"In a ruling submitted today, Judge Corley said the following:
Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision has been described as the largest in tech history. It deserves scrutiny. That scrutiny has paid off: Microsoft has committed in writing, in public, and in court to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation for 10 years on parity with Xbox. It made an agreement with Nintendo to bring Call of Duty to Switch. And it entered several agreements to for the first time bring Activision’s content to several cloud gaming services. This Court’s responsibility in this case is narrow. It is to decide if, notwithstanding these current circumstances, the merger should be halted—perhaps even terminated—pending resolution of the FTC administrative action. For the reasons explained, the Court finds the FTC has not shown a likelihood it will prevail on its claim this particular vertical merger in this specific industry may substantially lessen competition. To the contrary, the record evidence points to more consumer access to Call of Duty and other Activision content. The motion for a preliminary injunction is therefore DENIED. "
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While I absolutely hate the fact that the gaming industry is being consolidated into a few massive corps, I am very excited for the entire Activision Blizzard umbrella to be under new leadership.
Just a friendly reminder that the judge’s son works for Microsoft.
Irrelevant. The FTC knew and had no issues so why do you?
Read the linked article for some good potential reasons it’s an issue (e.g. Microsoft has been doing a lot of layoffs recently, why is her son still employed?)
But that was written before the ruling. Now that we have it, her ties to Microsoft offer at least one potential explanation to the nonsense of the decision (IMO, obviously).
For an excellent write up on what happened, check out Matt Stoler’s recent article.
Microsoft has been doing a lot of layoffs recently, why is her son still employed?
Last article I found said they laid off less than 1% of theor staff. It would be weird if he was layed off.
Lol so the only reason he wasn’t laid off is because of his mum? What are you basing that off?
I know reading is hard bro, but give it another go.
As soon as anyone even brings that up they’ve lost any argument or debate they are in.
As far as poison goes, I’d much rather pick Phil Spencer over Bobby Kotick.
Oh great, more consolidation and monopoly building.
'Tis the era of Indy Games, my friend. Abandon the Graphically amazing games that cannot be built upon passion due to have dev teams of 10,000 strong. Instead, embrace the smaller titles developed by less than 10 people whom cry with joy at the prospect of showering you with entertainment and art.
Facts, battlebit remastered is going to go down as one of the best releases of the year, and I think it was developed by just 3 people
You’re saying this 3 weeks before BG3 drops lol
This is the best year for big studios in a loooong time
What is bg3?
Baldur’s Gate 3
Just don’t buy it or wait a couple years to grab it at good discount. Or if you’re feeling extra feisty, take the high seas.
I’ve already purchased BG3, and Larian is one of very few companies I will pre-order anything from solely due to my desire to contribute to them making more games.
The genuine love they demonstrated during D:OS 1/2 has me sold on their development style as basically “the old Blizzard” and until that changes, I will donate to kickstarters, preorder games, whole 9 yards. Making the D:OS Enhanced editions free, separate installs, with the amount of additions and quality they added, was just next-level for a game company.
Their community engagement and response during the BG3 Early Access only cemented this belief for me.
The more companies we get like Larian working on different genres, the better the gaming industry would be.
I was talking more about the big studio releases in general. I also recommend keeping an eye on the studio if you love them that much, it’s not uncommon for core devs responsible for making a studio great in the first place quitting and leaving behind an empty shell.
Or worse, they find a more profitable franchise and turns your favorite one into a side project. Looking at you, From.
What’s the point of all these lawsuits over mergers when every single time there is clearly a monopolistic merger it just goes through anyways.
The issue in this instance is that’s its hard to prove that a company not even close to leading to the market is going to somehow dominate that market through a single (albeit large) acquisition.
It’s not a “single” acquisition though. Microsoft have been acquiring huge companies (Bethesda, for example), hit games (Minecraft), and key development parters from competition (remember Rare?) from the beginning of Xbox.
To think that they spent all of those billions of dollars to buy out everything but that they aren’t going to use that to benefit their platforms, is just crazy to me.
Just like they said in one of their internal emails, they are in a unique position to spend their competition out of business, and the entire industry will be worse for it.
Microsoft have been acquiring huge companies (Bethesda, for example), hit games (Minecraft), and key development parters from competition (remember Rare?) from the beginning of Xbox.
And yet, they are still in third place in the gaming market behind Sony and Nintendo. If those acquisitions didn’t turn Microsoft into a monopoly already, what will be significantly different if they acquire AVB?
They’re 3rd place this generation mainly because they release one big exclusive per year, like Redfall, which turns out to be utter dogshit. It’s not because they don’t have an actual treasure trove of IP to draw from or a lack of development resources.
While Nintendo is putting out games like Tears of the Kingdom, Microsoft produces boring, samey, minorly iterative crap year after year. Halo and Gears went from being Xbox icons to unsurprising announcements at formulaic E3 press conferences, because Microsoft only seems to know how to beat dead horses.
Let me ask you this simple question: how have gamers or the industry benefited from Microsoft’s past acquisitions?
I can’t see any way that allowing Microsoft to own (and probably squander) an ever-growing library of IP is good for me or anyone outside of the company.
Gamers benefited tremendously. GamePass is a game changer and having access to day 1 first (and often 3rd) party releases is amazing. Devs are happy too. Many publicly admitted that without GP some of their games would not launch at all.
While you are right that MS has released mostly duds this generation, it’s not fair to paint them as completely without any benefits to gamers or industry.
