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[noise36]

Guy attacking the entire site instead of discussing the topic talking about attacks instead of discussing the topic.

Explain what you mean?

You can always leave. I know the mods here don't like it when anyone develops a persecution complex so you might want to avoid that if possible.

Oh look. Phil Spender's investment in ChatGPT and Artificial Intelligence is speaking. It's still having Final Fantasies over the Activision Merger. Is this what they mean by Power your Dreams? Because many Xbox fans dreams seem to be powered by acquisition and making games exclusive instead of making their own games.

OMG!

Put your pitchforks away, I was referring to this thread.

If you look back at the last few pages I am discussing the topic and have people responding with personal attacks, playing the man not the ball.

Anyway thats the last of this from me, future posts will be about the topic of the thread.

 

[The Pleasure]

OMG!

Put your pitchforks away, I was referring to this thread.

If you look back at the last few pages I am discussing the topic and have people responding with personal attacks, playing the man not the ball.

Anyway thats the last of this from me, future posts will be about the topic of the thread.

 

[Nico_D]

In the future this thread will be use in high school psychology textbooks as an example of coping and of Dunning-Kruger effect.

 

[The Pleasure]

In the future this thread will be use in high school psychology textbooks as an example of coping and of Dunning-Kruger effect.

No it won't. High School Students will use ChatGPT to write the essay and the source will say NEOGUF XTRA

 

[ShaiKhulud1989]

In the future this thread will be use in high school psychology textbooks as an example of coping and of Dunning-Kruger effect.

I read (albeit passively) GAF for almost 3 gens straight and that SonyGAF copy pasta predates the generative AI by a lot of years.

BTW, from what I can gather, stock market almost ignored the EC ruling, so I guess even the financial crowd kinda buried the deal.

 

[DJ12]

BTW, from what I can gather, stock market almost ignored the EC ruling, so I guess even the financial crowd kinda buried the deal.

Maybe it's because they understand without the 3 regulators approving this deal, its dead. Unlike the ambassador rank and file here who seem unable to grasp that very clear and simple point.

 

[THE DUCK]

The extra content you're talking about costs time and money to make. The idea that consumers are going to spend less on the game purchase and then spend more than they would have from the game purchase on DLC is absurd. And with AAA games having 4-7+ year release cycles that cost hundreds of millions of dollars per game, I don't see how game subscriptions are beneficial to the industry as a whole in the long-term. Call me cynical, but I just can't see where the money is coming from. (Again, only talking about the hypothetical scenario in which subscriptions become the norm, not a secondary/complementary service.)

Not really, if MS could get to say 60 million subs, which really isn't that insane if you think about it long term, that's 11 Billion dollars a year in revenue. So if MS were to develop four 500 Million dollar AAA games per year, they would still have tons of money left for other games.
The key is the cash flow is very consistent. You need deep pockets to build it up and get it going, which MS has in spades.

As to beneficial in the long term, that remains to be seen. Certainly there has been traction towards the model in other content areas. And MS isn't exactly going into this blind, and their biggest competitor has now followed suit (even if to a lesser extent), so there is something to it.......
The way I see it, we pay either way.

 

[Ar¢tos]

Oh, another one of those armchair "experts" that has decreed that gamepass equals lower quality. You do realize that a massive pool of cash from gamepass revenues could actually result in high quality games and even innovation and risk long term, right? And that to date there really zero proof that gamepass equals lower quality?

"I prefer to buy quality products" what a bunch of self pontificating bs.

Let's imagine a studio making an amazing 70$ multiplatform game, let's call that game "Redfailflop". The budget is 200m and it is expected to have a consoles sale split of 65% on PlayStation and 35% on Xbox based on market share. Mid development the publisher that owns the studio is bought by MS and the PlayStation version is scrapped, those 65% are gone, and the potential 35% is now reduced to 5-10% because the game will be included in gamepass, that you can get for 10$/month but many people stocked up a few years for 1$/month, and, to make things worse, the game turns out to be a smelly ugly turd.
Do you expect the studio to get another 200m budget for their next game after all this?

