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

Do you believe the deal will be approved?


  • Total voters
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  • Poll closed .
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First their problem was Lina Khan, now it's the UK. This little petty Twitter talk between them has to be the most circlejerk, inconsequential, self-masturbation bullshit they've ever done. I assume the worst reactions from them have yet to come.

Uhm CMA has been their first problem, then came the FTC, and now back to the CMA. MS will probably get the deal closed on the US, however it's the CMA the real threat to this acquisition.

I'm on team 50-50, also it's yet to see what would be MS-ABK strategy if all the regulators approve the deal but the CMA.
 

Pelta88

Member
What the fuck is your problem, British people?

Don't make us bring George out of retirement...

4Th Of July Freedom GIF


Kidding.....love you guys

I'll see your George and raise you

weirdcomplicatedbagworm-size_restricted.gif

We love you guys too
 
Who is even saying Xbox will die without this deal, anyway?

If anything, this is the first time I see a sign that Xbox is in a real crisis. To hear Microsoft stating "Xbox will exist" is actually the opposite of reassuring.

You don't ever hear Nintendo say "Nintendo will exist" , do you? Because they never need to say such things.
 
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Thirty7ven

Banned
If Xbox gets out of the industry, console gamers are fucked.
Xbox and PS keep each other in check, considering Nintendo is doing Nintendo stuff.
If there is no one to compete with PS, then Sony would get too complicit and would try and exploit their audience.

I agree and I don’t.

Xbox will keep PS in check if MS is in the game to push the envelope on games and hardware. But they have decided that hw innovation is boring and would rather buy IP than create it. So what’s the good side of that?

Their current strategy of bleeding out the competition will make for a better PlayStation how?

360 vs PS3 days are long gone.
 

jm89

Member
Uhm CMA has been their first problem, then came the FTC, and now back to the CMA. MS will probably get the deal closed on the US, however it's the CMA the real threat to this acquisition.

I'm on team 50-50, also it's yet to see what would be MS-ABK strategy if all the regulators approve the deal but the CMA.
CMA would have block it before any approval in the USA, assuming FTC don't suddenly drop. The question is will MS have any stomach to take on the FTC in court knowing that CMA have killed it? Whether MS wins against FTC is whatever, but if the FTC don't backdown it will be a messy fight and final decision could go into 2024 in the USA.
 
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Northeastmonk

Gold Member
There’s government people who don’t understand or even think about the games industry and they’re probably causing their share of problems for Microsoft. It reminds me of FB when they had to break things down to a 5 year old’s level of understanding. I’ve dealt with businesses that got upset at MS for having an Xbox app shadow installed in Windows. It’s sucks because they make some rather harsh comments or decisions based off their lack of understanding. These people are also forced to learn Windows to do their job. I bet it would suck to be that big of a company, having a lot of support from the community, and then having to explain everything to someone who doesn’t understand you whatsoever.
 

Flutta

Banned
And nothing of value would be lost if it did Phil.

The only reason for Xbox to exist is to keep Sony in check that is what you’ve turned Xbox into to not let Sony ”get arrogant” again. You and your team fucking suck at everything else.

Without MS backing, Xbox would have had the same fate as Sega. That tells you all you need to know about Team Xbox.

But here you are crying like a little bitch it’s not fair we need ALL THE STUDIOS IN THE WORD so we can
”compete”. What you and your spoiled gang need is a reality check, like maybe be forced to learn how to run a business without having your daddy there to save your ass every time.
 
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pasterpl

Member


Xbox don’t have budget to market their console? Why are they being ran like a startup? That Brad Smith pie chart looks even funnier now. How do you sell a product with no advertising?

That’s the one odd one for sure, even in the launch period of the consoles Sony spent 3x more than ms marketing ps5 vs xseries

 

OmegaSupreme

advanced basic bitch
Was anyone actually thinking otherwise ? :pie_thinking:
That Jez Gorden(corden?) guy I think tweeted something to the effect of msn dumping the xbox brand if this deal doesn't happen. At least that the idea was possible. I doubt it myself. The biggest thing I could see them doing is maybe getting away from hardware.
 

quest

Not Banned from OT
I agree and I don’t.

Xbox will keep PS in check if MS is in the game to push the envelope on games and hardware. But they have decided that hw innovation is boring and would rather buy IP than create it. So what’s the good side of that?

Their current strategy of bleeding out the competition will make for a better PlayStation how?

360 vs PS3 days are long gone.
Bleed out the competition lol. You ignore sony trying to content starve the other side with money hat world tours. Sony went on a money hat world tour before Microsoft bought any publisher. Blame sony for zenimax they wanted to money hat every single zenimax AAA game. Microsoft responded with purchasing zenimax to stop the money hats. Those who cry about zenimax were styling and profiling when sony got deathloop, ghost wire tokyo and on the verge of getting Starfield.
 

