[HN Gopher] UK Blocks Microsoft's $69B Activision Deal ___________________________________________________________________ UK Blocks Microsoft's $69B Activision Deal Author : jmsflknr Score : 557 points Date : 2023-04-26 11:17 UTC (11 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.bloomberg.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.bloomberg.com) | kripy wrote: | https://archive.md/m784j | asmor wrote: | I really wish we could have a _different kind_ of competition in | gaming (and some other sectors). | | I miss the good old days when everything was on Steam. I wish | there was some middle ground between everyone paying 30% to Valve | and running 10 launchers at once. And now, with subscription | models making their way in, it even more closely resembles the | development of Netflix. There should be an industry standard | launcher, just as there should be an industry standard cloud | gaming standard. As it is now, only one of them is really usable | with reasonable latency where I live, and it lacks a lot of games | because NVIDIA refused to put their foot down on "we just provide | a computer, not a platform". | | This competition is parallel worlds that pretend their | competitors do not exist and where customer choice doesn't exist | (unless you're really not picky about what to play). | nonethewiser wrote: | > I miss the good old days when everything was on Steam. | | Well, this is 1 step further from everything being on gamepass | saos wrote: | The CMA have always done a solid job. Glad they blocked this. | deepzn wrote: | Probably consumers might benefit from concentration of gaming | titles within Xbox for more seamless experiences. But, arguably | very destructive in the long run. As this is a major INDEPENDENT | studio, not only for multiplatform but also for deciding the | titles/projects they produce. | | As we see with the HBO Max/Discovery merger, once companies | merge, they have the option to close or end projects, that is | destructive to both consumers and the creators of those. | | Furthermore, these are trillion dollar companies, that are almost | getting if not already way past the size of "Too Big To Fail". | These companies need to be reigned in, if we are trying to create | mobility in the private sector, as well as consumer choice, and | avoid monopolization currently already in tech. | saos wrote: | I'm so happy | [deleted] | sylware wrote: | Is this true? | | The dev studio of redfall was bought by msft, then the | playstation build was scraped. | | If true, I would have expected msft to be more cunningly smart, | namely to provide a playstation build... but significantly worse | than the windoz/xbox builds. | | The only way msft could restore confidence would be to provide | top notch elf/linux builds of ALL games of ALL its studios (not a | few games here and there, and hardly any "significant" ones). | | Idem for sony though. | paol wrote: | Thank $deity someone did. Microsoft owning both the biggest | platforms and the biggest publishers is a glaring example of what | anti-trust regulations should exist to prevent. | | Every anti-trust regulator in the world would have auto-blocked | the merger after 5 minutes of examining the situation. | Unfortunately actual anti-trust enforcement seems to have fallen | entirely out of fashion. | reaperducer wrote: | _Thank $deity someone did. Microsoft owning both the biggest | platforms and the biggest publishers is a glaring example of | what anti-trust regulations should exist to prevent._ | | I can't speak for the UK, but in the US, there are plenty of | industries where the creator of a product is not also allowed | to be the distributor of the product. | | Movie companies aren't allowed to own theaters. In most states, | auto makers aren't allowed to own dealerships. Beer companies | aren't allowed to own bars. The list goes on. | MikusR wrote: | Microsoft is 3rd place on consoles, non-existent on pc, non- | existent on mobile. And this deal would have moved it to 3rd | place in publishing. | drumhead wrote: | >non-existent on pc | | Hmmmmmmmm........ | Hamuko wrote: | > _non-existent on pc_ | | What's the share of PC gaming on Microsoft Windows vs. not on | Microsoft Windows? | MikusR wrote: | They don't get any money from people playing on Windows. | All the money goes to Valve | thehappypm wrote: | Isnt gaming a big draw to buying Windows in the first | place? | Vermeulen wrote: | Your mostly correct - but it's wrong to say 'non- | existent' on PC due to how successful PC Game Pass is | gpm wrote: | They make money from people playing on Windows. Windows | licensing fees directly. And indirectly by getting people | into their software ecosystem. | | Just because they don't make additional money from game | sales doesn't mean they aren't making money. | Hamuko wrote: | My gaming PC doesn't have a Windows license because I | like Microsoft or Windows. | | Written on my Mac Studio. | poloniculmov wrote: | Thanks to Proton, most games work on Linux, as long as they | don't have any anti-cheat rootkits. | Hamuko wrote: | ProtonDB rates 28% of