Microsoft / Activision Deal Approval Watch |OT| (MS/ABK close)
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PropellerEar
Member
Jimbo would let Phil taste some well oiled weiner.We need a CEO thunderdome.
Winner take all
reinking
Gold Member
To be fair, he ends it with "he could be fired." Not, "go to jail." Regardless of legality, Jim Ryan does have an obligation to protect those revenue streams so his point still stands.
Snake29
Banned
So far, if we talk about "crying". I only see MS constantly "crying" in the media over Sony and their dominance, or acting how "small" Xbox is and that they need this deal, or downplaying CoD, or today saying that EA and Ubisoft are Sony's biggest partners and not ABK.
reinking
Gold Member
DeepEnigma
Gold Member
That's the funny part. Sony have done absolutely no media PR and all we hear are from CMA docs to the CMA, not public sphere. MS have been playing politics every week this entire process.
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All this drama and Activision is only the 5th largest Publisher on Playstation. Behind EA, Ubisoft and Take Two.
How many times have we heard they were #1 in this thread?
www.yahoo.com
How many times have we heard they were #1 in this thread?
Microsoft Says EA, Not Activision, Is PlayStation’s Biggest Third-Party Publisher
Another day, another gem unearthed from Microsoft Activision deal‘s regulator fiasco. […]
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CuNi
Member
It won't be the full 69bn since they'll have to pay fines to ABK, I think roughly 3bn, so it'll be in the ballpark of 65bn but still that's an insane amount of money.
I truly wonder what MS would do with this amount of money.
Buy every possible console marketing/exclusivity?
Buy every upcoming/growing indie/AA dev up to starve Sony from new games outside already established IPs?
Invest that money into already owned Studios?
I won't lie, I hope the deal goes through with behavioral remedies since that would be the biggest win for me as I neither have an Xbox S/X nor a PS5, so more games being funneled into GP is a win in my books, but I am equally curious into what exactly MS would do in the future if the deal gets outright blocked and MS gets forced to spend the money elsewhere.
jm89
Member
Show us
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Snake29
Banned
All this drama and Activision is only the 5th largest Publisher on Playstation. Behind EA, Ubisoft and Take Two.
How many times have we heard they were #1 in this thread?
Microsoft Says EA, Not Activision, Is PlayStation’s Biggest Third-Party Publisher
Another day, another gem unearthed from Microsoft Activision deal‘s regulator fiasco. […]
Every week starts with "MS says". MS should say nothing anymore and just stfu imo.
Bernardougf
Member
Outside outright buying out the industry what is exactly what MS is trying to do in the long run, you just cant thrust MS to make "better decisions" they tried that for 20 years.. now they just went to the "fuck it" mode
If you cant win, join then? Fuck no.. buy them out
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Pelta88
Member
I think it's clear "Microsoft" isn't prepared to give "XBOX" 70 Billion. 70 Billion for the biggest IP in gaming? Sure.
Microsoft is the biggest conglomerate in the world. They've been in gaming for 26 years. They've never given XBOX that big of a budget previously, what makes you think they'll start now?
reinking
Gold Member
Sony could very well regret it because Xbox might become more aggressive with third-party exclusive deals but that 69 billion doesn't just roll over to the Xbox division if the deal fails. If the deal fails, it will be interesting to see Microsoft's next move with Xbox. If it goes through, it will be interesting to see Sony's next move.
jm89
Member
thicc_girls_are_teh_best
Member
All this drama and Activision is only the 5th largest Publisher on Playstation. Behind EA, Ubisoft and Take Two.
How many times have we heard they were #1 in this thread?
Microsoft Says EA, Not Activision, Is PlayStation’s Biggest Third-Party Publisher
Another day, another gem unearthed from Microsoft Activision deal‘s regulator fiasco. […]
It's MS so you know there is always BS involved with how they try presenting their data.
If you read the article, it'd seem MS's claim is based on number of individual titles released. And knowing them, probably dating back to the PS1. By which metric it's easy to think Sony's published 286 games across five console generations.
Once again though it's all BS. MS knows regulators are looking at actual generated revenue with pertinent consoles, in this case PS4 & PS5, and ABK generate more revenue on PS than those others mentioned.
