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

Do you believe the deal will be approved?


  • Total voters
    886
  • Poll closed .
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Bernardougf

Member
Not sure using Australia as a point of potential problems is much of a blip on their radar, they care so much about our laws/country/market they don't even turn up to answer questions when summoned to federal hearings over software prices in australia. That's all of them, actually adobe turned up I think, google/ms/apple laughed and went to lunch. Also Valve wont even sell steamdecks to us lol.
Yeah.. but if australia/nz approve the deal.. just wait for the twitter pr lead by lulu start spamming the good news as one more country joins in the aproov3d bandwagon!
 

poppabk

Cheeks Spread for Digital Only Future
1. Invest in their own CoD, MS said 10 years is plenty (tsk…)
To make a game as good as CoD, I think that is possible for Sony. To make a game that sells as well as CoD does currently - not a chance in hell. To make a game that sells as well as an Xbox exclusive CoD - definitely possible.
 

Corrik

Member
When Microsoft announced the deal, Activision was going through a very rough patch. Their stock had plummeted from $100 to $64 a share. The share collapse is what led to Microsoft pursuing the deal, and Activision accepting.

Now after 18 months, things have settled down. Activision's cash flows seem to be doing quite well, there's less issues surrounding the harassment scandal, and the markets are pricing in higher valuations for companies over the past 6 months.

So looking at it from the lens, and realizing that ATVI is now trading more like a stock with high volatility instead of being anchored to the agreed price in 2022, a similar premium being placed at $82/share (as opposed to $64) would require MS to renegotiate @ $120 / share or even higher given the potential risks of dragging this ordeal out without signing a new marketing agreement with a big platform holder like Sony.
This is still not accurate. It is $82 right now with the idea that being invested will get you $95 paid out when the deal is consummated. If the deal falls apart, the stock will recede. The question is, how much? How many people already bailed on the pay out? And how many are riding it out in hopes it pans out?

The initial belief was that Microsoft actually overpaid for ABK with what they offered. Is ABK in a better position now? Probably. But, they aren't in as good a position as you are portraying either because you are taking into account a premerger bubble that will pop if the deal falls through.

While a good Diablo release is good for ABK, a single brand damaging misfire on CoD could also be devastating to the company also. This creates a situation that makes their stock vulnerable. Also, if the reasoning to the merger failed looks like it makes the company relatively unsellable or not attractive to pursue, this will negatively affect stock value as well.

In either case, the numbers being floated here for price / share if renegotiated are way higher than what is realistic.
 

Clintizzle

Lord of Edge.
Apparently a country of 5 million (NZ) people with the majority of them not having the network infastructive to play cloud games for a long while should be concerned XCloud will foreclose Sony and Nvidia. Absolutely embarrassing.

To be fair our internet services are at least better than Australia 🤣
 

DarkBatman

SBI’s Employee of the Year
Apparently a country of 5 million (NZ) people with the majority of them not having the network infastructive to play cloud games for a long while should be concerned XCloud will foreclose Sony and Nvidia. Absolutely embarrassing.

To be fair our internet services are at least better than Australia 🤣
But if that country had waved the deal through without any complaints, people on Twitter would have hailed it as a clear success, underscoring that another country of five million people is in favor of this merger.
 

POKEYCLYDE

Member
When Microsoft announced the deal, Activision was going through a very rough patch. Their stock had plummeted from $100 to $64 a share. The share collapse is what led to Microsoft pursuing the deal, and Activision accepting.

Now after 18 months, things have settled down. Activision's cash flows seem to be doing quite well, there's less issues surrounding the harassment scandal, and the markets are pricing in higher valuations for companies over the past 6 months.

So looking at it from the lens, and realizing that ATVI is now trading more like a stock with high volatility instead of being anchored to the agreed price in 2022, a similar premium being placed at $82/share (as opposed to $64) would require MS to renegotiate @ $120 / share or even higher given the potential risks of dragging this ordeal out without signing a new marketing agreement with a big platform holder like Sony.
Roughly a 50% premium on a stock price that is being inflated due to the possibility of a $95 share buy out?