the top 1000 games as platinum | ("runs perfectly out of the box"). The rest either need | some tweaks, have some issues, or just don't work. My | assumption is that most gamers don't care too much tweak | with their games, so I wouldn't put that much weight on | the gold category. And when it comes to silver and below, | that can be pretty nasty. | | And when looking at the top 20 most played games on | Steam, there's some pretty big titles missing. PUBG (5th | most played) is borked, CoD MWII (6th) is borked, Destiny | 2 (9th) is borked, Rainbow Six Siege (10th) is borked, | FIFA 23 (11th) is borked, NARAKA: BLADEPOINT (13th) is | silver, Rust (14th) is bronze and Dead by Daylight (20th) | is bronze. So when it comes to "most players", there's | definitely a lot of gaps too. | | I have a Steam Deck and I can have pretty good gaming | experiences on it. Surprisingly even. But it's definitely | not perfect, and one of the reasons why I can feel pretty | confident in owning a Steam Deck is that I still have a | Windows-based gaming PC that I can fall back on. | 0x457 wrote: | Don't know about the rest, but destiny 2 works fine on | linux...you will just get banned by anti-cheat. The only | reason you can't play Destiny 2 on linux is because | Bungie won't allow it. It even has working anti-cheat. | seattle_spring wrote: | So the only online games you can play on Linux are full | of blatant cheaters? | paol wrote: | > non-existent on pc | | You may want to think a little longer on that ;) | MikusR wrote: | So should you. | lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: | Xbox has a digital marketplace on which game developers | (sometimes a dreaded _publisher_ ) sell games and | Microsoft gets a cut of the deal. Microsoft makes money | because a game is sold on the Xbox digital marketplace. | Microsoft has no (popular) equivalent to Steam, GoG, Epic | Games Store, etc., and as such have no (popular) way of | monetizing PC games sales. | | (As in, we're still talking about a games market and not | an OS market. OP doesn't have to rethink their claim that | MS is "non-existent on pc" because they practically are.) | snapcaster wrote: | As a MSFT shareholder I agree. As a citizen of the world I | think it's fine to stop multi trillion dollar companies from | expanding anymore regardless of impact and I think most | reasonable people would agree | nonethewiser wrote: | That's not what anti trust means though. If that's the | reasoning the commission acting outside it's purpose. | AraceliHarker wrote: | If you are a shareholder of MSFT, please tell them to stop | making Windows 11 full of ads. | samstave wrote: | >> _to stop making Windows 11 full_ STOP | | W11 is utter trash (as I type this from W11 PC and when I | mouse over to the left, it pulls up ads ... how can I | block this at my router? anyone know the domains it pulls | from. I need a blacklist of all MS ad domains. | | Also, here was something that just happened this morning | ;; I opened my machine, and I clicked on the firefox menu | icon, and it fucking opened microsoft EDGE. It HIJACKED | the firefox icon. | | I had to reboot... and it added a fucking "search bing" | thing to my menu bar... WHAT THE FUCK. I didnt set this | up. | | Why is W11 making ANY changes to my machine | autonomously???????? | | https://i.imgur.com/F8jdaUH.png | | https://i.imgur.com/mBos3Do.jpg | eatsyourtacos wrote: | I am still _baffled_ they even made W11. I really thought | Windows10 was going to turn into like... Windows. As in, | they just keep updating it- why the hell do we need more | versions! | web3-is-a-scam wrote: | The self-ware Bing/Sydney AI is procreating. | ricardobayes wrote: | Do you think this will actually have a good outcome for UK | gamers? I can definitely foresee UK gamers not having access to | products. | joosters wrote: | No-one is going to stop selling games in the UK, they would | be leaving money on the table if they did. | | Instead, they might move development away from the UK. Bad | for developers, sure. | drumhead wrote: | I dont see how development would be affected. | [deleted] | tombert wrote: | I think I agree, but would this logic apply to Nintendo in the | mid-80's? I think that (at least in the United States), the NES | was probably the biggest game console, and Nintendo was almost | certainly the biggest publisher for it. | reaperducer wrote: | _I think I agree, but would this logic apply to Nintendo in | the mid-80 's? I think that (at least in the United States), | the NES was probably the biggest game console, and Nintendo | was almost certainly the biggest publisher for it._ | | Maybe not at the beginning because home video games were new | and different, and there was plenty of competition from Sega | and Atari and others. | | But in a related note, Atari was forced to create a new | company to publish some of its coin-op games to fend off | monopoly accusations. (It later turned out to just be a shell | game.) | rprospero wrote: | Nintendo was taken to court and forced to pay out over anti- | competitive business practices. Granted, the