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.
Jigsaah said:
That deal was never signed though. Sony and Mmicrosoft can go back to the table without the weight of this case weighing on the decisions. They'll play hardball for sure, but I don't think 100% of revenue will end up with Microsoft.
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If it isn't 70 30 I would just block avb entirely on Playstation.
 
mayham2199 said:
I don't know what will happen but I think the outcome of this deal will be decided before the 18th one way or the other. Either CMA agrees with MS and allows it go through or CMA doesn't and I think the deal is dead after that. I don't think there are any plans to extend the deal at all.
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I have read that they are negotiating behind the doors for remedies, which means they have already accepted. they basically don't want to make a fool of themselves in court like the ftc did, they will announce that they have found a solution in a few days
 
DrFigs said:
I don't think Sony is interested in expanding their japanese output
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The problem with Sony buying things is what is their return? They're already dominant so it wouldn't be about increasing share. They're getting the games for free right now with none of the labor costs and getting their 30 percent cut.

Sony was always about having just enough goty exclusives to be enough of a reason to buy their console. But with their business model having more studios creating exclusives creates a lot of diminishing returns for a large increase in labor costs.

Microsoft needs the studios to feed gsmepass. Unless Sony changes their model I see them buying maybe one huge acquisition just to show confidence and steady their fans and call it good.
 
tmlDan said:
This may not be what people want to hear but as soon as Kotick leaves/if he does (despite being a shitty human) the company could potentially plummet into a shittier space than it is
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People were saying that they would be bought by Tencent with horror, but I think ABK's philosophy already lined up with Tencent's. These are the people responsible for releasing Diablo Immortal. If anything, I imagine it would be more of the mobile freemium model in the future.
 
drganon said:
Nah, they need a couple more. Only then can they "compete".
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Well.....I wouldnt mind if they added sega to the list (not gonna happen, I know..japan laws and all). I think IOI, AND CDPR are eventual purchases for MS (lets be honest sMs and sony are going to buy more stuff!)


and maybe buy bioware from EA... MS should have acquired them in the first place back when they had the chance. they belong just like bethesda. bring em 'home', I say.



They should......Make EA an offer they cant refuse....


Marlon Brando Godfather GIF by Filmin
 
The judge made a wonderful and fair decision. That will impact gaming for the best imo. I think MS made a very impactful skilled and honest case. Going to be great having all those games on GP.
 
SlimySnake said:
you and i both know thats nonsense. if activision couldve ported these games on the switch they would've.

all you have to do is look at the ps360 versions of blops 3 and see how 'tailored' they were. No campaign, barebones maps and features. they were a joke and that was a 2015 game. getting MW2 or a next gen only COD to run on a switch that is literally 63x weaker than the xsx is simply going to be impossible.
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It'll run just fine on Switch 2 which is probably right around the corner...
 
tpieman2029 said:
The problem with Sony buying things is what is their return? They're already dominant so it wouldn't be about increasing share. They're getting the games for free right now with none of the labor costs and getting their 30 percent cut.

Sony was always about having just enough goty exclusives to be enough of a reason to buy their console. But with their business model having more studios creating exclusives creates a lot of diminishing returns for a large increase in labor costs.

Microsoft needs the studios to feed gsmepass. Unless Sony changes their model I see them buying maybe one huge acquisition just to show confidence and steady their fans and call it good.
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Well I mean the advantage to consumers of MS buying Activision is not clear to me either. All platforms were already getting these games. And MS could already pay to put Activision games on Gamepass if they wanted to. So I don't really understand the strategy except that they want to deprive competitors of these products. It's a weird situation for Sony because they kind of are in danger of losing a ton of revenue if MS makes COD exclusive and Japanese games (which are way more profitable on the switch) are not going to cut it.
 
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aliadiere25 said:
This is what these Xbox/Microsoft people don't understand. It's only going to increase the prices of Game Pass and PlayStation Plus a lot if they buy other gaming studios and make more games exclusive to their consoles. If you think paying 17 dollars a month on Game Pass is expensive, wait till they raise it to like 30 dollars a month in like 3 years.
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So? This happened with Gold. How many times has the price raised for Netflix in the last two years. Didn't Sony start charging 10 more for games now? How many times people bitch about their Comcast bill rising and they still pay it. If it happens it happens and you as a consumer have a choice to move on or pay it. This isn't unique to Gamepass.
 
Solidus_T said:
People were saying that they would be bought by Tencent with horror, but I think ABK's philosophy already lined up with Tencent's. These are the people responsible for releasing Diablo Immortal. If anything, I imagine it would be more of the mobile freemium model in the future.
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But thats why they got so big, even though the direction they took pisses off most hardcore gamers.

