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.
ManaByte said:
Don't those games still launch the shitty EA app though?
Click to expand...

I don't know, potentially? What's so shitty about EA app? The new one is actually great. Looks good, fast to start, what else do you need?

Clean:

o8HiDPY.png
 
Godot25 said:
Microsoft offered 3 years outside of current Sony/ABK marketing deal. So technically it was 5 years deal from 2022 (until 2027).

Microsoft will not remove COD not because of how high-profile this case have become, but because it makes no business sense. CMA stated that, EU stated that. And FTC had to bring up bogus 20% number to "prove" that it makes business sense for Microsoft to do it. COD is just cash cow for Microsoft gaming business and Microsoft is risking killing it's popularity if it become exclusive. It's same reason why GTA VI would not be exclusive even if Microsoft/Sony bought Take 2.

Why on earth would you risk killing your golden goose when you can get your primary competitor to fund your presence in gaming business like with Minecraft?
Fact is that with Minecraft and COD Microsoft can pump money from Nintendo/Sony platforms into Xbox ecosystem to grow it. With Game Pass or other means. They would be dumb as hell to forfeit that money.

From day one since deal was announced I said
Bethesda was bought to draw people into Xbox ecosystem
ABK was bought as a cashcow

That still stands.
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There is certainly an argument that COD is too big to make exclusive.

But as I said, I still have my doubts because it all depends on how much Microsoft is willing to take a hit in short-term revenue for longer-term gains. And if any money can sacrifice short-term revenue, it's Microsoft.

That's why I think if COD stays on PS now, it is probably more likely because of how high-profile the case has become.

But let's see how it all plays out.
 
ManaByte said:
Don't those games still launch the shitty EA app though?
Click to expand...
They do and its quite annoying,
You launch your EA game in steam and it boots up the EA App which in turn boots up the game.
I wouldn't mind this idea with steam but direct would be amazing.

I am someone that just wants one launcher for everything and that launcher to be Steam.
 
MidGenRefresh said:
100% COD will remain on PlayStation. 100% Microsoft will use marketing tricks and time / content exclusivity to convince casuals that XBOX is the one and only place to play COD.
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They will be using GP and an earlier release date/windows for maps, guns, modes, and do exclusive beta's to leech users of off PS in the next 3-5 years, which are all the things Sony/PS have been doing. Around that time period they'll look into making the game exclusive if they're able to grow CoD's player base on Xbox/PC so that they don't lose a ton of money from PS gamers.
 
Heisenberg007 said:
There is certainly an argument that COD is too big to make exclusive.

But as I said, I still have my doubts because it all depends on how much Microsoft is willing to take a hit in short-term revenue for longer-term gains. And if any money can sacrifice short-term revenue, it's Microsoft.

That's why I think if COD stays on PS now, it is probably more likely because of how high-profile the case has become.

But let's see how it all plays out.
Click to expand...
Cod will 100 percent stay on PlayStation but MS will definitely leverage Cod in some way or some form. delay releases, maybe warzone only on playstation? But that wont happen for awhile. Sony needs to sign the 10 year deal so none of the trickery can occur in that 10 year time frame.
 
tryDEATH said:
They will be using GP and an earlier release date/windows for maps, guns, modes, and do exclusive beta's to leech users of off PS in the next 3-5 years, which are all the things Sony/PS have been doing. Around that time period they'll look into making the game exclusive if they're able to grow CoD's player base on Xbox/PC so that they don't lose a ton of money from PS gamers.
Click to expand...

They can also do a Call of Duty spin off game. Technically it's not a Call of Duty game so it can be exclusive. I'm not a COD fan but I'm sure there are characters that fanbase love and would like to see more of.
 
Godot25 said:
Does it?
I mean, yeah. GTA V sold gangbusters. But 180 million sales came during 10 year period. Which means 18 million copies per year on average.
Meanwhile, COD is selling 20-30 million copies per year easily and is monetised in a way that that is raking few billion dollars per year in revenue for ABK. Not to mention COD Mobile.
Click to expand...
Look at additional posts I made.
 
TrebleShot said:
They do and its quite annoying,
You launch your EA game in steam and it boots up the EA App which in turn boots up the game.
I wouldn't mind this idea with steam but direct would be amazing.

I am someone that just wants one launcher for everything and that launcher to be Steam.
Click to expand...
The closest I've got is to that is using GOG Galaxy (CD Projekt's client for GOG games). You can link Steam, EA, Epic, Blizzard, etc and you can have it start them minimized/hidden so that the game just launches. All your games from each different client is shown in one library.