Is the "massive pool of cash" generated by 1$/month gamepass sales even enough to cover the losses a single game like this makes?

It's no surprise that everybody expects gamepass to turn into 90s shareware.
Small (sometimes tiny) , some good, some bad games that nobody ever buys the full version (which nowadays would be cosmetics/DLCs or expansion packs).

 

[ToadMan]

Maybe because I haven't visited this site in months, I'm not clouded by conjecture, but asking the right questions seems more important. Why are Microsoft and Activision still moving forward and spending millions on legal proceedings if the deal was dead?

The terms of the acquisition require it and those are the terms on which ABK shareholders voted.

MS and ABK are to put in “reasonable best efforts” to attain regulatory approval until the process becomes “unappealable” - or until July 18 this year at which point ABK may unilaterally halt the acquisition without suffering a financial penalty.

And regulators worldwide are part of the approval process but US, UK, EU and China regulators were specifically named as required approvals for the acquisition to close.

These 4 constitute the major revenue sources for ABK as well as business operation centres for ABK and MS - losing one or more of these markets would significantly affect the valuation of the ABK business - ie ABK is no longer valued at $69bn if for example they have no UK revenue stream. And ignoring legally binding decisions in these territories would significantly impact MS’s businesses also.

 

[Three]

Not really, if MS could get to say 60 million subs, which really isn't that insane if you think about it long term, that's 11 Billion dollars a year in revenue. So if MS were to develop four 500 Million dollar AAA games per year, they would still have tons of money left for other games.
The key is the cash flow is very consistent. You need deep pockets to build it up and get it going, which MS has in spades.

As to beneficial in the long term, that remains to be seen. Certainly there has been traction towards the model in other content areas. And MS isn't exactly going into this blind, and their biggest competitor has now followed suit (even if to a lesser extent), so there is something to it.......
The way I see it, we pay either way.

This assumes that MS would rather pump that money into doing you a favour and releasing frequent $500M 10hr games. Why when you can rely on people staying subscribed with less than $50M ones, GaaS and microtransactions?

Is Netflix creating the best high budget movies with their 200M subs and high $31B revenue?

 

[ShaiKhulud1989]

Not really, if MS could get to say 60 million subs, which really isn't that insane if you think about it long term, that's 11 Billion dollars a year in revenue. So if MS were to develop four 500 Million dollar AAA games per year, they would still have tons of money left for other games.
The key is the cash flow is very consistent. You need deep pockets to build it up and get it going, which MS has in spades.

As to beneficial in the long term, that remains to be seen. Certainly there has been traction towards the model in other content areas. And MS isn't exactly going into this blind, and their biggest competitor has now followed suit (even if to a lesser extent), so there is something to it.......
The way I see it, we pay either way.

I love how posts like this just ignore the insane running costs of servers and 1st party piplene that will eat almost all the profits.

 

[Godot25]

Let's imagine a studio making an amazing 70$ multiplatform game, let's call that game "Redfailflop". The budget is 200m and it is expected to have a consoles sale split of 65% on PlayStation and 35% on Xbox based on market share. Mid development the publisher that owns the studio is bought by MS and the PlayStation version is scrapped, those 65% are gone, and the potential 35% is now reduced to 5-10% because the game will be included in gamepass, that you can get for 10$/month but many people stocked up a few years for 1$/month, and, to make things worse, the game turns out to be a smelly ugly turd.
Do you expect the studio to get another 200m budget for their next game after all this?

Is the "massive pool of cash" generated by 1$/month gamepass sales even enough to cover the losses a single game like this makes?

It's no surprise that everybody expects gamepass to turn into 90s shareware.
Small (sometimes tiny) , some good, some bad games that nobody ever buys the full version (which nowadays would be cosmetics/DLCs or expansion packs).

I'm amazed that even after all those years people are still spreading that 1$/month Game Pass bullshit.
Mate. It never worked like that. If you stock up on Game Pass for 3 years in advance, you need to secure 3 years of Gold for 180$ and then make 1$ conversion (now it can't be done since Microsoft disabled that promo). So from which ass did you pulled that 1$ per month from?

