIFA 23
  8. Pokémon Legends: Arceus
  9. Horizon II: Forbidden West
  10. MLB: The Show 22
  11. Mario Kart 8
  12. Call Of Duty: Vanguard
  13. Gran Turismo 7
  14. Kirby and the Forgotten Land
  15. NBA 2K23
  16. Sonic Frontiers
  17. Gotham Knights
  18. Minecraft
  19. Nintendo Switch Sports
  20. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

Yeah I don't see any problem.
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Which they will have 10 years to make exclusives to fill the multiplayer void.
 
TheGodfather07 said:
But there is no case by case basis. Unless im very wrong I don't see another Bethesda game on PS again. Do you think there will be? Also ghostwire and deathloop were pre existing contracts signed before the acquisition, so they don't count towards anything. If there are ever sequels to both those games they would be xbox and pc only. Case by case was just another phrase with no substance. Microsoft are the King's of doing that.
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If I were a betting man I'd say the next mainline Elder Scrolls will be multiplat. At best it will be a timed exclusive on Xbox with exclusive content. Reasoning being there's a builtin audience on Playstation. And if those Xbox perks (earlier release, bonus content) don't get them to switch platforms. Might as well sell them the full game. The audience is there. Plus you can monetize that same audience with Elder Scrolls Online.
 
GHG said:
The "debate" that timed exclusives, 3rd party exclusives and even games/IP developed by a company's own first party studios are the same as going out to market and wholesale purchasing any major 3rd party publisher possible.
Click to expand...

Sure it's the same thing. How do you think Sony came into possession of their studios? One company has more money for acquisitions than others and now all of a sudden there are all these conditions on when an acquisition should be allowed or not ... people need to get real. Either it's allowed or it's not. Exclusives are an acceptable practice or they're not. If MS can't make the acquisition to stop the practice then that should be the case across the board.
 
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lefty1117 said:
Sure it's the same thing. How do you think Sony came into possession of their studios? One company has more money for acquisitions than others and now all of a sudden there are all these conditions on when an acquisition should be allowed or not ... people need to get real. Either it's allowed or it's not. Exclusives are an acceptable practice or they're not. If MS can't make the acquisition to stop the practice then that should be the case across the board.
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I think the main difference here is we are talking about buyouts that in the past were 100 million or so, some into the billions, now we are talking about the largest 3rd party publisher in the world, and its for $70b.
 
Back to the Spider-Man thing, again 🙄, MS passed up on it to concentrate on owned IP's. MS has no one to blame for themselves for that one. Don't know why that's so hard understand. A Marvel exec came out and said this.

ZWkCf4h.jpg
 
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lefty1117 said:
Sure it's the same thing. How do you think Sony came into possession of their studios? One company has more money for acquisitions than others and now all of a sudden there are all these conditions on when an acquisition should be allowed or not ... people need to get real. Either it's allowed or it's not. Exclusives are an acceptable practice or they're not. If MS can't make the acquisition to stop the practice then that should be the case across the board.
Click to expand...

Eclxclusives are not the same as purchasing the largest 3rd party publisher in the world, no matter how much you wish it to be the case.
 
GHG said:
Eclxclusives are not the same as purchasing the largest 3rd party publisher in the world, no matter how much you wish it to be the case.
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It absolutely is. If the worry is that the acquisition will result in a game becoming exclusive, it's no different than a company buying smaller studios and making their new releases exclusive. What's different is the price tag and size, but that is Sony's problem. Which certainly they seem to understand based on the hysteria
 
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