Support NeoGAF

[reksveks]

Kotick new email.

 

[Warablo]

I don't think timed exclusives is that big of deal, but some of the lengths Sony has those deals for is ridiculous.

It doesn't affect me much, but it's crazy Sony can get a 1 year timed exclusive game mode in a CoD yearly release or even permanent one with Destiny.

 

[Handel]

Do you want to go over, for the hundredth time, why Sega and Nintendo fucked themselves? Because I don't have the strength to talk to rubes today.

Sega and Nintendo made their fair share of mistakes for sure, but to act as if Sony with it's much bigger wallet didn't use that to try to squash the competition is also revisionist history. You really only need to look into $299.00 PS1 to see that quite clearly, they took a big hit on every console sold which their competitors couldn't match being primarily just gaming companies who needed to go even or make a profit on console sales. They then leveraged being a maker of DVD players to put one into the PS2, significantly boosting it's popularity.



https://www.gamesradar.com/phil-har...true that when,development up to that point."

The thinking behind the aggressive price for the time was, in Harrison's words to "set us up well for the launch in the US and in Europe". PlayStation had made a good start in Japan, but knew going up against Sega and Nintendo would be a tough environment to launch a console into. However, that E3 helped cement PlayStation's place in history, not only due to the mic-drop moment of its price reveal, but the announcement of Final Fantasy 7, which was a "was a huge factor in the success of PlayStation in Japan", according to Harrison.

The former director at Sony also spoke about the economics of console making, telling Edge that: “It's slightly misunderstood that console companies always make a loss on the hardware. That is not true. It is true that when the PlayStation was launched in Japan at ¥39,800, the equivalent of $400, we were losing money on every single machine, mainly because of the sunk R&D costs that had gone into its design and development up to that point."

 

[Varteras]

I don't think timed exclusives is that big of deal, but some of the lengths Sony has those deals for is ridiculous.

It doesn't affect me much, but it's crazy Sony can get a 1 year timed exclusive game mode in a CoD yearly release or even permanent one with Destiny.

To me, those are the biggest "fuck you" to a competitor and its players. It just feels so petty and meanspirited. Like, instead of just not giving them the option of the game or making them wait for it, you let them pay the same price for a lesser product. And it works. So very well. If I know one version of a game is less than the other, even if it's something I don't care about, I won't buy that version. Unless I have no other choice at that time and it still feels bad. I feel much the same way about how Microsoft handled map packs in Call of Duty for a long time. It's one thing if it's your own IP. But you went out of your way to pay another company to do that? Savage, and not in a good way

 

[wolffy71]

Some company that has so much money they can worry about control rather than revenue? You're aware this is Microsoft, right?

Yeah and they didn't become one the biggest earners the world has ever seen by passing on revenue opportunities

 

[Varteras]

Sega and Nintendo made their fair share of mistakes for sure, but to act as if Sony with it's much bigger wallet didn't use that to try to squash the competition is also revisionist history. You really only need to look into $299.00 PS1 to see that quite clearly, they took a big hit on every console sold which their competitors couldn't match being primarily just gaming companies who needed to go even or make a profit on console sales. They then leveraged being a maker of DVD players to put one into the PS2, significantly boosting it's popularity.



https://www.gamesradar.com/phil-harrison-on-how-the-ps1-price-was-decided/#:~:text=It is true that when,development up to that point."

The revisionist history we're talking about is the part where people believe Sony leveraging their money was THE reason why Sega collapsed and Nintendo lost a fuck ton of market share. It wasn't.

 

[DeepEnigma]

Sega and Nintendo made their fair share of mistakes for sure, but to act as if Sony with it's much bigger wallet didn't use that to try to squash the competition is also revisionist history. You really only need to look into $299.00 PS1 to see that quite clearly, they took a big hit on every console sold which their competitors couldn't match being primarily just gaming companies who needed to go even or make a profit on console sales. They then leveraged being a maker of DVD players to put one into the PS2, significantly boosting it's popularity.



https://www.gamesradar.com/phil-harrison-on-how-the-ps1-price-was-decided/#:~:text=It is true that when,development up to that point."