BeardGawd

Banned
why wouldn't they...

sounds like concern trolling by people cheering on corporate consolidation.

Fuck consolidation, MS with their 'already more First party studios than the competition' will be just fine without trying to create a monopoly.
Good thing MS owning ABK wouldn't create a monopoly and would help compete with a dominant Sony.
 
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Roxkis_ii

Member
Microsoft's biggest problem is that it doesn't feel failure and feedback or have to respond to it in ways that normal companies do.

Without the backing of Microsoft, the Xbox division would have been forced to make a choice: Continue with the Xbone strategy and risk bankruptcy, or change to suit the market. We saw Atari and Sega choose not to change and we saw Nintendo and Sony change to suit the market.

Evolution is adapting to the change in the environment, from external pressures and forces. Microsoft have been able to soak up the feedback and charge ahead into what would have been bankruptcy for any other company, but still come out alive because of their financial failsafe.

Microsoft should stop, look around and take note of what the market wants. Stop listening to online shills like they have since the days of Kinect and listen to the fans who got the xbox to where it was at its' peak.

Gamepass is a great service for B-tier, Indie and AA games; a place to nurture and grow new talent. It is the death of AAA games though. We all want free or cheap games, myself included, but it isn't sustainable for Xbox. The Elite pad v1 is the best controller ever made, the 1X was the best console Microsoft have ever made. They need to stop with the split console idea and rushed off-the-shelf hardware and take some real risks like they did with the xbox360 - minus the RROD.

Microsoft can turn the Xbox division around and turn it into a very profitable department, but they need to have a honest and long, hard look in the mirror.

I think this is a really great post that nails it on the head. Xbox is so insulated with cash, they don't have no real skin in the game. If Microsoft closed up Xbox next week, it would probably be a small dent in Microsoft overall checkbook.

The more I think about this post, the more it makes sense. Why do most MS studios have an issue with delivering games. Could it be a lack of hunger?

Maybe Microsoft should let Xbox be run like a more independent company, with consequences and all.
 
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ToadMan

Member


Ad algorithms are trolling these days.

Next one will be an ad to buy the whole xbox division 🤣

Jez happy or sad with that ad?

Competition was defined in this thread a couple hundred pages ago as the participants in the brand new "high performance console market." People were emphatically insisting that Nintendo wasn't a part of the market and therefore should not be included in the discussion. Now the same people who were saying Nintendo wasn't competition for Sony and Microsoft are saying there's plenty of competition in the market and are including Nintendo in the charts and graphs related to the market.

It's interesting how easily Nintendo moves in and out of the market depending on the point people are trying to make.

Got it all from this guy

7SmDLMi.jpg


When MS don’t put Nintendo on their charts <mumble mumble>, why should anyone else?
 
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demigod

Member
Always funny seeing comments like this. Like yeah, no shit dude - believe it or not there was a point in time when Xbox was actually run by competent people who were actually clued into the industry.

The good old days of discovering and playing Braid, Dishwasher and Castle Crashers on XBLA - Geometry Wars being re-released as a 360 launch title! The accessibility of Japanese visual novels was unique too. They had freaking Chaos;Head exclusively?!

GPInjector, Photo Parties with the boys come midnight, Hacked Betas - you remember these things right? M2AF?

The good old days when Xbox people had a pulse on game development and were sealing up now classics like BioShock and Mass Effect for exclusivity deals. When Xbox were early backers of console eSports through THEIR OWN IP with Halo and Gears through MLG / Gamebattles.

All that magic and soul pissed away by this idiot;

jR7EcRz.png


The only people who defend this current regime are Xbox zoomers who have never watched a Final Boss set or never attended an X/360 midnight launch in their life.

That's my disjointed Xbox fan rant over after thinking about the good old days
They are a cult and believe all the bs from phil spencer instead of calling him out.
 
I only see this being an issue if Redfall and Starfield are another Sunset Overdrive, Quantum Break and Halo MCC in terms of sales performance, slow to fix issues, and development problems.Along with lacking upfront what's needed to appeal to buyers until too late.

Sure they have games coming from a couple internal teams and other aquisitions, but unless they make up for the two most anticipated games of the year failing in this scenario, it would be another year or two before we see replacement games like Fable, and by then it would be too late.

Series still has momentum, damaged by last year but not gone. They mess up this year it's a done deal.

Also Phil acting like three competitors is much better than two is stupid. He also, nor does Jim, put down Nintendo as competition even before the Activision deal, so why he's now acting like there's more than two is nothing more than lying to appease the CMA.
 

