Microsoft to buy Activision-Blizzard

[Arika]

7 minutes ago, Be Rock said:

-a big snip-

none of that lends ANY credit to your claim of:

 

Quote

SONY is bordering on bankruptcy

Their market cap is going UP not DOWN.

[Be Rock]

3 minutes ago, Arika S said:

none of that lends ANY credit to your claim of:

 

Their market cap is going UP not DOWN.

You're absolutely right.

It's a wonderful sign of financial stability when companies fragment into smaller corps.

Looking at their market cap fluctuation doesn't indicate health. What isn't sown in that simple graph are all the important details; which divisions are proffitable and which ones aren't? Right now SONY picture studios is bringing in enough positive revenue to counteract the losses in other departments like SONY electronics, or SONY music group, SMEJ.

What do you think will happen when the departments that make all the money split off? Who is going to cover the bill for the departments or divisions that aren't solvent like SEA or PlayStation.

This is one of the primary reasons that companies end up being sold at all...

When the shareholders at Atcivision Blizzard were rolling in cash because each year they made heaps more money than the year before - do you think had any interest in selling themselves to MS? Hello no... but now, after several long years of declining proffits, bad PR, and dozen's of key developers literally walking off the job - they realized that they need to sell before the value gets so low that no one is interested. This isn't a win for MS - they just purchased a sinking ship: The winners are the shareholders who just found a golden parachute to use before they lose it all.

SONY Inc. probably won't ever actually file for bankruptcy - that was me being hyperbolic. But they have some serious tough times ahead.

But TBH, I'm not really sure why I am explaining all this. The original comparison I made was not a slur against SONY - if anything I was taking a jab at MS for being daft enough by $70B USD for a company that is extremely unlikely to make that money back even 10 years from now. I introduced SONY as an example becuase they represent "The other side" of MS - and caquiring them completely would likely not have cost MS much more in the grand scheme of things. The entire purpose of my comparison was to show how much MS overpaid.

[Video Beagle]

21 hours ago, Kisai said:

The more likely scenario right now is Apple (Market cap 3 Trillion) buying any of the game companies, entirely to produce exclusive titles for iOS/MacOS, just so they have specific IP in the game space, which they presently do not. As for who's a better fit, I always seen Nintendo as the best fit with Apple, sharing the same gimmicky hardware obsessions, but I don't think Nintendo would sell itself to anyone.

I also speculated, wondered about Apple's play in all of this. I see your point about Nintendo, but I think it's too much "hardware" for Apple to want to deal with. They wouldn't trash Nintendo's exisiting stuff, but it doesn't lend itself to the eco-system, and it's IP feels like a gross miss-match for Apple.

 

I think, of companies you mentioned, Ubisoft could be a good fit, though. It's got a more.. "mature" "prestige" feel to it, especially with the AC titles...and I can that especially being a ripe IP for exploiting in like big budget Apple TV + series.

[Kisai]

6 hours ago, Video Beagle said:

I also speculated, wondered about Apple's play in all of this. I see your point about Nintendo, but I think it's too much "hardware" for Apple to want to deal with. They wouldn't trash Nintendo's exisiting stuff, but it doesn't lend itself to the eco-system, and it's IP feels like a gross miss-match for Apple.

 

I think, of companies you mentioned, Ubisoft could be a good fit, though. It's got a more.. "mature" "prestige" feel to it, especially with the AC titles...and I can that especially being a ripe IP for exploiting in like big budget Apple TV + series.

I think the problem with looking at EA or Ubisoft in general is that they operate their own crappy DRM-stores and that therefor creates a lot of legacy maintenance for someone to acquire them. At least the Activision acquisition, most of that legacy IP was never put into battle.net, only Blizzard properties, which had "battle.net" since the 1990's before it was any kind of store or launcher.

 

Anyhow, I would not be surprised if Apple gobbles up a mobile developer or two for game IP. If they were looking for film/TV IP (which let's be honest, their current Apple-created film/tv library is basically nothing.)

 

Which gets back to the other point I made about these companies should just move the IP itself to holding companies that license everything out, even to their previous owners so that the IP's stop collecting dust, and the people who have a material interest in those IP's can fight over who is most worthy of producing things, and smaller developers don't have to reskin their existing games with some other IP just to sell it.