Oh the horror. They saved consumers money by recouping in software sales and freeing third parties from the draconian licensing lockdown Nintendo had on the games industry. Arrogant Sony!

 

[Banjo64]

It’s the card you all been playing about Microsoft using the whole company’s profits to buy activision. It’s just business

And regulators investigating businesses is also just business. I now have a grasp on what’s going on.

 

[Jigsaah]

thread got locked , any ways lets see phil spencer speak japanese if he really cares about japan



jimbo is just beating phil on every level

You mean "read in Japanese" right? Also Phil has spoken in Japanese before.

 

[phil_t98]

And regulators investigating businesses is also just business. I now have a grasp on what’s going on.

Yeah that’s true and the regulators are now not against the deal

 

[GHG]

Need to and want to are completely different things. As much as I hate the complete corporate consolidation happening in our world right now, right next to you, it is an unfortunate reality and the last couple of years have only expedited it.

At the very least I'd much rather have an MS (or Sony if they had the capital) to acquire Activision than a Meta or Amazon.

Ok so do you honestly think they need to or want to? You think they are making a 70 billion dollar acquisition just for shits and giggles and not because they've put themselves in a position where they need to due to sunk cost with the Xbox division?

And as a point of reference, the largest company in the world by market cap, apple, have spent just ~ $28 billion on acquisitions across their entire history.

 

[Banjo64]

Yeah that’s true and the regulators are now not against the deal

Well, to some extent - the CMA and EU seem to have discounted console but we’ve not seen what (if any) concessions they’ll want in relation to the rest of their concerns.

 

[phil_t98]

Well, to some extent - the CMA and EU seem to have discounted console but we’ve not seen what (if any) concessions they’ll want in relation to the rest of their concerns.

But they have both come out or at least the CMA have in favour of the deal. The rest will be ironed out

 

[adamsapple]

Ok so do you honestly think they need to or want to? You think they are making a 70 billion dollar acquisition just for shits and giggles and not because they've put themselves in a position where they need to due to sunk cost with the Xbox division?

And as a point of reference, the largest company in the world by market cap, apple, have spent just ~ $28 billion on acquisitions across their entire history.

Like I said a few posts earlier, they're using it to bolster the gaming division. If they saw the Xbox division as a continued "sink" they wouldn't spend this money on it in the first place and have had sold it off in '14 like it was going to. This isn't a bank bailout situation here.

But they have both come out or at least the CMA have in favour of the deal. The rest will be ironed out

They haven't flat out said they're in favor of the deal yet, just that one of their biggest concerns (for CMA it was the CoD foreclosure and EU it was primarily cloud) will not be big issues like their first assessments.

The deal is still a ways from being complete.

 

[Kvally]

Like I said a few posts earlier, they're using it to bolster the gaming division. If they saw the Xbox division as a continued "sink" they wouldn't spend this money on it in the first place and have had sold it off in '14 like it was going to. This isn't a bank bailout situation here.

After this acquisition, Xbox wouldn't be able to sell anyway. Ain't nobody gonna be able to afford this division now.

 

[Nothing1234]

Kotick new email.

The way this has been framed as US vs China and Japan has been very tasteless.

 

[TheGodfather07]

Does the drop in console concerns means Microsoft doesn't need to make concessions there anymore? So no need for 10 years of cod on playstation? Or am I misunderstanding?

 

[phil_t98]

Does the drop in console concerns means Microsoft doesn't need to make concessions there anymore? So no need for 10 years of cod on playstation? Or am I misunderstanding?

They will definatly have to follow through with the 10 year deal. Would look pretty bad if they didnt

 

[Kvally]

They will definatly have to follow through with the 10 year deal. Would look pretty bad if they didnt

But we know Sony isn't signing anything with MS regarding a COD deal.

 

[feynoob]

No more timed/permanent exclusive talk guys. We are walking circles here.

 

[phil_t98]

But we know Sony isn't signing anything with MS regarding a COD deal.