The only reason why Microsoft is paying a 45% premium at the moment is because ATVI stock was so low at the time. The buyout price needed to get shareholder approval, that's the reason for that high premium.

IF a renegotiation has to be brought before shareholders for approval, you will not see the same 45-50% premium.
 

Ar¢tos

Member
Apparently a country of 5 million (NZ) people with the majority of them not having the network infastructive to play cloud games for a long while should be concerned XCloud will foreclose Sony and Nvidia. Absolutely embarrassing.

To be fair our internet services are at least better than Australia 🤣
Because internet speed and coverage is never going to improve over there, its going to remain fixed until the end of times, right?
 

Zathalus

Member
Sorry had meant to reply to this about cloud hardware for those deals.

I looked into it and the maxwell Tegra X1 powered shield is effectively a laptop version of a GTX 950 with mains power and active cooling like a SFF PC. Keeping in mind the Switch comparison to Smartphones from 2019, the Shield has more than 3x the performance of the Switch on battery power,, because it has a clockspeed x3 higher - to raise all those boats.

The other comparison issue between even the Switch and a smartphone is that the Switch isn't passively cooled, and has a active fan. Only the other day I was using my phone with the Xperia's 3D creator app - that digitizes like megascans - and it got my Xperia 1 so hot after about 10mins that the app died, after a rebooting my phone for an hour my handset - not the sim - couldn't access the mobile network because it was still too hot - which I only discovered with CPUz showing 60degs on the main CPU core - which didn't fix itself until I powered the handset off for an hour and 30-40degs temps resumed.

Suggesting any Android 10 smartphone can do 4k60 like a Shield with GeforceNow doesn't sound credible if the Shield in reality is x3-4 the Switch on battery power.
What? The Shield is nowhere near the level of a GeForce 950. The Shield is 256 shader cores at 1267Mhz which comes to 648 GFLOPs, fed by 25GB/s memory. The 950 is 768 shader cores at 1188Mhz which comes to 1825 GLOPs, fed by 105.8 GB/s memory. It's over 3x as fast. The equivalent PC GPU would be a 270 from 15 years ago, heck onboard Vega graphics are faster.

The Snapdragon 845 from 5 years ago marches and exceeds the Tegra X1 on every metric. The Tegra X1 is nearing 8 years old already, it is far from cutting edge anymore. My iPhone blows the shit out of the Tegra when it comes to sustained performance.
 

PaintTinJr

Member
What? The Shield is nowhere near the level of a GeForce 950. The Shield is 256 shader cores at 1267Mhz which comes to 648 GFLOPs, fed by 25GB/s memory. The 950 is 768 shader cores at 1188Mhz which comes to 1825 GLOPs, fed by 105.8 GB/s memory. It's over 3x as fast. The equivalent PC GPU would be a 270 from 15 years ago, heck onboard Vega graphics are faster.

The Snapdragon 845 from 5 years ago marches and exceeds the Tegra X1 on every metric. The Tegra X1 is nearing 8 years old already, it is far from cutting edge anymore. My iPhone blows the shit out of the Tegra when it comes to sustained performance.
I said "Laptop" GTX 950, not a SC Desktop version. and mobile phones aren't actively cooled, so operating temperatures limit sustained performance. The shield being actively cooled and mains powered is in a completely different league, like a laptop GTX 950 would.

Just because the tegraX1 is 8years old has no bearing on its technical comparison to low power, cutdown, passively cooled smartphone chipsets. TegraX1 is still maxwell desktop silicon running in a shield, not super low power settings of Switch maxwell desktop silicon.