Not to say that your entire post is invalidated by Microsoft recent earnings call where Microsoft CEO said that they made almost 1 billion in revenue from Game Pass. So either you have 320 million subscribers paying 1$ per month (since quarter has 3 months) or average revenue from Game Pass subscriber is actually higher then you are trying to bullshit your way towards.

So basically. You invalidated your whole post because you don't even know how things are working and then by cold hard math

But please. Go on.

 

[zapper]

all activision games will be available in the cloud, on which platforms will they run? azure or providers will have their own?

 

[intheinbetween]

I read (albeit passively) GAF for almost 3 gens straight and that SonyGAF copy pasta predates the generative AI by a lot of years.

BTW, from what I can gather, stock market almost ignored the EC ruling, so I guess even the financial crowd kinda buried the deal.

I wouldn't expect any impact on the stock price until a final decision is made, actually this very same thing is happening to the Broadcom-VMware acquisition.

As I stated a few days ago, MS stock price has gone over the last 6 months from 240$ to 310-315$, and this increase was mostly because of their investment in OpenAI (plus the integration of OpenAI services in their products: Office 365 Copilot and Security Copilot) and financial results, so I don't think if the deal doesn't go through their price stock would be plummeted it surely could take a hit but not that much, however I can't say the same thing about ABK

 

[Astray]

I'm amazed that even after all those years people are still spreading that 1$/month Game Pass bullshit.
Mate. It never worked like that. If you stock up on Game Pass for 3 years in advance, you need to secure 3 years of Gold for 180$ and then make 1$ conversion (now it can't be done since Microsoft disabled that promo). So from which ass did you pulled that 1$ per month from?

Not to say that your entire post is invalidated by Microsoft recent earnings call where Microsoft CEO said that they made almost 1 billion in revenue from Game Pass. So either you have 320 million subscribers paying 1$ per month (since quarter has 3 months) or average revenue from Game Pass subscriber is actually higher then you are trying to bullshit your way towards.

So basically. You invalidated your whole post because you don't even know how things are working and then by cold hard math

But please. Go on.

"Joke's on you, it's only a %66 discount"

 

[Ar¢tos]

I'm amazed that even after all those years people are still spreading that 1$/month Game Pass bullshit.
Mate. It never worked like that. If you stock up on Game Pass for 3 years in advance, you need to secure 3 years of Gold for 180$ and then make 1$ conversion (now it can't be done since Microsoft disabled that promo). So from which ass did you pulled that 1$ per month from?

Not to say that your entire post is invalidated by Microsoft recent earnings call where Microsoft CEO said that they made almost 1 billion in revenue from Game Pass. So either you have 320 million subscribers paying 1$ per month (since quarter has 3 months) or average revenue from Game Pass subscriber is actually higher then you are trying to bullshit your way towards.

So basically. You invalidated your whole post because you don't even know how things are working and then by cold hard math

But please. Go on.

The point of the post was to say that multiplatform AAA budgets aren't realistic for games to be released day one on gamepass and future games will have smaller scopes (AA), but sure, focus on gamepass monthly cost instead....

 

[Godot25]

"Joke's on you, it's only a %66 discount"

You mean outside of fact that only most core of audience even know about this conversion method? Yeah. But's still difference then spreading "1$ per month" bullshit.

So. If we take Microsoft's statement at face value. Almost 1 billion per quarter. So let's say 960 million per quarter - 320 million per month.
If Game Pass has 25 million subs (last official number from Microsoft) - that means that Microsoft have 12,8$ revenue per Game Pass customer
If Game Pass has 30 million subs (which Sony implied in regulatory documents) - that means that Microsoft have 10,66$ revenue per Game Pass customer

Sounds pretty different than all doom & gloom shitposters around here, right?

 

[freefornow]

Dammit! Is the NSA live streaming their surveilance footage of my home?
Man, one or two "innocent" tweets to Lulu and they are all over you!

 

[Godot25]

The point of the post was to say that multiplatform AAA budgets aren't realistic for games to be released day one on gamepass and future games will have smaller scopes (AA), but sure, focus on gamepass monthly cost instead....