When they bought Bethesda they honoured all the contracts for the games Sony had exclusive rights on. They still
Have marketing deals with COD and am sure they will still the the 10 year deal they publicly stated and do that with Sony to

 

[ToadMan]

Most of GAF falls outside of Activision's demographic. The entire argument is a surrogate for the console wars and COD has always been the focal point of those discussions.

Sorry, this is ridiculous.

This deal is big not just in terms of gaming, but tech in general.

Same as the healthcare mess in the US - I don’t need to be sick to see there is a problem - I want the problem fixed before I need the healthcare system. Whether and when I play CoD is irrelevant - this goes beyond that.

This forum is for gaming enthusiasts and if you don’t have an opinion about this acquisition, then you can’t complain if the hobby takes a path you don’t like.

 

[Banjo64]

But they have both come out or at least the CMA have in favour of the deal. The rest will be ironed out

Unless I’ve missed something today, they haven’t. They’ve just said the PS issue isn’t a issue now.

Just saw the previous responses

 

[Malak]

Xbox with MS money= big yacht.
Xbox with no MS money= small yacht.

you say that as if the PlayStation came out of nowhere, without any investment from Sony. And I think it's much worse for Sony to depend heavily financially on the Ps than the Xbox from Ms.

 

[reinking]

No more timed/permanent exclusive talk guys. We are walking circles here.

 

[C2brixx]

Kotick new email.

Interesting that Bobby confirmed the statement about Sony not concerned about COD, but they just wanted to block the merger. Lulu was chastised by some for relaying that conversation.

 

[gothmog]

Yeah and they didn't become one the biggest earners the world has ever seen by passing on revenue opportunities

They became one of the biggest earners by being shrewd and extinguishing the competition. All of the tech giants are pretty notorious for it but Microsoft was notable.

 

[feynoob]

you say that as if the PlayStation came out of nowhere, without any investment from Sony. And I think it's much worse for Sony to depend heavily financially on the Ps than the Xbox from Ms.

$68b is 65% of Sony entire business, not PS.

MS is just a beast on different scale. Xbox is lucky to have that kind of financial backing.

 

[PaintTinJr]

There’s this thing called Gamepass that needs content.
Not sure why you’re bringing up tales from 2002 as a rebuttal.

How does Microsoft buying up valuable historical IPs and old versions of games for gamepass fund $10-20M budget shenmue 3 content for gamepass to keep the Japanese jobs going?

The same would be true of Konami, Capcom, Square or maybe a Platinum funded Scalebound

Game development is a high risk high reward business and every time someone owns a developer they are burning big money if that game is AA-AAA and doesn't make a return or move the needle for console sales. You are only talking about how taking all those quintessential Japanese IPs helps Microsoft and gamepass. The developers want to make new successful games and still have jobs, so I'm still happy with my original point I made.

 

[TheGodfather07]

They will definatly have to follow through with the 10 year deal. Would look pretty bad if they didnt

Oh. I was thinking that the drop in console concerns meant no concessions were needed there anymore.

 

[TheGodfather07]

But we know Sony isn't signing anything with MS regarding a COD deal.

If I'm understanding It correctly, it wouldn't matter if the regulators themselves require it as part of the concessions. Sony don't need to sign anything.

 

[Edmund]

You mean "read in Japanese" right? Also Phil has spoken in Japanese before.

I can speak Japanese too.

HADOUKEN!!! SHORYUKEN!!

Omae wa mou shindeiru!!

 

[feynoob]

I can speak Japanese too.

HADOUKEN!!! SHORYUKEN!!

Omae wa mou shindeiru!!

Spoiler: My Japanese is better too

私はペニスが小さい

 

[12Dannu123]

This whole saga has been nothing but a massive blunder on Sony's part.

They lobbied the CMA, EC and CMA that Nintendo is not part of the market, it's only Xbox and PS, the regulators agreed and when regulators realised that making COD won't foreclose Sony, they dropped the DLC concern and not only that, Microsoft is using that definition of the market against Sony using their massive lobbying power in Washington and abroad, which could result in Sony's timed exclusive business model being under the microscope

 

[Topher]

That's a totally separate fight that has nothing to do with the ABK acquisition.

This has nothing to do with gaming or cloud gaming.