specific charge | was price fixing and the settlement of sending coupons to | consumers was ridiculous, but I could imagine an FTC that | wasn't asleep at the wheel who split the company's hardware | and software divisions. | edgyquant wrote: | No, the industry was new and not worth close to what it is | now. Plus a lot different, arcades we're still pretty | dominate at that time. | jxi wrote: | I'm just glad Activision doesn't get paid out. What a terrible | company it has become. Really wish they never acquired Blizzard. | mattferderer wrote: | This might be a bad time to tell you that they might be getting | paid out in terms of $2.5 - 3 billion for the deal falling | through. | javajosh wrote: | And what a strange end for the mighty Blizzard. I wonder what | the owners of Blizzard thought would happen when they sold in | 2008. I bet it even mattered to them at that time, at least a | little. | nottorp wrote: | Did it? I don't think Blizzard has ever been in financial | trouble, so they sold it just for more money. And we all know | the old Blizzard is completely dead now. | slavik81 wrote: | In 2008, Blizzard was owned by Vivendi Universal, which is a | giant conglomerate that owns a seemingly random assortment of | media properties. | | Vivendi has gone through so many mergers, acquisitions and | divestitures over the years that I find it hard to imagine | them having a sentimental attachment to a particular business | unit. | | Blizzard has pretty much always just been one part of a | larger organization. It was sold in the 90s. | segasaturn wrote: | Yeah Blizzard is doomed because of this block. Activision | doesn't give a rip about Blizzard's IPs (there's a running | joke in the StarCraft 2 community that the game is being | maintained by a single unpaid intern). Sad day especially for | the StarCraft 2 community who were hopeful about the | acquisition saving their beloved series. | mouzogu wrote: | mr kotick going to have to buy a smaller yacht i'm afraid. | smcleod wrote: | Good. Governments should be block FAR more acquisitions. We need | more small to mid sized companies and far fewer mega corps. | jeroenhd wrote: | Really? Cloud gaming is where this gets killed off? | | I suppose they can't really block the merger for their exclusive | titles seeing as all of Microsofts's competitors are the same or | worse when it comes to exclusives, but I'm still surprised | someone managed to convince these people that cloud gaming was | going to be the way this merger was going to bite people in the | arse. | | I do hope regulatory bodies will maintain these decisions across | other platforms as well (i.e. Sony's acquisitions, Epic Games) | but I'm not sure that's realistic if cloud gaming is cited as the | main reason why two tech conglomerates merging is a bad idea. | thepratt wrote: | https://archive.is/2mV5g | kman82 wrote: | Microsoft is an American company. Activision-Blizzard is an | American company. I get that the UK is an important market but | how can their regulators block a deal that possibly most of the | rest of the world wants. Who determines that the UK has the power | to block this? Can somebody legally explain this to me ELI5? | chaosbolt wrote: | What am I missing here? I thought both Microsoft and Activision | were American companies, why would the UK even have a say in | this? Is it a "if you buy it you can't operate here" kind of | statement? | Culonavirus wrote: | That's my understanding too. At the end of the day, I'm sure | this will be a PITA, but what stops Activision from spinning | off its UK business operations into a separate entity that will | not be part of the Activision-Microsoft deal? | | Not to mention that the only part of distribution this can | affect is the physical one. I mean, if I want to sell a game on | Steam and sell it in all the regions Steam operates in, I can | do so without needing a business presence in every individual | country... | nonethewiser wrote: | That's a good question. I don't recall ever seeing something | like this happening. | fnbr wrote: | I was about to ask the same thing. Why does this matter? It's | like when the Canadian Parliament subpoenaed Mark Zuckerberg- | he just ignored it [1]. | | [1]: https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/27/tech/zuckerberg-contempt- | cana... | nonethewiser wrote: | Never demand something which you can't enforce. Signals major | weakness. | summerlight wrote: | Not only the UK government still has a significant power to | leverage here, but also corporate doesn't usually want to | directly go to war against governments since that's going to be | an alarming signal for all other governments across the globe, | especially EU who is actively seeking a way to regulate US big | techs. Even US cannot protect them without a good | justification. | elAhmo wrote: | Good! There is no sane reason to allow Microsoft to own one more | company and just become bigger in another market. | | It has nothing to do with their core business (which is quite | diverse to be fair), and as an end consumer, on average, this | would just