This company is well-known for lying through obfuscation and misrepresentation, I'm surprised how easily you fall for it.
So you're saying Sony, other companies and regulators should be pressured and threatened into letting MS get things 100% their way because of a $69 billion boogeyman they can theoretically use to buy up 3P exclusives?
And what makes you think they will do that? What makes you think 3P publishers will take the offer? Most of these companies still want to actually sell their games. What makes you think MS will pay the hundreds of millions for each individual 3P AAA game to drop into Game Pass Day 1 when they weren't willing to do that before, and they started buying publishers specifically to avoid doing that?
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DrFigs
Member
Sony has a relative advantage though when it comes to paying for exclusivity, just because of the market share. For any given game, Sony probably has to offer less to a developer to keep their game off xbox, compared to how much Xbox has to pay to keep games off Playstation. This would be a fight they would be willing to take versus microsoft. Unless MS is fine with never making their money back on gamepass - which they might be at this point.
Sony could very well regret it because Xbox might become more aggressive with third-party exclusive deals but that 69 billion doesn't just roll over to the Xbox division if the deal fails. If the deal fails, it will be interesting to see Microsoft's next move with Xbox. If it goes through, it will be interesting to see Sony's next move.
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James Sawyer Ford
Banned
That's not an accurate take of the situation. Minecraft is NOT CoD. Different demographics, different platform dynamics of where the dominant place to play is.
Minecraft is NOT a game that will get users to switch from playing on Playstation to playing on Xbox instead (as their primary console). Minecraft is NOT a game that will get users to flock to GamePass over rival sub services, CoD is.
Microsoft has little incentive to make Minecraft exclusive because it wouldn't create a shift in the balance of power and would just cost them revenue. CoD, however, would give Microsoft a huge boost immediately. Would it cost them money to do so? Yes, in the short term it would, but they have $70B to throw around, they can easily absorb the transition costs that would occur by making it only available on Xbox. And the goal would probably be to gradually shift it off Playstation. Start first by making it better on Xbox, or available on GamePass. Once the CoD userbase has moved over, then you can finally pull the plug on playstation.
Heisenberg007
Gold Journalism
Another set of weird AF arguments by Microsoft
www.yahoo.com
Microsoft Says EA, Not Activision, Is PlayStation’s Biggest Third-Party Publisher
Another day, another gem unearthed from Microsoft Activision deal‘s regulator fiasco. […]
- Measures the biggest publisher by a number of games released, not revenue, MAU, or the pull of their IPs ala COD.
- Microsoft says that Activision is the 5th biggest publisher for Sony. Doesn't focus on the fact that it's also the 5th biggest on Xbox.
- Also says that Sony keeps its first-party games "almost entirely exclusive to PlayStation" and provides examples such as: Spider-Man, The Last of Us, and God of War -- as if Xbox releases Halo, Forza, and Gears on PlayStation.
James Sawyer Ford
Banned
Another set of weird AF arguments by Microsoft
Microsoft Says EA, Not Activision, Is PlayStation’s Biggest Third-Party Publisher
Another day, another gem unearthed from Microsoft Activision deal‘s regulator fiasco. […]
- Measures the biggest publisher by a number of games released, not revenue, MAU, or the pull of their IPs ala COD.
- Microsoft says that Activision is the 5th biggest publisher for Sony. Doesn't focus on the fact that it's also the 5th biggest on Xbox.
- Also says that Sony keeps its first-party games "almost entirely exclusive to PlayStation" and provides examples such as: Spider-Man, The Last of Us, and God of War -- as if Xbox releases Halo, Forza, and Gears on PlayStation.
This ridiculous spin is why nobody should ever trust sales figures or "profitability" metrics coming with vague statements out of Microsoft's mouth. Measuring largest third party competitor by number of games released is absurd.
Dick Jones
Banned
Fixed it for youAnother set of weird AF arguments by Microsoft
Microsoft Says EA, Not Activision, Is PlayStation’s Biggest Third-Party Publisher
Another day, another gem unearthed from Microsoft Activision deal‘s regulator fiasco. […]
- Measures the biggest publisher by a number of games released, not revenue, MAU, or the pull of their IPs ala COD.
