Dick Jones
Gold Member
I'm actually impressed by his standing jumps over chairs. SeriouslyThose Bill Gates dance moves tho
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Microsoft / Activision Deal Approval Watch |OT| (MS/ABK close)
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I know I'm not. Majority of the population is Stupid with a capital S and newer generations are even dumber.
Even if you just want to limit it to this particular subject, videogames, the xbox brand perfectly encapsulates how dumb people really are.
People actually paid for online gaming, during a generation where the competitors of the xbox brand had free online gaming. And they defended the practice while experiencing virtually 0 benefits for the privilege of paying for it. So much so, that they told the competition that it would be okay to start charging for it. And suddenly, console gamers stopped having a place to play new games online at no extra charge.
That's how stupid people are.
Cheezewizz
Banned
Do you have a source for this claim? MS acquired Mojang almost a decade ago, and I haven't heard anything about this up until a couple of months ago. Not saying it's not true, but I've asked for a source on this from a couple of people here making that same exact claims. So far nobody has provided anything.
Dick Jones
Gold Member
You could have just said a banned (requested) poster here created an alt using the same distinct photo to troll and got caught.
That's how stupid people are.
DeepEnigma
Gold Member
That's why the 10 years deal just won't cut it.
That alone is not a solution to the anticompetitive concerns.
The moment you're saying 10 years the immediate question becomes: and after that? How much power the company could gain in the meantime? What can they do undisturbed after 10 years?
Some people (also under the influence of a mediatic campaign where Microsoft wants to be the one and only narrator) think that regulators aren't even asking themselves that question just because Microsoft has decided that 10 years is good enough for them
But that is unlikely to be accepted as the only remedy even by regulators like EU that are *supposedly* not going as far as asking divestement or block like the CMA.
Microsoft's gaming business can be put under observation, their business decisions could become subject to approval by a third party, the 10 years license can be re-examined and extended and so on. These are all behavioral remedies.
Some people are looking at this in a black and white way (blocked or approved with what MS is offering) but that's not the case.
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DeepEnigma
Gold Member
Do you tho?
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Dick Jones
Gold Member
The time he'll save when he figures out about copy and paste.lolDick Jones Yeah I know about @SenjutsuSage. I'm just trying to make sure he doesn't type out 18 paragraphs needlessly.
Again.
DarkMage619
$MSFT
If Activision could do all of these things why didn't they? There is no evidence Activision was going to put their games on Game pass day and date. There was no evidence Activision was going to strike a deal with Nvidia for GeForce Now or any other cloud provider for their content. There was ample evidence they were hostile to the idea of their employees unionizing. There was no evidence Activision was planning on making Nintendo versions of their games again. It is fiction to claim all of the things this deal has planned were going to happen had MS not offered to buy Activision.
First off I don't know why it's MS' responsibility to ensure that any new entrant to the space can come in and compete especially when other more well financed companies failed to do so and other companies are not even interested in offering the same features of the service.
Secondly Xbox’s cloud dominance remains dubious especially since that service isn't even available outside of Game pass u
Ultimate. It is not stand alone. It is a feature of their game subscription service so it's ridiculous to claim they had some sort of dominant place in a market that does not even exist on its own.
Kilau
Member
I seent it done on Suits. Classic lawyering.
Banjo64
cumsessed
I’m guessing (hoping) you only meant CoD there?
Would any Nintendo gamer honestly swap games like the ones above for the promise of some shitty gimped CoD port in the future? Or even worse, a cloud only version?
No. But like everything else, you won’t accept that
Thirty7ven
Banned
Well there you go, you got it. It’s the regulators job.
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splattered
Member
Closing in on 700 pages boys
Bernoulli
M2 slut
yeah, but in the provisional findings teh CMA looked smart and objective, they didn't get tricked by any side and have a good understanding of the Marketis not at play here. is all lawyering stuff
Yep still wrong. And meandering aimlessly at this point.