Kotick is a smart businessmen, if he leaves and ABK doesn't hold onto its finances MS will cut them up into pieces because they need to make good money to recoup costs of the deal
 
I took the diarrhea dump into my Series X vents like I said I would and it started installing COD Warzone. Guess I'm on board now.
 
DrFigs said:
I think this is clearly a huge loss for playstation and probably bad for gamers in general to lose a major publisher like this. But could be a silver lining that spurs some innovation (assuming Sony's response isn't just to buy more companies).
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I mean I don't see how they won't buy companies in reaction to this, Sony has to do something to help ensure their own survival with Microsoft openly declaring their goal is to drive PlayStation out of business

hopefully they do both things though
 
Heisenberg007 said:
This is not correct.

Microsoft just recently outbid Sony for 2 games exclusivity and subscription service rights: Valheim and Immortality. We just learned about these 2 games from the court case. There'd be plenty of others.
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Right, and thats my point- they had to outbid for things (yes prob a typical thing that happens), but my point was that this buy-out was probably them seeing the long term plan of spending more now and not having to worry about making deals with games that are guaranteed to make you money.
 
tmlDan said:
But thats why they got so big, even though the direction they took pisses off most hardcore gamers.

Kotick is a smart businessmen, if he leaves and ABK doesn't hold onto its finances MS will cut them up into pieces because they need to make good money to recoup costs of the deal
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They actually don't need to make anything to recoup costs of the deal. They own an asset now that's worth more than what they paid for it. The price already went up. The Activision / Blizz / King revenue gets added to Xbox division and once and for all puts to rest all concerns about them not being a self-sufficient division.
 
Solidus_T said:
Microsoft's offer for CoD on Playstation held that MS would get 100% of the revenue, so even in that ridiculous scenario offered by MS, Sony still loses the revenue from the game.
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We haven't seen the offer Microsoft/Xbox made to Sony. But I highly doubt this is true. What you're referencing is the agreements between Microsoft and BYOG Cloud Streaming providers like Nvidia GFN, which is just how those services operate.
 
What is even the point of regulators when they just bend over and take it up the ass by trillion-dollar corporations when the deal is big enough?

How can they claim to be protecting the public interest and consumers? Honestly, it's a joke.

This is essentially unregulated capitalism where multi-billion dollar corporations have more power than governments. We're not in for a good time.
 
Punished Miku said:
They actually don't need to make anything to recoup costs of the deal. They own an asset now that's worth more than what they paid for it. The price already went up. The Activision / Blizz / King revenue gets added to Xbox division and once and for all puts to rest all concerns about them not being a self-sufficient division.
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Must be nice thinking the world is all sunshine and rainbows...do you know who MS is?

also, you ignored the caveat about Kotick leaving, that's the whole premise of my response
 
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Well, now we will have a lot of competition, instead of several studios, it will be at best 3 companies(
if one of them doesn't give up)

Why have the FTC if a judge Who can be corrupted* can reverse the decision
 
Jigga117 said:
So? This happened with Gold. How many times has the price raised for Netflix in the last two years. Didn't Sony start charging 10 more for games now? How many times people bitch about their Comcast bill rising and they still pay it. If it happens it happens and you as a consumer have a choice to move on or pay it. This isn't unique to Gamepass.
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I submit that it is a really bad idea to assume the impact on a consumer's ability to choose will remain static when one entity continues to consolidate an industry. With enough consolidation, the choices shift from A or B, to either A or nothing.
 
aliadiere25 said:
This is what these Xbox/Microsoft people don't understand. It's only going to increase the prices of Game Pass and PlayStation Plus a lot if they buy other gaming studios and make more games exclusive to their consoles. If you think paying 17 dollars a month on Game Pass is expensive, wait till they raise it to like 30 dollars a month in like 3 years.
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You realize there's not a gun to people's head to pay for game pass right? You can indeed opt out of paying. Shocking I know. If a crazy price increase does indeed happen, you can just pay for 1 month every several months or so, play the games that interest you and move on.
 
tpieman2029 said:
The problem with Sony buying things is what is their return? They're already dominant so it wouldn't be about increasing share. They're getting the games for free right now with none of the labor costs and getting their 30 percent cut.

Sony was always about having just enough goty exclusives to be enough of a reason to buy their console. But with their business model having more studios creating exclusives creates a lot of diminishing returns for a large increase in labor costs.