But you can't make implications about something when your entire math is wrong?

As I said. Microsoft earned almost billion from Game Pass in 3 months. That's 300+ million dollars per month. Can this be used to build AAA first party games? Of course it can. AAA games that are in development for 5 years (like GOW Ragnarok) costs around 200 million dollars to make. I highly doubt that Microsoft will go for bigger budgets then Sony (outside of COD if they will have ActiBlizz). So during 5 years of AAA game development, Game Pass (in current revenue stream) make 20 billion dollars in revenue. I'm sure that not enough (/s) (4 billion per year x 5 years)

Of course, you are blindly ignoring fact that first-party games of Microsoft are still selling even when they are in Game Pass. Sea of Thieves for example sold (according to SteamSpy) 6,5 million copies on Steam alone. Not counting Xbox sales. Forza Horizon 5 sold 3,5 million copies on Steam alone. And just wait how many copies Starfield will sell on Steam. You are acting like inclusion of XGS games in Game Pass will 100% suppress sales which is just false.

Another aspect is that Game Pass is still growth vector for Microsoft, so they are basically still willing to spend revenue generated by GP into future growth.

And last thing is first-party games in Game Pass will draw people into subscribing and therefore spending more money into ecosystem. If you buy Xbox console because you want to play Starfield, subscribe into Game Pass and then stay subscribed into service because you found other games that you want to play, isn't it added value? Kind of value that you can't point finger onto, but Microsoft has all their metrics they need about?

 

[THE DUCK]

Let's imagine a studio making an amazing 70$ multiplatform game, let's call that game "Redfailflop". The budget is 200m and it is expected to have a consoles sale split of 65% on PlayStation and 35% on Xbox based on market share. Mid development the publisher that owns the studio is bought by MS and the PlayStation version is scrapped, those 65% are gone, and the potential 35% is now reduced to 5-10% because the game will be included in gamepass, that you can get for 10$/month but many people stocked up a few years for 1$/month, and, to make things worse, the game turns out to be a smelly ugly turd.
Do you expect the studio to get another 200m budget for their next game after all this?

Is the "massive pool of cash" generated by 1$/month gamepass sales even enough to cover the losses a single game like this makes?

It's no surprise that everybody expects gamepass to turn into 90s shareware.
Small (sometimes tiny) , some good, some bad games that nobody ever buys the full version (which nowadays would be cosmetics/DLCs or expansion packs).

Wait your example is a poorly developed game? So let's say they release that same game the way they had intended, and it's just as bad, you really think they going to green light a sequel then? And we're back to the $1 subs crap again that has been proven wrong?

You have zero idea if said game's crappyness had anything to do with gamepass, it just fits your narrative.

 

[Bernoulli]

The meltdown when this has nothing to do with abk

 

[THE DUCK]

This assumes that MS would rather pump that money into doing you a favour and releasing frequent $500M 10hr games. Why when you can rely on people staying subscribed with less than $50M ones, GaaS and microtransactions?

Is Netflix creating the best high budget movies with their 200M subs and high $31B revenue?

If they understand thier own business model, they know they need 4 AAA games per year plus others to keep the subs from leaving and to attract new subs. 10hr games? That's not happening now so let's just make up some crap.

Netflix didn't already own a bunch of movie studios and still don't, it's not shocking they don't have the best movies. Ms has plenty of large game studios and keeps increasing.

 

[ToadMan]

I'm amazed that even after all those years people are still spreading that 1$/month Game Pass bullshit.
Mate. It never worked like that. If you stock up on Game Pass for 3 years in advance, you need to secure 3 years of Gold for 180$ and then make 1$ conversion (now it can't be done since Microsoft disabled that promo).

I agree. Xbox Live gold was never worth $60 a year - especially with PS+ being cheaper and better.

I even prefer Nintendo’s online even at that price - love that Nintendo brought some quirky retro goodness to their service.

But, adding the $1 GPU offer is taking something not worth $60 a year, and making it $61 a year for GPU access. Is $61 a year worth it? Not to me, no.