Yes...... R reksveks had already pointed out my mistake.....

Oh.....I see. Not related to ABK. Couldn't read the bloomberg article, but found the gist of the complaint here.

Executive Summary of CISPE Complaint against Microsoft | CISPE - The Voice of Cloud Infrastructure Service Providers in Europe

cispe.cloud

 

[Ozriel]

They will definatly have to follow through with the 10 year deal. Would look pretty bad if they didnt

If Sony accepts the deal.

 

[Nothing1234]

This whole saga has been nothing but a massive blunder on Sony's part.

They lobbied the CMA, EC and CMA that Nintendo is not part of the market, it's only Xbox and PS, the regulators agreed and when regulators realised that making COD won't foreclose Sony, they dropped the DLC concern and not only that, Microsoft is using that definition of the market against Sony using their massive lobbying power in Washington and abroad, which could result in Sony's timed exclusive business model being under the microscope

Which would be fine as Microsoft and Nintendo both do the same thing.

 

[phil_t98]

If Sony accepts the deal.

Sony will still want COD on their console as they do Minecraft

 

[3liteDragon]

 

[TheGodfather07]

This whole saga has been nothing but a massive blunder on Sony's part.

They lobbied the CMA, EC and CMA that Nintendo is not part of the market, it's only Xbox and PS, the regulators agreed and when regulators realised that making COD won't foreclose Sony, they dropped the DLC concern and not only that, Microsoft is using that definition of the market against Sony using their massive lobbying power in Washington and abroad, which could result in Sony's timed exclusive business model being under the microscope

Microsoft should clean their own house before accusing others. They literally do the same thing. Aint nothing wrong with that but why all the accusations? I don't see sony coming out and accusing them of the same when they could do if they wanted.

 

[Elios83]

This whole saga has been nothing but a massive blunder on Sony's part.

They lobbied the CMA, EC and CMA that Nintendo is not part of the market, it's only Xbox and PS, the regulators agreed and when regulators realised that making COD won't foreclose Sony, they dropped the DLC concern and not only that, Microsoft is using that definition of the market against Sony using their massive lobbying power in Washington and abroad, which could result in Sony's timed exclusive business model being under the microscope

You seem too have some confused ideas.
COD won't foreclose Sony? DLC concern?

Regulators agreed with Sony that Microsoft buying Call of Duty to make it an exclusive is not normal competition, it's an anticompetitive practice.
The only reason the console market concerns were cast aside (provisionally?) it's because for regulators this scenario can't happen because the losses for Microsoft would outweight the benefits, not because if it did happen it would be considered like fair competition. This is a huge difference that is going to force Microsoft to keep COD multiplatform even if Sony decides to not sign anything with them.

If Sony didn't do anything, we already knew what Microsoft's plan was, 3 years of COD after current deals just to Sony.
Now it's ten years of COD to pretty much everyone, every cloud competitor getting both Xbox and Activision games for 10 years and Microsoft's plan to use acquisitions to buy marketshare cannot pass unobserved anymore like it did with Bethseda.

We don't know how this thing will end but it's clear that Microsoft was at the very least forced to concede a lot more they imagined when they signed this deal in early 2022 and it's not over, regulators have not expressed themselves about the remedies they will end up asking.

The thing about the congress people and timed exclusives is unconsequential fluff, low level and explicit lobbying with no credibility.

 

[DForce]

Sega and Nintendo made their fair share of mistakes for sure, but to act as if Sony with it's much bigger wallet didn't use that to try to squash the competition is also revisionist history. You really only need to look into $299.00 PS1 to see that quite clearly, they took a big hit on every console sold which their competitors couldn't match being primarily just gaming companies who needed to go even or make a profit on console sales. They then leveraged being a maker of DVD players to put one into the PS2, significantly boosting it's popularity.



https://www.gamesradar.com/phil-harrison-on-how-the-ps1-price-was-decided/#:~:text=It is true that when,development up to that point."

- The Sega Saturn was rushed out the door and was an expensive console to manufacture.
- The Saturn was also very difficult to develop for.
- Developers didn't have enough time to make games for the Saturn's launch.
- Sega could have made a console with Sony.