Microsoft needs the studios to feed gsmepass. Unless Sony changes their model I see them buying maybe one huge acquisition just to show confidence and steady their fans and call it good.
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It's about protecting revenue streams. Ensuring those companies don't go anywhere. No one thought ABK would be bought, until they were. Sony also wants in on mobile and the only good way to do that is buying companies who already have a big presence there. That's not even getting into their goals for transmedia. The more they own, the larger their headcount, the more they can produce that translates into movies and TV shows.
 
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BiohazardX95 said:
It should be clear that industry consolidation is going to be negative for the consumers.

Maybe it has something to do with the amount of people that plays those games on each platform, for example I read somewhere that only 1 million out of the 10 sold of FFXV were sales on Xbox.
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Hard to foster a strong and faithful consumer base for your franchises when over half of the games in said franchise are made ambiguously exclusive to the competitor console. I know I wouldn't want to invest in an IP as a consumer if there was no guarantee I could even play future games in the series.
 
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aliadiere25 said:
This is what these Xbox/Microsoft people don't understand. It's only going to increase the prices of Game Pass and PlayStation Plus a lot if they buy other gaming studios and make more games exclusive to their consoles. If you think paying 17 dollars a month on Game Pass is expensive, wait till they raise it to like 30 dollars a month in like 3 years.
Click to expand...

To be fair to both Microsoft and Sony the prices for PS+ and Game Pass SHOULD be higher. As should the base price for standalone purchases. Games started costing $60 with the release of the Xbox 360 in 2005. Thats over $90 adjusting for inflation. Games are actually CHEAPER today than they were 20 years ago.
 
FTC decision is not a surprise but the CMA response is.

If this deal goes through then you're going to see mass consolidation. It's going to be bad for the industry.
 
GHG said:
And the people who are coming back after evaporating after the CMA's block are the ones who think that people will suddenly disappear. Funny that.

What they fail to realise is the fact that most of the discussion in this thread has not been juvenile mud-slinging.
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That's true GHG. but to be fair there has also been certain elements of this thread that have been tarring all Xbox owners with the same brush.

Some of us like Gamepass and buying new releases :)

Still ..never a dull moment in this pastime these past few years.
 
Mr Moose said:
If both sides start buying up everything it's going to be fucking dog shit. Anyone who is for this bullshit is just silly.
The only reason to buy a publisher would be if they are in trouble and potentially going under, Activision are not that.
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THe sad fact of the matter is that I would be all for this acquisition if MS actually had the competence to leverage the IPs they have acquired. They've completely wasted the IPs they got from Rare and based on what I have heard I have little faith that they will do anything meaningful with the Bethesda IPs. It frankly pissed me off when they said "they were going to let the studios do their thing" Fuck you Phil! Tell Obsidian they are working on a New Vegas 2. Put some smaller studios on less risky projects that don't require new tech. Have a smaller studio work on a Doom Eternal project. In the meantime, have a smaller studio port New Vegas and Fallout 3 to XSX with 4K/120 support.

But no, MS wants to allow Bethesda to keep Elder Scrolls and Fallout in house meaning, they get released once every 15 years.
 
Jigga117 said:
So? This happened with Gold. How many times has the price raised for Netflix in the last two years. Didn't Sony start charging 10 more for games now? How many times people bitch about their Comcast bill rising and they still pay it. If it happens it happens and you as a consumer have a choice to move on or pay it. This isn't unique to Gamepass.
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You literally have no clue, do you? We're not talking about a couple of dollars increase here or there, we're talking about a 100% increase in the space of 2 years or so (or maybe this year for Game Pass after this deal goes through)

It isn't just the price increase, it's also the fact that this gives the go-ahead for companies to do whatever they want, charge whatever they want, and make games exclusives that weren't exclusive before. This is why we have court hearings to try and stop companies from monopolizing things... so they can't do whatever they want to the customer.
 
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Exciting news for those who wanted this (me included), but there's no need for despair from the Sony fans - this will force them to be even better. Can only imagine the years ahead. Can't wait. Should end any questions of Microsoft leaving the industry too.

CMA's immediate climbdown is kind of amusing though, and a big loss for Jim Ryan, which I'm okay with... If you're not going to win, don't pick the fight. A bit of humble pie never hurt anyone long term.

Imagine being the person who initiates that transfer of funds?
 
Varteras said:
Again, there will be no negotiation. Did you forget about Zenimax already? The plan from the beginning was exclusivity. The only reason CoD would stay is because of how big it is and how much money it makes on PlayStation. For a while, anyways. They were already looking into how to make Minecraft exclusive. This isn't a matter of Sony playing nice. It never was.
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Ok so now tell me... do you want Sony to attempt to negotiate a deal to keep Activision games on PS or not? Cause at this point especially now the clock is ticking...
 
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