That’s how I did it anyway. Expires next year but I don’t plan to continue at full GPU price.

 

[THE DUCK]

I love how posts like this just ignore the insane running costs of servers and 1st party piplene that will eat almost all the profits.

I love when posters ignore the idea of actual real world costs of servers and inflate them by 10x. This is a server company and that running servers is a very small fractions of thier costs overall.

As to first party game costs, recognized as being the #1 cost, with or without gamepass.
As to eating up "all" the profits, that why ms is trying hard to hit critical mass, since the game costs are fixed and adding gamepass subs doesn't substantially change costs.

 

[drganon]

The meltdown when this has nothing to do with abk

When the appeal most likely fails, Foss is going to light himself on fire in front of the cma.

 

[Three]

If they understand thier own business model, they know they need 4 AAA games per year plus others to keep the subs from leaving and to attract new subs. 10hr games? That's not happening now so let's just make up some crap.

Netflix didn't already own a bunch of movie studios and still don't, it's not shocking they don't have the best movies. Ms has plenty of large game studios and keeps increasing.

Did people leave during this drought? I'm not sure why we're making up the idea that MS would require $500M or big releases per quarter to stop people from leaving. People aren't leaving with the lower budget games. The 10 hour game was just some average single player game amount I used. Don't concentrate too much on the value rather than the point.

 

[Godot25]

Ehh. Really CMA? But I guess I'm not surprised anymore. It's like CMA knew what conclusion they want to go for and cherrypicked data so they will suit their needs. Kinda sad. But I guess Microsoft/ActiBlizz lawyers will have a field day with this in front of CAT. Especially since Amazon recently let every prime member to have access to Luna. So by CMA math, Luna now has 200 million users.

 

[GHG]

This can only mean one thing, you know who's about to come back right?

https://www.neogaf.com/threads/xbox...s-slower-than-xbox-one.1656570/post-267945596

 

[ZehDon]

... But I guess Microsoft/ActiBlizz lawyers will have a field day with this in front of CAT. Especially since Amazon recently let every prime member to have access to Luna. So by CMA math, Luna now has 200 million users.

The bar for CAT to send the decision back to the CMA to re-review is incredibly high, so I wouldn't say they'll have a "field day". Microsoft and ABK have ammunition to argue that the CMA acted illogically, but the system is deliberately stacked against appeals so they'll need more than pot shots to hit their target.

 

[Elios83]

I wouldn't expect any impact on the stock price until a final decision is made, actually this very same thing is happening to the Broadcom-VMware acquisition.

As I stated a few days ago, MS stock price has gone over the last 6 months from 240$ to 310-315$, and this increase was mostly because of their investment in OpenAI (plus the integration of OpenAI services in their products: Office 365 Copilot and Security Copilot) and financial results, so I don't think if the deal doesn't go through their price stock would be plummeted it surely could take a hit but not that much, however I can't say the same thing about ABK

This acquisition won't affect Microsoft's stock anyway, it's a huge company with the bulk of their profitability coming from other markets and not gaming.
Activision's stock is what you should look at and indeed it has been really receptive about how things were going with this deal because shareholders will get a lot of money if it goes through.
We have seen Activision's stock getting a significant increase when CMA dropped their console market concerns while it crashed when it was announced they were blocking the deal.
EU's decision barely had any effect on Activision's stock which tells us that investors don't see this decision changing the outcome which is obviously true.

Imo the most likely outcome is that Activision collects the 3 billions in July and walk away. In this way they can have the time to resume their business and make the marketing deals they want covering the next few years and then they can look at other potential buyers with higher chances of approval if they still want to sell.

The other option is for Microsoft to convince Activision to extend the current contract by offering way more than 95$ per share given the high risk of failure and go into a legal limbo for an other year or two with poor chances of success and the awareness that the deal won't be approved anyway without a set of strict remedies that are going to change the nature of the deal as the parts originally intended.

 

[THE DUCK]

Did people leave during this drought? I'm not sure why we're making up the idea that MS would require $500M releases per quarter to stop people from leaving. People aren't leaving with the lower budget games. The 10 hour game was just some average single player game amount I used. Don't concentrate too much on the value rather than the point.