- Microsoft says that Activision is the 5th biggest publisher for Sony. Doesn't focus on the fact that it's also the 5th biggest on Xbox.
- Also says that Sony keeps its first-party games "almost entirely exclusive to PlayStation" and provides examples such as: Superman, The Last of Us, and God of War -- as if Xbox releases Halo, Forza, and Gears on PlayStation.
MasterCornholio
Member
Thats really weird to be honest. Microsofts keeps talking about keeping COD multiplatform but then they bring this up.
thicc_girls_are_teh_best
Member
Most likely they will just take a reasonable amount of it and put it towards their stable of developers and R&D for the next Xbox, as well as marketing for the current system and games. People are crazy if they think MS are going to take $60+ billion and pump it into Xbox if there's no ABK; the only reason they decided to earmark $69 billion in the first place is because they thought they could get ABK for the money.
Xbox without ABK is worth nowhere near $69 billion to Microsoft; most of that money will just go to their other divisions like Office, Windows, Azure and Surface, and further investments into AI like Chat-GPT. At most Xbox would probably get 1/3 of that money (~ $22 billion) for the course of the rest of the generation (or most of it), but that would be covering a LOT of things: software development, salaries, pay bonuses, marketing, licensing costs, retail partnerships, console manufacture & production, R&D, redundancies (I guess stuff like trademark & patent filings), select 3P cofunding, 3P exclusivity deals, and Day 1 Game Pass deals.
The people who think MS takes all that $60+ billion to buy every 3P exclusive don't understand business and don't understand Microsoft's business, even. Not to mention, them doing that for EVERY 3P game could find themselves right back in the courtroom for many of the same foreclosure anticompetitive concerns that are being considered with the ABK deal.
Another set of weird AF arguments by Microsoft
Microsoft Says EA, Not Activision, Is PlayStation’s Biggest Third-Party Publisher
Another day, another gem unearthed from Microsoft Activision deal‘s regulator fiasco. […]
- Measures the biggest publisher by a number of games released, not revenue, MAU, or the pull of their IPs ala COD.
- Microsoft says that Activision is the 5th biggest publisher for Sony. Doesn't focus on the fact that it's also the 5th biggest on Xbox.
- Also says that Sony keeps its first-party games "almost entirely exclusive to PlayStation" and provides examples such as: Spider-Man, The Last of Us, and God of War -- as if Xbox releases Halo, Forza, and Gears on PlayStation.
They're all really weird arguments and don't have anything juicy enough to stick. The last point is almost like Microsoft are trying to chastise Sony for not supporting PC enough. Sony doesn't own the #1 OS used on PC, Microsoft: you do. So they have no obligation to support your PC OS anymore than they already do (and even that could probably use some re-evaluation IMO).
I mean they could be making that point in relation to console but given MS's PR games in arranging all these 10-year Game Pass deals with cloud providers on mobile & PC, plus the offer they outright made to Valve, I wouldn't discount them meaning that point to reference Sony's PC support...support for a platform Microsoft conveniently has 80+% of the OS market share in worldwide.
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reinking
Gold Member
Yep. I agree Sony has an advantage. Not only because of userbase but Sony's focus is still on game sales and not a streaming service. As a consumer, I love Game Pass but I believe if it becomes a sticking point in negotiations for Xbox it can have a negative impact. Even with the disadvantages, Xbox has enough clout and money to work on marketing deals.
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James Sawyer Ford
Banned
The $69B earmarked was for Activision because it represented a unique opportunity. If that falls apart, they will not be allocating that money to Xbox in general. It will compete with "other" investment opportunities, such as - share buybacks, dividends, and acquisitions in other areas of the company.
Heisenberg007
Gold Journalism
Especially when they are also the 5th "biggest publisher" on Xbox. It's not like ABK is #1 on Xbox but #5 on PlayStation.
And why doesn't Microsoft understand that arguing that ABK does not release as many games on PlayStation goes directly against their promises that they won't make ABK games exclusive? lol.
adamsapple
Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Fixed it for you
It's worth reading the entire passage that the examples are derived from.