It works quite well but I stopped caring about having to install multiple clients. I have Steam, Blizzard, Epic, EA, Ubisoft, GOG installed. Yeah it'd be nice to have everything on Steam but it's not going to happen.
 
Hopefully this in a way make Sony revive their amazing games like Killzone, Socom, MAG, etc.

In reality, they shouldn't even need COD at all. I don't know why they let those great games forgotten, when they should be as popular as COD (specially Killzone).

To me, Killzone 2 is still the best FPS I've ever played.
 
RCU005 said:
In reality, they shouldn't even need COD at all. I don't know why they let those great games forgotten, when they should be as popular as COD (specially Killzone).
Click to expand...

For millions of casual players COD and FIFA is a deciding factor in choosing a console. Just owning marketing rights is seriously a big deal. Owning the IP, that's huge.
 
01011001 said:
if you don't mind absolutely awful controls I guess...
"Killzone 2, for people who like bad controls". they should have used that for their cover art PR speech... maybe it would have sold more than a million copies through honest marketing lol
Click to expand...

You should probably just get good.
 
MidGenRefresh said:
For millions of casual players COD and FIFA is a deciding factor in choosing a console. Just owning marketing rights is seriously a big deal. Owning the IP, that's huge.
Click to expand...
Being able to put up trailers/billboards for CoD with the Xbox logo will be huuuge for Microsoft. And of course if they own it then they can do what they want with it. It could be that Playstation owners need to wait longer, miss out on content, have to pay more....or don't get to play it at all. I know they agreed to not make it exclusive but if they own it... who knows what could happen in the future.
 
01011001 said:
a shooter with 160+ms of input lag is automatically a bad shooter.
what's worse is that even the best HD TVs at the time it released had at best 33ms of screen lag.
so you were looking at close to 200ms of total end to end latency.
Click to expand...
Killzone 2 was dope and the heavy controls feel contributed to that.
 
01011001 said:
a shooter with 160+ms of input lag is automatically a bad shooter.
what's worse is that even the best HD TVs at the time it released had at best 33ms of screen lag.
so you were looking at close to 200ms of total end to end latency.
Click to expand...
Killzone 2 was better than cod. Even now nothing is quite like killzone 2. Mixing the classes and the heavy gunplay made for some truly stressful fights
 
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ChiefDada said:
Might not be necessary:

Click to expand...

that would be a reckless waste of taxpayer's money and Lina Khan is already being subpoened for her shenanigans. Her tenure has been a train wreck. The judge annihilated their arguments in such a way that it would take minutes for an appeal court to laugh them away. The CMA has smelled the coffee and asked for negotiations. If the FTC is determined to go down guns blazing they can. They might delay the inevitable by 2 weeks if that.
 
Greggy said:
that would be a reckless waste of taxpayer's money and Lina Khan is already being subpoened for her shenanigans. Her tenure has been a train wreck. The judge annihilated their arguments in such a way that it would take minutes for an appeal court to laugh them away. The CMA has smelled the coffee and asked for negotiations. If the FTC is determined to go down guns blazing they can. They might delay the inevitable by 2 weeks if that.
Click to expand...
yeah its time for her to stop wasting tax payers money and resources. She had her shot and missed. Time to move on. Even the CMA has returned to the table. Which shocked me.
 
MidGenRefresh said:
They can also do a Call of Duty spin off game. Technically it's not a Call of Duty game so it can be exclusive. I'm not a COD fan but I'm sure there are characters that fanbase love and would like to see more of.
Click to expand...
That's a good call and MS has already done that to a certain extent with HALO: ODST, which was a spin-off from Master Chief's HALO. Depending on how big of a financial hit MS is willing to take they could switch the mainline series to a 2 year cycle, but have "spin-offs" release between that 2 year period that are exclusive to Xbox/PC.
 
tryDEATH said:
That's a good call and MS has already done that to a certain extent with HALO: ODST, which was a spin-off from Master Chief's HALO. Depending on how big of a financial hit MS is willing to take they could switch the mainline series to a 2 year cycle, but have "spin-offs" release between that 2 year period that are exclusive to Xbox/PC.
Click to expand...

Captain Price A Call of Duty story
 
MidGenRefresh said:
Only. Hehe.

How many more millions play COD, FIFA and 1 maybe 2 games a year?
Click to expand...

Hard to understand where you're getting at. You either followed the case or not. You either understand why it's being approved or not.

6 million people is the number you are looking for.

And FIFA? I don't get it. You think people who buy a PlayStation to play FIFA are going to buy an Xbox? Ok
 
Thirty7ven said:
Hard to understand where you're getting at. You either followed the case or not. You either understand why it's being approved or not.