I know people like GamePass, but I’m not sure that spending $17/mo to own nothing in the end is what I consider a win… Especially since GamePass feels like a prime example of Microsoft digging into their deep company pockets to outspend their competition with what seems to be an unsustainable loss-leader.
I also have no idea whether it benefits or hurts 3rd party developers.
Yeah, gamers will definitely benefit greatly when GamePass becomes the only way to access certain new releases and they start upping the monthly price. This is every service subscription ever. Once they have the market lead they’ll be free to up price, offer shittier service etc.
Gamepass as it currently exists will be gone within a decade. This is the Netflix or Amazon model at play. Run service cheaply until it hits critical mass, then start ramping the price up to turn it profitable. You won’t be getting unlimited $70 games on launch for $15/month for forever.
Even if the above is wrong: a successful GP will fundamentally alter the way games are made. Content is aggressively and constantly tweaked or changed structurally in order to optimize profit. You know why search results on Google are garbage? Because people found a way to take advantage of that system to make the most money; doing so pushed out the good results. Same reason why all the biggest youtube channels have the content creator making a stupid face in the thumbnail with a clickbait title. Same reason why film has moved towards cinematic universes lately, or why so many IPs have moved towards the TV format (its for streaming).
Consumer oriented content changes when the revenue model changes. If GP is influential enough, games will change to optimize for whatever method makes the most money there — and that model will not be the one that exists currently. If Microsoft pays them by hours of playtime, games will become bloated with more and more empty content or arbitrary difficulty. If DLC continues to not be included, more and more core game content will shift towards DLC that becomes more expensive. Etc.
Cementing Gamepass is anything but a “tremendous” benefit for gamers.
Game Pass is already profitable, as said by Phil Spencer.
The goal with game pass is to have enough subscribers giving guaranteed revenue to finance all their first party games for the year along with the payouts for third party games. Once a person is subscribed and in the ecosystem, Microsoft then get 30% of every third party game and DLC they buy. That’s where the real money is. Game Pass is there to get them hooked. With MS’s goals of 4 AAA first party games a year, they need say $400-$600mil in revenue from game pass a year for that. They’re already over half the number of subscriptions needed for the upper end of that revenue @$15/month. Adding COD will make that number explode.
Theoretically, the way it works is each one of those sales should go through until you hit the one that would push them over the edge to monopoly. You don’t block a purchase because of purchases you expect them to make in the future (unless stuff has already been signed)
Well the good thing here is that there was several concessions MS has made in contracts to ensure it’s mitigated. That’s why it’s necessary to go through the trial even if it isn’t likely going to be in your favor. Small victories
They’ll go nuts on mobile gaming, I saw it on youtube
I don’t care about “monopolies” and “consolidation”
I just care about the possibility of Guitar Hero being revived god dammit
As much as I hate Activision Blizzard as a publisher and Bobby Kotick as a person, I feel this level of corporate consolidation is a terrible thing for the games industry and gamers.
There is so much more to this than CoD being on Playstation or not…
If they start banning everything Activision makes from Steam, Gog, or other stores, then probably they’ll get a nice lawsuit. But tbh, if you don’t like Microsoft, then don’t buy Microsoft products and that will henceforth include Activision products.
Sure. But then Microsoft will buy Sega so you shouldn’t buy Sega products either. And then Microsoft will buy Capcom, so you can’t buy Capcom products either. So then Microsoft will buy SquareEnix so y-
Wait guys, I think corporate consolidation might be bad.
I know a lot of people (rightfully) are against it . But the way Activision/Blizzard has been run has been shambles and needs at least some kind of change. Plus the scrutiny has lead to several concessions by MS that will help curtail future antitrust issues for the most part.
They’re run more effectively than Microsoft has run their gaming division for the past ~15 years or so… Microsoft’s gaming leadership has seen one of the most valuable gaming IPs, Halo, flounder again and again and again. They closed all their game studios and spent a whole generation with minimal first party exclusives, they did I don’t know how much damage to Arkane with Redfall…
More generally, Microsoft’s approach to leading their game studios is to leave them to run the way the studio was ran pre-acquisition. Activision-Blizzard is not going to see major changes to the way they run if this deal does go through (pending CMA). Microsoft will Activision to be run the way it is now, and only intervene if profits dip too much (considering Halo, though, that might take quite the dip).
I don’t get the assumption that Activision is going to see some major cleanup from this. They won’t.
they did I don’t know how much damage to Arkane with Redfall…
Microsoft aren’t to blame for Redfall. Redfall started development in 2018 but Microsoft didn’t buy them til 2021. Redfall sucks because Arkane Austin made a bad game without any input from MS.
Microsoft didn’t close all their studios either. In fact they’ve barely closed any actual studios that have made xbox games. They closed ones that were bad though. Lionhead closed because Fable Legends was bad. I was in the beta, and it was not a good game. It would have absolutely flopped and killed the studio. They closed Ensemble almost 15 years ago. That’s about it really.
Devs can do no wrong, it’s always the publishers.
Well in that case it’s still not Microsoft, it’s Bethesda.
This is really a tough one. I hate consolidation, but I also really hate Bobby Kottick.
Well, you’re really gonna hate the fat pay out he gets.
He was always going to get it though
Companies should not be allowed to buy other companies
How come?
Because it leads to 6 companies making 95% of the food we eat
It’s amazing to me how short-sighted this decision is. Yeah sure keep wide access to CoD for 10 years to get the FTC off their back and then watch all that fall away immediately after. For us this is potentially decent gains in the short term but certainly contributes to this industry turning to crap long term.