Sega failed because of Sega, not Sony.

 

[Edmund]

Microsoft should clean their own house before accusing others. They literally do the same thing.

Axios: 11 members of Congress argue Sony is unfairly hurting Xbox in Japan

https://twitter.com/stephentotilo/status/1640465809448534017?s=20 https://www.axios.com/2023/03/27/congress-xbox-playstation-japan Driving the news: Policymakers raised concerns last week to Biden officials, saying Sony's business practices in its native Japan are blocking U.S. companies from...

www.resetera.com

Have you read this thread yet? It's the very definition of madness.

And I just want to point how two-faced Sullivan from Resetera is. He is very anti Sony in his posts in both the acquisition thread and this, yet he pops by once in a while in the PlayStation OT thread and even once said that the PS5 is his favourite console. No wonder almost no one engages with him over at the PlayStation OT over at REE.

 

[Edmund]

Kotick new email.

Kotick, of all people commenting on Sony's "behaviour" is making me roll my eyes.

 

[POKEYCLYDE]

What's the 50% based on though? Seems completely arbitrary to me that you've made up this benefit threshold where you use a different percentage increase in price for those switching.

You're still relying on something 'unrelated' to recoup the loss too, namely the margins of some other 1st party or 3rd party games they might buy in addition. Why can't this be a subscription service that can increase in price which would considerably affect the static LTV used in the incentives analysis?


Your cost/benefit analysis is flawed though and I'm not sure why you would do it that way. it's irrational to look at different price increases for consumers who move from a downstream rival vs other consumers. It really doesn't make sense in the context of the subscription service and foreclosure incentive.


It doesn't. You only need to look at Facebook/Giphy for an example of this. The incentive to do X (which is to foreclose) can rely on any number of things. The 'results' have external variables that are based on your strategy. There is no specific technique to asses the ability or incentive to foreclose. Least of all an out of context analysis which relies on differing prices depending on if you came from a downstream rival. We have vertical arithmetic or vguppi but those are also limited and dropped by the CMA for Facebook/Giphy.

The point being made is that the variables in the incentive analysis can be changed over the LTV time range to increase the merging parties ability to foreclose. We were discussing incentives that relied on a set LTV of current xbox users and how inaccurate that would be if subscription price increased by $1.45 for gamepass since they are artificially low. It doesn't help that both console and MGS margins are low too and COD margins high. foreclosure is likely to cause significant downstream diversion with only limited upstream dilution.

Highlighted from the CMA's document itself. You do not use current Xbox users in your LTV model.

The % of switchers is so low that the CMA did not see Microsoft not losing billions of dollars in the model they used from making CoD exclusive.

If the % was higher, it would be easy to come to a different conclusion.

 

[Lasha]

Sorry, this is ridiculous.

This deal is big not just in terms of gaming, but tech in general.

Same as the healthcare mess in the US - I don’t need to be sick to see there is a problem - I want the problem fixed before I need the healthcare system. Whether and when I play CoD ia irrelevant - this goes beyond that.

This forum is for gaming enthusiasts and if you don’t have an opinion about this acquisition, then you can’t complain if the hobby takes a path you don’t like.

You didn't read the post I was replying to. You only mentioned COD. You're kinda proving my point here.

 

[SportsFan581]

If Sony accepts the deal.

It will be on PS regardless, just a matter of whether or not there is feature parity or if MS gives itself some added perks. That really seems to be the decision that is in Sony's court.

 

[Iced Arcade]

Can't wait for this deal to be over so these 2 can start showing off again.

Semi off topic: starting to see Spider-Man 2 ads now (*no gameplay)

 

[b6a6es]

Can't wait for this deal to be over so these 2 can start showing off again.

Semi off topic: starting to see Spider-Man 2 ads now (*no gameplay)

For real man, it’s sucks waiting 2 years now for a showcase (hopefully not 3 years into 2024 because of this latest shitshow)

 

[DeepEnigma]

Can't wait for this deal to be over so these 2 can start showing off again.

Ain't that the truth.