I think like any service, people will tolerate some good and bad periods. But if you deliver crap and not enough releases, it will start to fall apart. Of course the more pressure Sony puts on them with great games and or ps plus, the more they will have to spend to keep customers happy.

Who knows what the exact dollar amount/quality ratio is before people will leave. But if your smart, and you can hit critical mass and keep those customers happy, you could build long term succcess. Activision would have/or will be another step towards that goal.

 

[Godot25]

The bar for CAT to send the decision back to the CMA to re-review is incredibly high, so I wouldn't say they'll have a "field day". Microsoft and ABK have ammunition to argue that the CMA acted illogically, but the system is deliberately stacked against appeals so they'll need more than pot shots to hit their target.

Well. Activision Blizzard said that they have not intentions of putting their games in subscription services if they remain independent and CMA said: "Nah, we don't believe you" without smidge of proof. Which is shitty tbh and I expect Microsoft/ActiBlizz to use it in front of CAT, because drawing huge conclusions (since CMA said that they expect ActiBlizz games to go into sub services even without merger) without some kind of proof is pretty bad.
And this is second big thing. Automatically assuming that every Game Pass subscriber is cloud user is pretty bad and huge red flag.

But rn. I expect CAT to send it back and then CMA just block it just in spite of EU ruling.

 

[Astray]

You mean outside of fact that only most core of audience even know about this conversion method? Yeah. But's still difference then spreading "1$ per month" bullshit.

So. If we take Microsoft's statement at face value. Almost 1 billion per quarter. So let's say 960 million per quarter - 320 million per month.
If Game Pass has 25 million subs (last official number from Microsoft) - that means that Microsoft have 12,8$ revenue per Game Pass customer
If Game Pass has 30 million subs (which Sony implied in regulatory documents) - that means that Microsoft have 10,66$ revenue per Game Pass customer

Sounds pretty different than all doom & gloom shitposters around here, right?

This is anecdotal and likely local to my region of the world, but I genuinely I don't know anyone who has Gamepass and spends full price, everyone who tries to talk me into GP immediately goes into the 'tricks'.

We're not even talking about the people who pay Turkish prices too!

 

[Godot25]

This is anecdotal and likely local to my region of the world, but I genuinely I don't know anyone who has Gamepass and spends full price, everyone who tries to talk me into GP immediately goes into the 'tricks'.

We're not even talking about the people who pay Turkish prices too!

Well. Numbers don't lie right?

 

[Astray]

Well. Numbers don't lie right?

What numbers? We don't get any actually useful figures out of Microsoft anymore. We haven't even got Gamepass subscriber figures in the last quarter or two iirc.

 

[Bernoulli]

Ehh. Really CMA? But I guess I'm not surprised anymore. It's like CMA knew what conclusion they want to go for and cherrypicked data so they will suit their needs. Kinda sad. But I guess Microsoft/ActiBlizz lawyers will have a field day with this in front of CAT. Especially since Amazon recently let every prime member to have access to Luna. So by CMA math, Luna now has 200 million users.

Field day

 

[GHG]

Ehh. Really CMA? But I guess I'm not surprised anymore. It's like CMA knew what conclusion they want to go for and cherrypicked data so they will suit their needs. Kinda sad. But I guess Microsoft/ActiBlizz lawyers will have a field day with this in front of CAT. Especially since Amazon recently let every prime member to have access to Luna. So by CMA math, Luna now has 200 million users.

It's worth noting that the FT were the ones running a ton of adverts on behalf of Microsoft in the lead up to the CMA ruling.

And with that said, having read the article I don't see anywhere in the direct quote from the EU official that actually states the CMA "overstated" anything.

 

[Banjo64]

Well. Activision Blizzard said that they have not intentions of putting their games in subscription services if they remain independent and CMA said: "Nah, we don't believe you" without smidge of proof.

The CMA had access to ABK’s internal documents which suggested they would in the future. You’d know this if you just read the report

 

[GHG]

Where is the full comprehensive report from the EU?