cause harm long term, considering consoles and gaming | market in general. | | One example: Call of Duty. Might not be important for many | people, but having CoD become unavailable on the most popular | console, just because someone had huge amounts of money and | bought a $69B dollar company doesn't sound fair and would be a | net loss for the industry. | PretzelPirate wrote: | > but having CoD become unavailable on the most popular console | | It would still be available for at least 10 years even if the | deal went through. | mysterydip wrote: | If Microsoft and Activision are both US companies, but have | international offices, do they have to get approval from every | country they operate in? Could they merge just the US parts or | non-UK parts? | rwmj wrote: | Yes actually. When IBM acquired Red Hat there was some last- | minute hijinx involving getting Brazilian (IIRC) regulatory | approval. | capableweb wrote: | Yes, both companies have offices around the globe, with | corporate entities all over the place. As those have to operate | within the laws of the countries they're incorporated in, if | they get blocked by some local watchdog, the acquisition | wouldn't be able to be completed in that country. | | More so, the merger is also discussed in the EU in general, | which is a bigger market than just the UK alone, and if the | acquisition gets blocked in the UK, EU watchdog will surely use | that block as prior material for doing a EU-wide block. | | Hence Microsoft is lobbying both the UK itself and Europe wide | for making the acquisition go through. | | Of course, even if the acquisition gets blocked everywhere but | in the US, the US counter-part can still be acquired, but not | sure how much sense that would make, they'll probably end up | not going through with it at all in that case. | Firmwarrior wrote: | If the US part has all the talent and all the profit, seems | like that'd still be a pretty viable move, wouldn't it? | capableweb wrote: | I don't think the US has all of neither, but especially not | revenue. Asia tends to be the biggest market, with the US | being the second and EU third. Usually, US has maybe half | of the profits as the Asia counterpart, while EU has half | of that. | | So if the acquisition gets blocked in the EU, they'll miss | out on a ton of revenue, for sure. | | Not to mention the operational overhead of actually | operating the machinery when the machinery is banned in the | EU but not the US. | nonethewiser wrote: | > Usually, US has maybe half of the profits as the Asia | counterpart, while EU has half of that. | | But is this actually the case with Activision? Aren't | most of their games banned in China (this shrinking the | Asian audience massively) and don't they charge a lot | less? | bastardoperator wrote: | You can see that games in other highly populated regions | sell for much less. This is the 7th most popular game on | steam that isn't free to play. | | https://steamdb.info/app/252490/ | | 39.99 in the US, 22-23 dollars in China and India. In | indonesia the game sold for as little as 13 cents a | license. It is slightly higher in the EU and UK but by | very little. In this case 24% of all players are | American. The UK is 2%. So even with a slightly higher | price, they're not getting anywhere close to the revenue | that US consumers are generating. Russia has 10% of the | player population and the game sells for 13 dollars. I | don't think the population correlates to revenue when the | game in nearly every market is going to see for less, or | attract much less players. | capableweb wrote: | According to sources gathered by Statista, Asia Pacific | is the largest market for gaming: | https://www.statista.com/statistics/539572/games-market- | reve... | | (in billion U.S. dollars) | | - Asia Pacific - 87.9 | | - North America - 48.4 | | - Europe - 32.9 | | - Latin America - 8.4 | | - Middle East & Africa - 6.8 | nonethewiser wrote: | That's not the question. The question is what share of | revenue it is for Activision. | | Edit: found the numbers here | https://investor.activision.com/news-releases/news- | release-d... | | Americas: 1,211 | | Europe and Middle East: 742 | | Asia Pacific: 381 | | Total: 2,334 | | So Asia is 16%. | nozzlegear wrote: | One would think the US part owns all of the IPs as well. | nonethewiser wrote: | Seems like the main thing of value at this point. It | would be great to get rid of the toxic bureaucracy | milking the IP. | fckthisguy wrote: | Why would the US part ha e all of the talent? Are/were | Activision's development teams based solely in the US? I | thought they had devs elsewhere too. | | Might make sense if their EU/UK offices were mostly admin. | WorldMaker wrote: | Some of Microsoft's top game development studios, | specifically right now, Rare and Playground Games are based | in the UK and contribute at least some of the profit and | arguably a lot of talent. | | (Microsoft has a really interesting history of UK game | development teams, going way back, including ones they | ultimately shut down such as Lionhead.) | justeleblanc