DarkMage619
$MSFT
Absolutely and MS has presented numerous deals and concessions to address their concerns.
These future titles or past ones? If you are going to look backwards I'm sure Activision put games on Sega Saturn too yet I highly doubt that will happen in the future.
I’m guessing (hoping) you only meant CoD there?
Would any Nintendo gamer honestly swap games like the ones above for the promise of some shitty gimped CoD port in the future? Or even worse, a cloud only version?
No. But like everything else, you won’t accept that
Curiously why would Nintendo sign a deal for something that was a forgone conclusion? Why didn't you address the numerous other points I made from the Nvidia deal to the union stuff? Why wouldn't Activision release their biggest IP on Nintendo platforms since it would obviously happen without any MS intervention? Perhaps it isn't me who isn't accepting things.
Can anyone point out any quote from Phil Spencer or anyone currently at MS pushing this philosophy or making this statement?
Warablo
Member
Which the regulators are there to stop a monopoly if a acquisition war happens. Which this isn't even close to one.
fred420170
Member
No, because if they did this forum would have another 50 pages already saying seeeee, this bad even the devs say so! Of course, now the devs don't matter because they are for the deal.
Topher
Gold Member
Didn't say that or that the fear is even justified. I think that is the fear just the same.
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DarkMage619
$MSFT
Fair enough just interesting to see unsubstantiated fears repeatedly posted. I guess we all have to be scared of something.
fred420170
Member
Sorry, gonna have to disagree. Xbox Live was a vastly superior platform for online gaming. They brought it to the living room, included headsets for chat., dedicated servers for big games etc. Sony's was free because it was not on the same level, not even close.
Warablo
Member
Sony fans are more obsessed with them than Xbox fans.
Pelta88
Member
This is all well and good for Activision as an independent company. When Microsoft owns ATVI, gamepass will be where COD debuts.
Probably a week before retail/PS5 too. Anyone who claims otherwise is being disingenuous.
sainraja
Member
OR maybe they weren't Sony extremists after all and you simply misjudged them?
As I said, MS plans for COD would ruin it. It is not suitable for streaming. 60 FPS is baseline, and 120 FPS is preferred.
Iced Arcade
Member
.... Naw
DeepEnigma
Gold Member
Nintendo gamers play Splatoon, they don't play CoD. That experiment was tried already, and thus why it hasn't been repeated since.
I’m guessing (hoping) you only meant CoD there?
Would any Nintendo gamer honestly swap games like the ones above for the promise of some shitty gimped CoD port in the future? Or even worse, a cloud only version?
No. But like everything else, you won’t accept that
Warablo
Member
Microsoft never said that
DrFigs
Member
I prefer regulators to be proactive rather than reactive. Better to be safe than sorry and all that.
Banjo64
cumsessed
The burden of proof isn’t on me. Activision have published plenty of great games on the Switch. If you’re suggesting they were just going to stop that stone dead, then you should provide proof
I addressed the point that I wanted to address.
Warablo
Member
That's fine, but where exactly do you draw the line. You can only own 20 developers, or do they go around and count all the developers each publisher has and average them all out?
The cloud deals as they are in their current form are just smoke and mirrors to try to look good and support a parallel mediatic assault with the purpose of creating pressure.
Cloud gaming is a super tough and relatively immature market where even a big tech company like Google has failed.
In the very unlikely event these companies they're doing deals with grow to a point Microsoft is concerned with in 10 years, they just won't renew the license for their games or they'll put them in a position not to be able renew because of crazy prices and they can crash them in a single move.
The issue is not giving them this power.
A 10 years deal without at least the option to get extended after a market revaluation is pointless.
Microsoft thinks that by doing a mediatic campaign about how good they are regulators won't think about all this and will accept the terms their comfortable with...now it's 10 years, a year ago it was just 3 years of COD (after current contracts) and just to Sony.
I think they'll find out they will be asked for much more but we'll find out at the end of April.