What are they hiding, do they not have one?

 

[ZehDon]

Well. Activision Blizzard said that they have not intentions of putting their games in subscription services if they remain independent and CMA said: "Nah, we don't believe you" without smidge of proof. Which is shitty tbh and I expect Microsoft/ActiBlizz to use it in front of CAT, because drawing huge conclusions (since CMA said that they expect ActiBlizz games to go into sub services even without merger) without some kind of proof is pretty bad.

The CMA's prerogative, I'm afraid. That doesn't mean they acted illogically - ABK isn't known for leaving money on the table, and so it does seem unlikely that they'd never - under any circumstances - allow their games on any cloud service without this acquisition. Do I agree with the CMA myself on this point? No, but the CMA has the power to make these kinds of rulings.

And this is second big thing. Automatically assuming that every Game Pass subscriber is cloud user is pretty bad and huge red flag.

Every Game Pass subscriber isn't, but every Game Pass Ultimate user should be because they're actively paying for it. I'm a Game Pass Ultimate subscriber, and I chose not to use xCloud because, frankly, it's fucking terrible. I'm still technically a customer and should be counted as such.

But rn. I expect CAT to send it back and then CMA just block it just in spite of EU ruling.

My honest expectation is the CMA continues to make a big song and dance to make sure everyone knows they're in charge. Then, CAT sends the decision back and, magically, the CMA change their minds and now everything is OK and the deal closes. Not because everything actually is OK, but because the CMA got fucking leaned on behind the scenes by members of the British Government, who act more like the corporate-sponsored American Government each year. Trillion dollar corporations have a tendency to get their way, barring a few notable exceptions. Is this one of those exceptions? Who knows, but I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up going Microsoft's way at the 11th hour against all odds.

 

[noise36]

Ehh. Really CMA? But I guess I'm not surprised anymore. It's like CMA knew what conclusion they want to go for and cherrypicked data so they will suit their needs. Kinda sad. But I guess Microsoft/ActiBlizz lawyers will have a field day with this in front of CAT. Especially since Amazon recently let every prime member to have access to Luna. So by CMA math, Luna now has 200 million users.

CMA literally made up a market arbitrarily and a future problem about that market that doesn't exist except in their heads.

The Luna comparison alone blows up their entire logical fallacy ridden ruling on its own.

 

[PaintTinJr]

The meltdown when this has nothing to do with abk

What a clown Florian is. He is asking a rhetorical question that disagrees with his point without even realising it.

As a small but very powerful nation with a great economy we actually typically trust our non-partisan regulators to do great work - on behalf of the UK to make us a first class country - and that support or large degree of confidence - as the CAT will put it in their opening appeal statement - comes from all parties in the UK, and at all times of the year or political calendar. Backing our regulators and highest courts rulings is probably one of the few things most Brits are completely aligned on. If the hopium is needing Rishi to make himself and his cabinet look completely corrupt, devalue the whole UK by diminishing the CMA expertise, then I fear the hopium supply has run dry - or my read on the current PM is totally off and were going to have a 4th PM, probably Johnson again in this parliament term.

 

[Three]

Well. Activision Blizzard said that they have not intentions of putting their games in subscription services if they remain independent and CMA said: "Nah, we don't believe you" without smidge of proof. Which is shitty tbh and I expect Microsoft/ActiBlizz to use it in front of CAT, because drawing huge conclusions (since CMA said that they expect ActiBlizz games to go into sub services even without merger) without some kind of proof is pretty bad.

Of course they don't believe them. Especially if they see subscription games eating away at their MAU. Especially if they've put their games on subscription services in the past.

And this is second big thing. Automatically assuming that every Game Pass subscriber is cloud user is pretty bad and huge red flag.

But rn. I expect CAT to send it back and then CMA just block it just in spite of EU ruling.

Assuming there are 150M active consoles is also pretty bad. It's no different.

 

[demigod]

Where is the full comprehensive report from the EU?

What are they hiding, do they not have one?

I did a little digging and found the EU documents.

Spoiler

 

[supernova8]

What a clown Florian is. He is asking a rhetorical question that disagrees with his point without even realising it.