wrote: | https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6448f377814c6... | | > Why did we review this merger? | | > 28. The CMA's primary duty is to seek to promote competition | for the benefit of consumers. It has a duty to investigate | mergers that could raise competition concerns in the UK, | provided it has jurisdiction to do so. | | > 29. Microsoft announced in January 2022 that it had agreed to | acquire Activision for a purchase price of USD 68.7 billion. | The Merger was conditional on receiving merger control | clearance from several global competition agencies, including | the CMA. | | > 30. While both Microsoft and Activision are US-based | entities, the question for the CMA is whether the Merger may | have an impact on competition in the UK. This link to the UK | can be established based on the turnover of the business being | acquired in the UK (ie whether the UK turnover of that business | is more than PS70 million). In this case, we concluded that the | CMA had jurisdiction to review this Merger because Activision | met that threshold in FY2021. | | You can read the full case here: https://www.gov.uk/cma- | cases/microsoft-slash-activision-bliz... Microsoft and | Activision/Blizzard decided themselves to seek the approval of | the CMA. | | The CMA's final decision is a 418 pages-long report. I doubt | any of the commenters here have read it before throwing in | their opinion about the case or the decision. | nonethewiser wrote: | You don't have to read 418 pages to have an opinion. | newsclues wrote: | As a gamer Activision is a shitty big company and while Microsoft | is in the same category, Microsoft is an improvement over | Activision. | kats wrote: | At least they fired all those people for sexual harassment. 37 | fired and 40 written up. Goes to you can really change a bad | workplace culture, it just takes 69 billion dollars. | pipes wrote: | How can the UK prevent two US companies from merging? | sofixa wrote: | Welcome to globalisation, baby. Very few companies are in one | country exclusively, and are thus subject to the laws of _any_ | country they operate in. That 's why Google pulled out of China | years ago, to not be subject to Chinese laws (even though | they're a "US" company). | | For reference, both Activision Blizzard and Microsoft have very | significant presence outside of the US. | nozzlegear wrote: | Not a lawyer (barrister?) but I'd guess it's because both | Microsoft and Activision have offices/legal entities in the UK | as well as the US. I wonder if the decision could be routed by | Activision simply closing those offices and exiting the UK? Not | saying it should be routed, just openly speculating as an | armchair not-lawyer/barrister. | kmlx wrote: | it's not about offices, it's about competition. | | if the companies' activities affect competition in the UK | then the CMA is responsible. | | the hint is in the name: Competition and Markets Authority | nonethewiser wrote: | That's not really the question. I could claim authority of | you and your family. But what is the mechanism that | enforces it? Why would you recognize that? | | Why would Microsoft listen or care about the ruling? It's | because they operate in the UK. The CMA can't just regulate | companies that don't operate in the UK. | dopeboy wrote: | I was wondering this too. Does this also affect whether they | can do business there? | GalenErso wrote: | IANAL, but why would it be within the UK's authority to block a | merger between two US-based entities? Could, I don't know, Angola | or India block similar mergers? Does every country have to | approve, or at least not disapprove? | skrebbel wrote: | I think the logic is that they can't stop the merger, but they | can stop the resulting company from doing business in the UK. | Angola can do the same but possibly the resulting company will | just -\\_(tsu)_/- and move on. And possibly not so much with | India or the UK, which are much bigger markets for these | companies. | GalenErso wrote: | Given Microsoft's and Activision's respective dominance in | their markets, Microsoft could ignore the regulators and keep | doing business in the country. | | The British economy cannot work without Windows PCs, the | Office suite, and Azure and OneDrive. And banning Microsoft | and Activision's games would piss off half of the under 30 | crowd, and by proxy, their parents. It would also be | unprecedented for any country to do that. | pmontra wrote: | > The British economy cannot work without Windows PCs, the | Office suite, and Azure and OneDrive. | | It would be a pain but they and everybody else would find | ways to cope with that. | tzs wrote: | I work for a non-UK company that has some online | customers in the UK and in the EU. We have to collect | each country's VAT on those sales. | | Before Brexit we used the VAT MOSS system, which allows | non-EU companies to register in a single country, collect | the appropriate VAT on EU sales, then quarterly send the | total VAT collected and a form showing total sales for | each country to that single country's tax folks, and