Polygonal_Sprite

Gold Member
Part of me wants the acquisition to be stopped just to see what kind of absolute monster Sony create by objecting to it. They think losing CoD would be a big deal? How about they lose every single AAA third party multiplatform game for it’s first 12-18 months for next 20 years. $70+ billion is a lot of money for Japanese third party moneyhat’s…

They should ask Nintendo about creating monsters by fucking other big companies over.
 

Topher

Gold Member
Competition was defined in this thread a couple hundred pages ago as the participants in the brand new "high performance console market." People were emphatically insisting that Nintendo wasn't a part of the market and therefore should not be included in the discussion. Now the same people who were saying Nintendo wasn't competition for Sony and Microsoft are saying there's plenty of competition in the market and are including Nintendo in the charts and graphs related to the market.

It's interesting how easily Nintendo moves in and out of the market depending on the point people are trying to make.

The problem with all that is that some keep ignoring the fact that the crux of the conversation regarding Nintendo was its relation to Call of Duty which isn't in the same market segment as games that make Nintendo popular. Remember, the crux of all this is this bullshit premise that since Nintendo doesn't need Call of Duty then the same applies to PlayStation. It was a false equivalency from the getgo.

But yeah, if we are going to talk about "how easily Nintendo moves in and out of the market" then time to start pointing fingers at Brad Smith. As far as I'm concerned, he ended that debate.

Fpgjpa_WIAEz7wP
 

Thirty7ven

Banned
Part of me wants the acquisition to be stopped just to see what kind of absolute monster Sony create by objecting to it. They think losing CoD would be a big deal? How about they lose every single AAA third party multiplatform game for it’s first 12-18 months for next 20 years. $70+ billion is a lot of money for Japanese third party moneyhat’s…

They should ask Nintendo about creating monsters by fucking other big companies over.

You think MS transferred 70B into Xbox’s bank account or something?
 

Snake29

RSI Employee of the Year
Xbox lacks identity and with buying up publishers to have their big IP's, you are not getting this identity.

Good thing MS owning ABK wouldn't create a monopoly and would help compete with a dominant Sony.

It's embarassing that they can't compete with the studios they have. Your comment shows that "taking the biggest MP game away from the compatitor will let us "finally" compete".

Sorry but it shows Xbox their lack of creativity and identity.
 
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I think this is a really great post that nails it on the head. Xbox is so insulated with cash, they don't have no real skin in the game. If Microsoft closed up Xbox next week, it would probably be a small dent in Microsoft overall checkbook.

The more I think about this post, the more it makes sense. Why do most MS studios have an issue with delivering games. Could it be a lack of hunger?

Maybe Microsoft should let Xbox be run like a more independent company, with consequences in all.
Thank you. If Xbox closed up next week it would be a benefit to Microsoft, as the Xbox department posts multi billion dollar losses every quarter.

I think you're right, it is a lack of hunger and complacency. Think of 343i, they were handed Xbox's biggest IP on a platter and through multiple-failures and delays nothing was done. Nothing was done until the only course of action was to take action. How many millions in resources were wasted, were able to be wasted, letting the studio have free reign? We see the same with Perfect Dark and Hellblade. There is no accountability for failure and no incentive to push out a great, high-quality product.

Xbox run as independent company would be a great idea, but you would have to gut the Microsoft managers and mindset from it. Bring in a businessman or fixer who could take the new independent company from loss to success.
 

GHound

Gold Member
Part of me wants the acquisition to be stopped just to see what kind of absolute monster Sony create by objecting to it. They think losing CoD would be a big deal? How about they lose every single AAA third party multiplatform game for it’s first 12-18 months for next 20 years. $70+ billion is a lot of money for Japanese third party moneyhat’s…

They should ask Nintendo about creating monsters by fucking other big companies over.

Don't quit your day job.
 

ANDS

King of Gaslighting
Why would this even need to be stated. AB was a great deal put together by Phil and Co. for sure (or whichever junior executive actually put the initial draft together that Phil and Co. will now take credit for), but the continued existence of XBOX isn't on this deal: it is on when MS head honchos figure they no longer need a "cool" tech arm.

Part of me wants the acquisition to be stopped just to see what kind of absolute monster Sony create by objecting to it. They think losing CoD would be a big deal? How about they lose every single AAA third party multiplatform game for it’s first 12-18 months for next 20 years. $70+ billion is a lot of money for Japanese third party moneyhat’s…

They should ask Nintendo about creating monsters by fucking other big companies over.

MS isn't tossing 70B dollars at Japanese developers. Who would they even give this money to? AB is ABSOLUTELY worth 70B dollars. Some petty slush fund to buy up limited time exclusivity deals with developers who have no real presence on your platform. . .you'd get laughed out of your bosses office, if not outright fired.
 
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Ozriel

M$FT
you know what? honestly speaking. i don't think they deserve to be around anymore.