Your iPhone maybe does blow it out the water, but then without knowing the model, we won't know if it is actually doing full precision floating calculations to match TegraX1 exactly for workloads, many smartphones still cheat with lower precision integer based calculations in graphics, as was the reasoning for an Opengl ES to begin with back in the day, but the need for the Switch to surpass and port the AMD GPU solutions for the WiiU, means it isn't cheating when it comes to zbuffering, etc.
 

Zathalus

Member
I said "Laptop" GTX 950, not a SC Desktop version. and mobile phones aren't actively cooled, so operating temperatures limit sustained performance. The shield being actively cooled and mains powered is in a completely different league, like a laptop GTX 950 would.

Just because the tegraX1 is 8years old has no bearing on its technical comparison to low power, cutdown, passively cooled smartphone chipsets. TegraX1 is still maxwell desktop silicon running in a shield, not super low power settings of Switch maxwell desktop silicon.

Your iPhone maybe does blow it out the water, but then without knowing the model, we won't know if it is actually doing full precision floating calculations to match TegraX1 exactly for workloads, many smartphones still cheat with lower precision integer based calculations in graphics, as was the reasoning for an Opengl ES to begin with back in the day, but the need for the Switch to surpass and port the AMD GPU solutions for the WiiU, means it isn't cheating when it comes to zbuffering, etc.
The laptop 950 is within spitting distance of the desktop version so the point still stands. Still the same 768 shader cores. Anyway it's a low end laptop card that launched over 7 years ago and is still several times faster.

The Tegra X1 is such a low bar to clear these days. We have benchmarks of it vs the ancient Snapdragon 845 and the Snapdragon comes out on top.
 
This is still not accurate. It is $82 right now with the idea that being invested will get you $95 paid out when the deal is consummated.
Roughly a 50% premium on a stock price that is being inflated due to the possibility of a $95 share buy out?

The only reason why Microsoft is paying a 45% premium at the moment is because ATVI stock was so low at the time. The buyout price needed to get shareholder approval, that's the reason for that high premium.

Read GHG GHG ’s post again

Activision’s stock price is now trading with high volatility, meaning it’s unanchored to Microsoft’s deal. The market is pricing in that the deal will fail and it’s current price reflects true market value

So yes. If the deadline expires MS will need to renegotiate a much higher price should they want to continue battling it out in the courts
 
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hlm666

Member
Yeah.. but if australia/nz approve the deal.. just wait for the twitter pr lead by lulu start spamming the good news as one more country joins in the aproov3d bandwagon!
hahaha lulu cares for us aussies yay.

just went and checked aus prices for activision games, nope lulu don't care enough to remove her fist from my ass until she's sure I got no more cash hiding up there.

But that's another issue for another day, although it would be a prime opportunity for the gov to get microsoft to fix their software prices here. For at least 10 years anyway ;)
 

Dane

Member
See that. Cloud gaming is a thing and their end game is to make it "the thing."

Amazing how it's a thing when it's perceived positive For The Brand™, but it's not a thing when concerns arise from regulators.

I wonder why that is?
Giving acess to a billion dollar worth catalogue to small companies is bad?
 

DeepEnigma

Gold Member
Giving acess to a billion dollar worth catalogue to small companies is bad?
nVidia... a small company?
Dog Reaction GIF
 

DarkBatman

SBI’s Employee of the Year
Giving acess to a billion dollar worth catalogue to small companies is bad?
First of all, it has to be said that Microsoft only started these deals when the merger wasn't just waved through with ease.

Next, it's also important to note that these deals appear to have had some lucrative $ perks for MS. Of course, it is still attractive for small companies, but there is already a certain insidiousness here.

Finally, I have to ask: What is stopping MS and Activision from offering such deals to small companies without an acquisition?
 