As a small but very powerful nation with a great economy we actually typically trust our non-partisan regulators to do great work - on behalf of the UK to make us a first class country - and that support or large degree of confidence - as the CAT will put it in their opening appeal statement - comes from all parties in the UK, and at all times of the year or political calendar. Backing our regulators and highest courts rulings is probably one of the few things most Brits are completely aligned on. If the hopium is needing Rishi to make himself and his cabinet look completely corrupt, devalue the whole UK by diminishing the CMA expertise, then I fear the hopium supply has run dry - or my read on the current PM is totally off and were going to have a 4th PM, probably Johnson again in this parliament term.

He's literally being paid by Microsoft to lobby on their behalf. Can we get that pinned or something? (I'm not making it up, he mentions it on his blogspot account but conveniently not on Twitter where most of the traffic is for his musings)

 

[Godot25]

The CMA had access to ABK’s internal documents which suggested they would in the future. You’d know this if you just read the report

Ehh. Nope?
Activision said that they have no plans of going into sub services especially day one.

CMA basically implied that they will go, because cloud and MGS will be huge in future. Basically they said that cloud will be billion dollar market in near future and ABK would want to have piece of pie. They did not have found any internal document that would imply that ABK as a separate entity is considering going into sub services.

"We are of the view that the assessment of the likelihood of Activision’s content becoming available on MGS services or cloud gaming services is best carried out within the competitive assessment. For the reasons set out in our competitive assessment, we consider that absent the Merger, in the foreseeable future, Activision ‘day and date’ content would become available on cloud gaming services, but not on MGS services on gaming consoles, at least for Activision’s most valuable games. However, we consider that Activision would likely place increasingly valuable parts of its gaming catalogue on MGS services as these services continue to grow."

So CMA basically invented cloud as a separate market, counted every Game Pass subscriber as a cloud user (what?), and then made an analysis that suggested that cloud gaming in 2026 will be 11,9 - 13,5 billion pound-per-year business. And because it will be such a huge business, ABK will go into cloud and MGS. And if you really believe that cloud gaming will be 11,9 billion business in 2026, I have a bridge to sell to you.

 

[PaintTinJr]

CMA literally made up a market arbitrarily and a future problem about that market that doesn't exist except in their heads.

The Luna comparison alone blows up their entire logical fallacy ridden ruling on its own.

Remind me again, what high-end gaming console, gaming console brand and array of first party studios and IPS does Amazon own - along with their AWS cloud - and successfully sell to have the same vertical merging concerns as Microsoft buying ATVI that the CMA took issue with?

 

[DarkBatman]

He's literally being paid by Microsoft to lobby on their behalf. Can we get that pinned or something? (I'm not making it up, he mentions it on his blogspot account but conveniently not on Twitter where most of the traffic is for his musings)

It's even worse if you check his description on blogger.com:

Clients currently include--in some competition contexts that affect my own interests as an app maker--Microsoft, which I am disclosing at their request as I already did in 2011. I also wish to acknowledge that I was a consultant to Blizzard (now part of Activision Blizzard King) for several unforgettable years.

 

[Dick Jones]

It's even worse if you check his description on blogger.com:

Clients currently include--in some competition contexts that affect my own interests as an app maker--Microsoft, which I am disclosing at their request as I already did in 2011. I also wish to acknowledge that I was a consultant to Blizzard (now part of Activision Blizzard King) for several unforgettable years.

"Which I am disclosing at their request" makes him out to be more disingenuous. So if MS told him to shut the fuck up about the obvious conflict of interest, he would not disclose his obvious shilling. What ethics I can trust this obvious buffoon.

 

[supernova8]

It's even worse if you check his description on blogger.com:

Clients currently include--in some competition contexts that affect my own interests as an app maker--Microsoft, which I am disclosing at their request as I already did in 2011. I also wish to acknowledge that I was a consultant to Blizzard (now part of Activision Blizzard King) for several unforgettable years.

Exactly it's hilarious. No problem with people using social media to lobby but they should have to disclose their interests when doing so.