 

I swear, if I see yet another mobile match-3 game with some licensed IP pasted over it... good gawd.

 

 

 

[RejZoR]

Damn, didn't know Microsoft also absorbed Obsidian. Just dug my teeth into The Outer Worlds and I'm really liking it. And after digging when that happened I stumbled upon The Outer Worlds 2 being planned. Noice.

[Video Beagle]

5 hours ago, Kisai said:

11 hours ago, Video Beagle said:

I think the problem with looking at EA or Ubisoft in general is that they operate their own crappy DRM-stores and that therefor creates a lot of legacy maintenance for someone to acquire them.

With stuff like that, basic software infrastructure, Apple (in the entirely improbable world where they bought one of them) would just do a "link your apple ID to your account to transfer over all your games to the App Store" then get rid of them. Given they already have stores for Windows etc for movies/music, be simple to have a section for games that they keep on other platforms.

 

Of course, Apple could just buy Atari and do an amazing Pitfall and Yar's Revenge revival.

[Kisai]

1 hour ago, Video Beagle said:

With stuff like that, basic software infrastructure, Apple (in the entirely improbable world where they bought one of them) would just do a "link your apple ID to your account to transfer over all your games to the App Store" then get rid of them. Given they already have stores for Windows etc for movies/music, be simple to have a section for games that they keep on other platforms.

 

Of course, Apple could just buy Atari and do an amazing Pitfall and Yar's Revenge revival.

No no, think about all these Ubi-play, EA-origin multiplayer-lockin's exist. Like both EA and Ubisoft's stores suck because they tie too much game functionality into their stores. Do you think someone who buys them is going to release patches for every game released over the last 15 years? No, this isn't GOG.  Everything tied to the online store is dead, and short of releasing an emulator for those stores functionality lost, many of those games DRM will just make the games dead, even ones that were released on disc.  At least console versions (by which I mean PS3 and Xbox 360) often were not permitted to have connectivity to their publishers for DRM reasons, the DRM was in the console, and, yes, when PSN/Xbox Live services end on those consoles, those games are also dead.

 

[Theminecraftaddict555]

On 1/20/2022 at 10:28 PM, Arika S said:

none of that lends ANY credit to your claim of:

 

Their market cap is going UP not DOWN.

And yet he calls himself not a sony hater lul jk

 

In all seriousness, Sony is still big enough not to go bankrupt and to be in "terrible financial status". So just another unsupported claim out of the window

 

[poochyena]

I'm genuinely shocked to learn Linus is against it and luke is fine with it. 100% would have expected the other way.

I don't get the issue with it. Its not like it some monopoly. You could play games 10 hours a day every day for the rest of your life and never play a game microsoft now owns, and you'd have plenty of game you never got to play. If you don't like shooters or adventure games, like myself, then its super easy to avoid all their games.

[Mark Kaine]

On 1/21/2022 at 5:51 AM, Be Rock said:

The entire purpose of my comparison was to show how much MS overpaid.

well, usually such "over payment" is made for "reaons" under "gentlemen" ... if you know what i mean

 

so on the surface, sure, but you cant say either way with certainty, and in the end it is irrelevant *why* they paid so much or even that they did, it's not going to put a dent in ms overall finances.

 

which is also why your comparison with sony falls flat, its not really relevant and no one is buying sony. 

[mr moose]

On 1/21/2022 at 3:03 PM, Arika S said:

 

cue in the MS/Sony price fixing conspiracies and allegations. 

[mr moose]

3 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

well, usually such "over payment" is made for "reaons" under "gentlemen" ... if you know what i mean

 

so on the surface, sure, but you cant say either way with certainty, and in the end it is irrelevant *why* they paid so much or even that they did, it's not going to put a dent in ms overall finances.

 

which is also why your comparison with sony falls flat, its not really relevant and no one is buying sony. 

 

How much a company pays for another company is quite a complex equation.  They first take the market cap,  they have to appraise it against reasonable sales growth/shrinkage, then take into account debt and loan management,  on top of that IP capital and workforce risk analysis has to be subtracted form the working figure.  Then the CEO has to calculate how much sex he can extort from the new secretary without the old one whistle blowing,  divide that by the number of minority employees he has to fire and multiply the last digit by the number of cars he can now afford to write off as dodgy franking credits. 