Corrik

Member
Read GHG GHG ’s post again

Activision’s stock price is now trading with high volatility, meaning it’s unanchored to Microsoft’s deal. The market is pricing in that the deal will fail and it’s current price reflects true market value

So yes. If the deadline expires MS will need to renegotiate a much higher price should they want to continue battling it out in the courts
The market is pricing in the likelihood it will or won't fail. You can look at the 6 month graph and it reads exactly as you would expect. When reports came out that CMA dropped the console SLC the stock skyrockets to like 87. When CMA blocks, the stocket plummets immediately down to like 77 or something. As Microsoft has committed to getting the deal done and it has looked possible they will get it done, ATVI has risen slowly but steadily all the way back up to 82 over the past month and a half.
 

Thirty7ven

Banned
Giving acess to a billion dollar worth catalogue to small companies is bad?

When these bit players who have no future can’t even get a cut from revenue created on their platforms?

You’re basically letting MS define the market, and pricing. Letting these cunts pick winners and losers.

Also doesn’t help that MS only rushed to these deals after facing regulatory scrutiny which was something MS and their minions thought would NOT happen.
 
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POKEYCLYDE

Member
Read GHG GHG ’s post again

Activision’s stock price is now trading with high volatility, meaning it’s unanchored to Microsoft’s deal. The market is pricing in that the deal will fail and it’s current price reflects true market value

So yes. If the deadline expires MS will need to renegotiate a much higher price should they want to continue battling it out in the courts
Even if the $80 price share is not connected to the deal, Microsoft will not pay a 45-50% premium for Activision in a renegotiation. My assumption would be 30% premium on the $80 share price, bringing the buyout to $105/per share roughly.
 

RedC

Gold Member
After all this is over, the more interesting thing is how it impacts video game acquisitions in the future by Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo.
 
Even if the $80 price share is not connected to the deal, Microsoft will not pay a 45-50% premium for Activision in a renegotiation. My assumption would be 30% premium on the $80 share price, bringing the buyout to $105/per share roughly.

I’m not saying they will.

It depends on how much they want the deal to close if this drags on beyond the extension
 

RedC

Gold Member
Well if MS can get away with ABK then all bets are off.
Not necessarily.

Despite the fact Microsoft is a zillion-dollar behemoth, it can still quantify Xbox as an underdog in several gaming markets relative to Playstation, Nintendo, Steam, Android, and IOS.

Sony on the other hand may have trouble acquiring publishers and/or studios in the future due to the FTC creating a "high-performance console market" that only includes Playstation and Xbox and Playstation dominates.
 

Thirty7ven

Banned
Not necessarily.

Despite the fact Microsoft is a zillion-dollar behemoth, it can still quantify Xbox as an underdog in several gaming markets relative to Playstation, Nintendo, Steam, Android, and IOS.

Sony on the other hand may have trouble acquiring publishers and/or studios in the future due to the FTC creating a "high-performance console market" that only includes Playstation and Xbox and Playstation dominates.

Boring.

Userbase split in the US for example isn’t a problem, it’s a competitive market which means if it’s ok for MS then it’s ok for Sony.

EU? They would have a problem with say a FIFA, sure. Can’t see much else. Also according to their reasoning even if COD and all those ABK games were to go exclusive it wouldn’t have much impact in the market so… if you think Sony buying a company half the size of ABK with no annual IPs the size of COD would be a problem, you haven’t been paying attention. If FTC convince the courts of what you say then the MS ABK merger will be blocked.

Problem acquiring studios? Lmao
 
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Thirty7ven

Banned
There were theories around MS artificially holding back Series stock and production to trick regulators. The merger was also supposed to have been cleared by now if the CMA hadn’t moved to block it. Did these theories gain strength with Phil Spencer announcing the shortages were over during the showcase?

The timeline is suspicious.
 

LordCBH

Member
There were theories around MS artificially holding back Series stock and production to trick regulators. The merger was also supposed to have been cleared by now if the CMA hadn’t moved to block it. Did these theories gain strength with Phil Spencer announcing the shortages were over during the showcase?

The timeline is suspicious.

Are the shortages really over though? Most stores still say out of stock for me and Amazon can’t even commit a delivery date for the one I ordered last week.
 
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