Thirty7ven
Banned
The problem isn’t buying developers. That’s not what MS is after here either.
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Warablo
Member
Publishers and developers are the same thing. They just include more developers.
I guess you could limit how many developers you can buy in a single purchase, but I'd agrue most of Activision is Call of Duty developers which wouldn't make sense to split up.
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Topher
Gold Member
No, they are not.
Warablo
Member
Not technically speaking, but when Microsoft buys Activision, they are buying all the developers and IP's underneath them. Not that big of difference.
mansoor1980
Member
Microsoft has hit back at Sony’s recent claim that the company’s upcoming acquisition of Activision Blizzard is anti-competitive with a counter-claim of its own. In a filing to the Brazil Administrative Council for Economic Defense, Microsoft has shot down the attempt to derail its plans by claiming Sony is the company implementing anti-competitive practices in regards to the Xbox Game Pass subscription service.
While Sony claimed Microsoft could wield the Call of Duty franchise as an exclusive title, and sway fans to join the Xbox ecosystem that way, it has now clarified that making the franchise exclusive would be financially unviable , and that it has no plans to do so.
The company has also counter-claimed that Sony is actively working to stop the growth of the company, and of its subscription service xbox gamepass, because the service threatens Sony’s market dominance.
‘Sony does not want attractive subscription services to threaten its dominance in the digital distribution market for console games,’ Microsoft said in the legal filing. ‘Sony’s own PlayStation, incidentally, has an established base of loyal brand players.’
‘Microsoft’s ability to continue expanding Game Pass has been hampered by Sony’s desire to inhibit such growth. Sony pays for “blocking rights” to prevent developers from adding content to Game Pass and other competing subscription services.’
https://www.gameshub.com/news/news/microsoft-sony-anti-competitive-accusations-xbox-game-pass-26504/
DeepEnigma
Gold Member
Topher
Gold Member
Microsoft could buy Sledgehammer, Treyarch and Infinity Ward and they wouldn’t be buying Call of Duty. That’s a pretty massive difference
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ChuckeRearmed
Member
Publisher is a set of studios. No different from buying a set of studios.
When somebody buys the largest publisher out there for $70B (more than the market cap of a lot of the competitors combined) having just bought one of largest in Zenimax already I'd say you're pretty close to that line, no?
The line is not number of developers anyway, just hurting competition with that purchase, but people try and deny that too and say the regulators are corrupt or stupid when they say that line might have been crossed.
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Warablo
Member
Which they wouldn't do that unless CoD is included.
I doubt Activision/Blizzard would want to remain a third party dev if they did that too.
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Thirty7ven
Banned
They are not the same but even then the problem here is that MS is buying a massive userbase, and to make matters worse they are buying a userbase that is massive on their direct competitors ecosystem and much bigger than on their own. Call of Duty’s userbase was more than double of Xbox’s just a short while ago.
Just think about it. Embracer bought a bunch of developers, they have over eleven thousand people now. Why wasn’t MS going after those devs if all they wanted was to increase headcount?
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GHG
Member
So the international marketing and distribution arms count for nothing?
Publishers don't even need to own the development studios that make games for them.
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Demon2blades
Member
Not only that but imo as soon as cod hits gamepass it's game over for competing for the cod crowd, who's gonna pay for cod on another platform when you can get it for whatever they charge a month on gamepass.. like no other company could afford to do that and ms have already shown they are willing to eat any cost to get where they want to be and for me that's what Sony are most worried about where's the competition in that ? .
Topher
Gold Member
Sure they would. Microsoft bought Playground. Sony bought Insomniac.
DeepEnigma
Gold Member
GHG
Member
"It's just some developers, who cares, what's the big deal?"
bitbydeath
Gold Member
Except Sony had dedicated servers and MS were running P2P. Of course it was argued back then that P2P made Xbox the better service, eventually that stopped when Xbox caught up.
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