6 million people is the number you are looking for.

And FIFA? I don't get it. You think people who buy a PlayStation to play FIFA are going to buy an Xbox? Ok
Click to expand...

No. You don't get it.
 
Thirty7ven said:
Hard to understand where you're getting at. You either followed the case or not. You either understand why it's being approved or not.

6 million people is the number you are looking for.

And FIFA? I don't get it. You think people who buy a PlayStation to play FIFA are going to buy an Xbox? Ok
Click to expand...

Well the official FIFA license is up for grabs now even though it requires deep pockets. With everything that's going on I think it's only a matter of time before someone snaps it up.
 


so the future are the services and the cloud according to the judge? I missed something because I didn't read the whole thing, but this decision doesn't stand imo
 
FalsettoVibe said:
It's not going exclusive. But it will be on GP, which is almost as good as exclusive. It won't even be exclusive at the beginning of next gen. But the fact that it will be on GP and be the definitive version due to Sony not providing PS6 information to MS effectively makes it exclusive.
Click to expand...

So would you say bungie games will be defacto exclusives as well when they don't get xbox next gen info early? This mindset is ridiculous.
 
zapper said:


so the future are the services and the cloud according to the judge? I missed something because I didn't read the whole thing, but this decision doesn't stand imo
Click to expand...


So it seems cma is right after all and Microsoft is downplaying the importance of their Azure offerings.
 
Bloomberg saying FTC leaning towards appealing...

www.bloomberg.com

FTC Leaning Toward Appealing Microsoft-Activision Loss

The US Federal Trade Commission is leaning toward appealing a federal judge’s ruling against the agency’s bid to block Microsoft Corp.’s $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard Inc., according to a person familiar with the case.
www.bloomberg.com www.bloomberg.com

tryDEATH said:
They will be using GP and an earlier release date/windows for maps, guns, modes, and do exclusive beta's to leech users of off PS in the next 3-5 years, which are all the things Sony/PS have been doing. Around that time period they'll look into making the game exclusive if they're able to grow CoD's player base on Xbox/PC so that they don't lose a ton of money from PS gamers.
Click to expand...

So you think Phil Spencer lied under oath?
 
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Topher said:
Bloomberg saying FTC leaning towards appealing...

www.bloomberg.com

FTC Leaning Toward Appealing Microsoft-Activision Loss

The US Federal Trade Commission is leaning toward appealing a federal judge’s ruling against the agency’s bid to block Microsoft Corp.’s $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard Inc., according to a person familiar with the case.
www.bloomberg.com www.bloomberg.com



So you think Phil Spencer lied under oath?
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Doesn't matter if they appeal or not at this point. They have a 5 percent chance of getting a emergency motion to stop the deal. Khan had her shot and she missed. Time for her to stop wasting tax payers money and resources. Even the CMA is back to the table.....
 
Man it's crazy what MS pulled off. They did say if their is one company to overcome a CMA block it's Microsoft. So many people thought the CMA was unmoveable after the block. Now their back to the table? Crazy.
 
Neofire said:
The hypocrisy of you in the face of what MS did with the Bethesda acquisition for you to spew this lol. It's like you are peeing on someone's head and telling them it's raining.

Ms did exactly what I stated in my initial post and individuals think they aren't going to do the same with ABK are delusional.
Click to expand...

And none of that happened out of some ridiculous spite towards Sony. "To stick it to those bastards!" That's the part of your argument that's just complete nonsense. They make business decisions on financial merit, end of. Stop being such an emotional bitch about all of this, it just oozes out of you lol
 
Topher said:
Bloomberg saying FTC leaning towards appealing...

www.bloomberg.com

FTC Leaning Toward Appealing Microsoft-Activision Loss

The US Federal Trade Commission is leaning toward appealing a federal judge’s ruling against the agency’s bid to block Microsoft Corp.’s $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard Inc., according to a person familiar with the case.
www.bloomberg.com www.bloomberg.com



So you think Phil Spencer lied under oath?
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Would it even matter though?
That law dude from Stanford even said that if Microsoft decided to close on Monday (which is likely if they strike a deal with CMA), Court of Appeal would not have enough time to grant an appeal.

But I'm not law expert to know ramifications. Just citing real law experts.
 
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EA would be a good buy next for MS to make a move on Europe. I expect EA's football game to continue to do well without the FIFA name or at least it's very possible to do so. If EA should see a drop someone like MS could buy EA and reunite the FIFA brand.
 
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