The CMA response does not use those names in the same sentence as 'keeps their games almost entirely exclusive'. It mentions those names as successful exclusive games.
Sony itself is the fourth largest game publisher in the world and the fourth largest
supplier to PlayStation. The fact that the blue band running from Sony to PlayStation
is so wide is an indication of the extent to which Sony keeps its own published games
almost entirely exclusive to PlayStation. In fact Sony has 286 games which are
exclusive to PlayStation including some of the most successful and popular titles such
as God of War,27 Spider-Man and Last of Us
Page 15-16
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Kenshin775
Member
saw these tweets from era. Seems huge. So if there is a math error then this basically kills CMA's theory of harm about mass PS users switching to Xbox and causing foreclosure/SLC. How is this going to play out. Math is objective, surely MS and CMA can both hire statisticians and they will come up with the same numbers.
TheGodfather07
Member
That's the part people ignore. Why would publishers want to hurt their own ip by siding with xbox, which has the smallest marketshare? That would never happen. Marketshare is more of weapon than just money and Sony have it. Thats why they get all the deals. Microsoft would have wiped the floor with Sony if it was just a matter of money. Sony would never have any marketing contracts at all or timed exclusivity for any games.
MasterCornholio
Member
It's still strange Mr Testicles.
Well that's an interesting update. We won't have to wait long until the CMA responds to this.
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adamsapple
Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Not as strange when you read the actual paragraph instead of click bait website snippets Mr. Cornhole.
Heisenberg007
Gold Journalism
FossPatents shares extremely inaccurate information. Not even worth posting, to be honest, because these will only misguide people.
Also:
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Heisenberg007
Gold Journalism
Even that argument won't stick. Spider-Man and God of War are already on PC. TLOU is launching in ~10 days.
As Sony said, this is all just for show and PR. No substance.
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MasterCornholio
Member
Thats fine I'll just eat you with ketchup and mustard.
You should clarify things better.
Anyways you should change your tag at this point if it bothers you so much.
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adamsapple
Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
I should clarify things better ? what ?
I posted the actual paragraph from CMA's report that Yahoo and Playstation Lifestyle are deriving half-baked commentary from.
The argument won't stick cause it's not the argument being made at all.
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MasterCornholio
Member
I should clarify things better ? what ?
I posted the actual paragraph from CMA's report that Yahoo and Playstation Lifestyle are deriving half-baked commentary from.
Well if your arguments weren't so half baked they would be easier to understand. Fully bake time and show both sides to make it more interesting.
adamsapple
Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Mate, what are you even talking about lol, I'm not the one making arguments based on the yahoo article, I literally posted the exact passage from the CMA response to you.
If you want someone to clarify better, send an email to Yahoo support.
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MasterCornholio
Member
Banjo64
cumsessed
As I posted yesterday, I'm not sure how Microsoft are interpreting this, but the models seem clear. I'm failing to see how this is an error on the CMA's part, and considering the CMA highlighted how Microsoft are using non-standard modelling in their projections I'm inclined to trust the CMA over MS.
Heisenberg007
Gold Journalism
It is one of the arguments because MS argues that Sony's first-party games remain mostly exclusive. And implying as if that's a bad thing.
MasterCornholio
Member
Now I'm just confused.
Only a little longer for an update from the CMA. Seems like this deal depends on it.
It is weird. Currently ABK is releasing games on PlayStation. Once they are bought that situation can change. That's what regulators have issue with.
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adamsapple
Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Again, the keeping the games exclusive and Sony having more successful exclusive games are used in two different sentences.
They are not a part of the same sentence or argument.
This is the actual CMA quote:
* I've removed the part after the last of us line because it just talks about turning the game into a successful TV show. Not relevant here.
And this is how the Yahoo article paints it:
These two read like completely different things.
Wouldn't you agree ?
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Heisenberg007
Gold Journalism
Yes, and more importantly if MS is bringing up PlayStation first-party exclusives in a conversation about acquiring ABK, it sends all the wrong signals to regulators. Like MS is justifying making ABK games exclusives because PS has so many exclusives.
This is not gonna help their cause at all. If anything, it might damage it.