Having a sole player in the high end console space would be worse for consumers.

Good thing this remains a fantasy and looks unlikely to happen.

Xbox lacks identity and with buying up publishers to have their big IP's, you are not getting this identity.

Is ‘identity’ the new ‘character’ now?
People play games, not ‘identity’.

It's embarassing that they can't compete with the studios they have. Your comment shows that "taking the biggest MP game away from the compatitor will let us "finally" compete".

February 2023 and there’s still discourse about COD being ‘taken away’ from PlayStation, even with guaranteed commitments of MP release on offer?
 
Lol only console warriors fantasize about one of the three dropping out. No one who’s seriously a gamer would especially given Microsoft has innovated in the space more so than the other two. Their first party output still has to catch up to the other two but we’ll see where that’s at when those studios start putting out products. The fact that he has to say this is absurd why would anyone thing after getting all those studios plus bathesda that they wouldn’t even give those studios a chance to put out games first to see where they stand they’d just close shop Because ABK fell through.
 

ReBurn

Gold Member
Ad algorithms are trolling these days.

Next one will be an ad to buy the whole xbox division 🤣

Jez happy or sad with that ad?



Got it all from this guy

7SmDLMi.jpg


When MS don’t put Nintendo on their charts <mumble mumble>, why should anyone else?
And you know where that started? Regulators defining new market segments that don't include Nintendo to bolster their cases. Including Nintendo makes the acquisition look less impactful to the overall market. This graphic could be true in a narrowly defined segment like "high performance consoles." But people don't seem to like the visual so now Nintendo needs to be back in the game and on the pie chart to balance things out a bit.
 

ANDS

King of Gaslighting
Is ‘identity’ the new ‘character’ now?
People play games, not ‘identity’.

You know EXACTLY what they mean. SONY and NINTENDO (and UBISOFT on the software side) absolutely have an identity when it comes to their vision for gaming. GOT has nothing to do with the Horizon series, but those "feel" like SONY games. MS has no real identity when it comes to the kinds of games they develop and so they just throw money at developers to build out that first party presence but since they are only chasing heavy hitters and not building internally, their "identity" is non-existent.

. . .and no this isn't about what "gamers care about", it is about the long term viability of a brand (which I'm sure you know that that is what the discussion is about, but are being obtuse to prove a point).
 

Airbus Jr

Banned
Or just answering a question he was asked by agenda driven journalists. It’s not like he randomly woke up and said if you know.
Still baffles me

Microsoft has all the money in the world to built their own first party studio like sony does but the fact that they had to resort on buying third party publishers like activision blizard really raised the big question for everyone

Why do they need to do that? The most reasonable explanation is : lazzines
 
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hemo memo

Member
They are not going anywhere hopefully. Can you imagine how ridiculous the gaming scene will be if Nintendo obviously continuing the hybrid route but Sony have the whole home console market for themselves? That is a fucking nightmare. Sony is arrogant on top now imagine being without competition.

Again, i’m glad Xbox exists even if only to pressure Sony to not fuck up.
 
I honestly would have just went after some of the bigger Japanese devs. Give me Capcom and Konami with Bethesda and I'd be ready to do battle. I dont actually care about the Activision deal. But I'm oldschool and have a connection with those older Ips. Sometimes I wonder if MS gets that aspect of gaming. MS has enough of its own IP to rock it isnt utilizing.
,
.
 
Microsoft/Xbox ain't going nowhere and that's a good thing.
Competition is ALWAYS a good for the consumer.
As a recent-ish example, if it wasn't for gamepass PlayStation most probably wouldn't have put out PS Plus extra or premium and we would be stuck with just the basic tier offering shovelware most probably - heck , even the offerings on the basic PS Plus tier have gotten better because of it.

...and this comes from a guy that has been disappointed with the Microsoft/Xbox offerings in the past 2 years, again, competition can only be perceived as positive.

Having said that, this feels like (negative) preemptive PR on their part regarding the Actibliz deal , not that I care about it but...yeah.
 
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Griffon

Member
If Xbox gets out of the market, I expect Valve to rush in to fill the power vacuum. They'd make a console sized Steam Box with the Steam Deck OS. MS would make all our Xbox games transferable to Steam as a last fuck you to their old competitors.
 
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Topher

Gold Member
And you know where that started? Regulators defining new market segments that don't include Nintendo to bolster their cases. Including Nintendo makes the acquisition look less impactful to the overall market. This graphic could be true in a narrowly defined segment like "high performance consoles." But people don't seem to like the visual so now Nintendo needs to be back in the game and on the pie chart to balance things out a bit.

That's not true. This started with Microsoft. It was their argument that Nintendo is proof that Sony didn't need Call of Duty. That's where all this nonsense originated.
 
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