 

Then they just pull a figure out of a hat and if it is in the budget they buy.

[RejZoR]

They got so many IP's that Activision was sitting on and wasn't using that they couldn't care any less about Call of Duty. It's an useful milking cow, but if they play it smart it's just a small percent of the entire thing.

[IPD]

9 hours ago, poochyena said:

I'm genuinely shocked to learn Linus is against it and luke is fine with it. 100% would have expected the other way.

I don't get the issue with it. Its not like it some monopoly. You could play games 10 hours a day every day for the rest of your life and never play a game microsoft now owns, and you'd have plenty of game you never got to play. If you don't like shooters or adventure games, like myself, then its super easy to avoid all their games.

I've felt the same way about EA.  Frankly, if a (PC) game wasn't available on Steam directly--I've pretty much ignored it.

[Kroon]

On 1/22/2022 at 5:29 AM, poochyena said:

I'm genuinely shocked to learn Linus is against it and luke is fine with it. 100% would have expected the other way.

I'm surprised not both was against it more.

 

I'm also surprised that the Steam and Sony collaboration was not brought up.  

[WhitetailAni]

On 1/20/2022 at 7:15 AM, cretsiah said:

because my kids and i can no longer play it in local lan modes

we cant use mods anymore

constant use your email address to log-in fails

????
It's worked fine for me on 1.18, though I am using the original launcher (which you can still download).

DO NOT USE the MS Store launcher, it's crap and doesn't work.

[Dzaxis]

It's kinda of funny really. Everyone hates monopolies but they're not entirely evil. I know competition is good for the consumer. But so is standardisation. And that's something that often ties in with monopolies.

 

All you have to do is look at Windows verses Linux. Windows is standardised as it basically has the monopoly the os space and as a result things just work generally.

 

Compare that to linux. Where the biggest issue is literally how many code bases and distros there are and there's little to no standardisation between them because there's so much overlap. Here's 43 ways you can do this. But hey let's make a new 44th way. and it is that which holds it back and ultimately just pushes users back to Windows.

 

If linux ever got standardised it's growth would take off in a huge way and it would do a ton of damage to microsofts position.

 

Windows certainly isn't perfect especially with all the bloat and crap you get but it does end up being a very pro consumer experience because everything basically works.

 

Another example could be streaming services. Netflix prime, hbo, disney, mgm, now, the list goes on.. far too many services yet most consumers would be more than happy with one subscription to one service that offers everything than coughing up a half dozen sub fees.

 

Which ironically isn't that much different to what Microsoft is apparently trying to do with its game pass.

 

Competition is definitely pro consumer. But standardisation is also pro consumer.

 

Pc gaming is yet another example. Many many gamers get more and more frustrated with how many different launchers they need installed on there system. One launcher that does it all would be amazing. Just have all your stores on that. Search a game. It comes up and says hey steam it's this price ea it's that price, epic it's that price.. digital version of the high street in a standardised launcher

[AlexOak]

An update on this topic. Bloomberg reports that FTC will be looking into the the Microsoft and Activision deal.

 

 

Paid wall: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-01/microsoft-deal-for-activision-to-be-reviewed-by-ftc-in-u-s

Free: https://www.pcgamer.com/microsofts-acquisition-of-activision-blizzard-to-be-investigated-by-the-federal-trade-commission/

[cretsiah]

On 1/30/2022 at 9:32 AM, Dzaxis said:

Pc gaming is yet another example. Many many gamers get more and more frustrated with how many different launchers they need installed on there system. One launcher that does it all would be amazing.

probably why I have gone to looking at mainly indie games.....  i am definitely one of these types of gamers.

the main launchers I use in this house are:

- steam 1) games 2)social activities such as discussions, artwork,videos, guides, 3) workshop/mods 4) attempting to become O.S agnostic (proton)

- multi MC https://multimc.org/  for minecraft versions, mods, java edition specifics and memory limit settings ( mainly for the kids )

 

Ive been put off of

- Far Cry series because of the constant launcher issues

- microsoft/ xbox live games such as halo, minecraft because of the limitations they have put on kid accounts ( which limit local lan play, firewall issues caused by a microsoft account which acts entirely seperately to the OS firewall itself )