Wow. So biased you feel the need to make such a comment without even looking at the data. It's game sales. Here let me make it easier for you:
Heisenberg007
Gold Journalism
No, honestly, I'm reading it the opposite way -- which aligns with how Yahoo read it. The "In fact" at the beginning of the sentence also implies that the following sentence is a part of the previous argument.
To me, it reads like:
- Sony mostly keeps its first-party games exclusives
- In fact, they have 286 games as exclusives
- And some of those games are really huge like Spider-Man, GOW, and TLOU.
thicc_girls_are_teh_best
Member
Your first mistake was going in that ERA thread on the acquisition and getting the tweets from there. Who's the user who linked them?
Secondly, FOSS is a very sketchy character. He has done paid libel against MS competitors for decades, has a 30+ year history with Microsoft, and additional history with Blizzard. He has both financial and emotional biases in his outlooks here, I would say he is worst than Micheal Pachter (who works for Wedbush Securities, who have $50 million worth of shares in Microsoft) and Lulu Cheng Meservey combined.
IMO he's a good example of a crooked "phony politician" lawyer. But about the CMA stuff; I doubt there were any miscalculations. It's more than MS are using a completely different metric to measure COD's worth to the PlayStation brand and that metric incidentally reduces its value significantly, so they'd rather use it. The irony being, Microsoft are so stupid, they don't realize an attempt to say the CMA overestimated COD's impact on PS so should it be removed, only makes Microsoft's insistence against divestiture of COD that much worst.
If COD's removal from PS would cause so little impact, why are Microsoft so hellbent to acquiring it and not divesting the asset? They want ABK for King, right? Then why do they need absolute control over an IP that, in their estimates, is so limited in value or impact to PlayStation? Why are they not willing to divest something that's supposedly insignificant?
You dig deep enough questioning the motive and it exposes their hypocrisy clearly. Microsoft would be forced to prove that somehow, COD removed from PlayStation has "little effect" yet them owning it makes them "competitive" with PlayStation, and to try pointing to the differentiation in their system and PlayStation's which doesn't work to MS's favor nearly as much as they think it does. Because the truth is virtually 80% of the same 3P games release on both systems Day 1. 10% are probably select 3P games that may be timed or full exclusive but both Sony & Microsoft engage in this. The last 10% are 1P exclusives, and even in Sony's peak FY for PS (so far), 1P games only accounted for 18.5% of their software revenue.
Also Microsoft's insistence on downplaying the impact of COD's removal on PS damages the value of their 10-year offers to all these other companies. What value is having COD on these cloud services going to bring when many of these services are very small in userbase, and provide non-optimal ways to play a competitive FPS? Like who thinks even a third of those GeForce NOW subscribers are going to play COD streamed as their goto method? Why would they?
In addition to that, there's the marketing aspect of things, too. 3P publishers want brand association and effective marketing that amplifies their returns by magnitudes. Sony have shown they are historically fantastic at helping market big 3P games; Microsoft have not shown this. I also think there's an allure for 3P publishers when they see 1P games like GOW Ragnarok, Spiderman, TLOU etc. setting various standards in one way or another and achieving big sales, and that motivates 3P AAA devs & pubs to push more with their own games, associate with that success and hopefully match it if not exceed it.
When's the last time a Microsoft 1P game was a genuine standard-setter or had massive retail success?
MasterCornholio
Member
In my opinion they are saying that because they plan on making games exclusive. Once they buy ABK they can do what they want with them once the concessions are satisfied. However this isn't a message they should be sending regulators again in my opinion.
adamsapple
Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
That's not my read on it at all, but I guess it is up to everyones individual interpretation.
Heisenberg007
Gold Journalism
Agreed 100% on both fronts.
They want to make ABK games exclusive as soon as they can. Even the CMA has identified that MS is likely to make those games exclusive, despite their assurances.
And they also should not say stuff like this to regulators. Then if their acquisition gets blocked, they will start blaming the CMA and Sony, instead of reviewing these stupidly harmful statements they kept sending to regulators.
Mr Moose
Member
In fact Sony has 286 games which are
exclusive to PlayStation including some of the most successful and popular titles such
as God of War,27 Spider-Man and Last of Us
Are they retarded? Those are released on PC already.
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