that | country deals with distributing the VAT to the separate | countries. | | Post Brexit vote we continued to use VAT MOSS (which has | since been renamed to something else that I'm failing to | remember) although we switched our registration from the | UK to Ireland [1] just in case the UK did something | stupid and failed to negotiate a Brexit deal in which | they remained part of the VAT MOSS system. | | They in fact did fail to remain in the VAT MOSS system, | and so we had to register with the UK for VAT. They told | is that the tax office was a bit busy dealing with Brexit | so it might take a while to actually issue our VAT | registration number, which we need in order to actually | pay collected VAT to them. They said that until then we | should collect VAT, but not call it VAT, and hold on to | it. | | That was _over 4 years ago_ and we are still waiting. | | A country that for 4 years and counting has to tell | businesses to _not_ remit collected taxes because that | country cannot manage to issue the registration numbers | that would allow those businesses to file their tax | reports is not a country that instills confidence that | they could handle something that is actually hard like | switching OS /office suite/cloud. | | [1] In retrospect, we should have used Ireland from the | start. Getting registered in the first place for VAT MOSS | in the UK had involved a lot of paperwork and time, and | the quarterly filings required submitting separate | spreadsheets for the UK and the rest of the EU. | | Ireland registration took a few minutes online. To file | we just copy/paste the data from our quarterly VAT report | script into a text box on a web form and submit it. | spookie wrote: | I find your argument to be exactly the reason why these | acquisitions should be blocked. | oneeyedpigeon wrote: | > The British economy cannot work without Windows PCs | | If that is genuinely true, then the British economy has a | BIG problem that it needs to resolve. Alongside all the | others, of course. | georgyo wrote: | You make it sound like any government should be able to | cut ties with any company at a whim. | | Microsoft and Apple dominate the desktop market, with | Microsoft in a commanding lead. | | Imagine if the UK government said no one could buy SQL | Server, use Excel, or buy new windows machines. | | People and companies would have to spend unimaginable | amounts of time learning and migrating to alternative | tools while at the same time angry at the government for | telling them they can't use the tool of their choice. | | The same is true for Apple. If the UK government said | Apple could no longer do business in the UK, the UK | economy would be crushed. | oneeyedpigeon wrote: | > You make it sound like any government should be able to | cut ties with any company at a whim. | | Well, yes. An individual company should absolutely not be | more powerful than an entire state. Yes, migrating away | from Microsoft would be painful and expensive, but it | _must_ be possible, otherwise Microsoft can get whatever | it wants from the UK on pains of pulling its business. | mr_mitm wrote: | It's not just the UK. Munich famously tried to get away | from Microsoft and failed. The reasons aren't entirely | clear to me - rumor has it it's because of some deals | behind closed doors - but I think it's obvious that many | governments on all levels are fully dependent on | Microsoft. I believe China is headed towards independence | of Microsoft, though. | paganel wrote: | > The British economy cannot work without Windows PCs, the | Office suite, and Azure and OneDrive | | I would expect that much of the British Government, | including its armed/security forces, rely on those MS | products and services. As such, I think that telling a big | major US ally "tough luck, you're on your own right now" in | the middle of this very tense global political climate is | not in the best interests of Microsoft the US company. | qwytw wrote: | I guess they could just impose huge fines instead of | banning MS products outright. | GalenErso wrote: | Sure, but if the fine is non trivial, Microsoft could | file a lawsuit. It would also be a bad look for Britain | to effectively extortionate foreign firms to keep doing | business in the country. Whether it's called a "legally | approved levy under xyz law" or a bribe to the government | is beyond the point. It's the kind of thing you see in | corrupt third world countries. | klelatti wrote: | Sorry file a lawsuit on what grounds? | | You seem to be under the impression that large firms can | just ignore the laws of the countries they do business | in. That's not how it works. | ben_w wrote: | > The British economy cannot work without Windows PCs, the | Office suite, and Azure and OneDrive. | | You're not wrong, but that's _almost_ not a sufficient | consideration for the British administration in recent | years. | Mindwipe wrote: | And the UK would fine them in excess of any profit | generated, and there is the potential for senior MS | executives to go to prison, and even possible extradition. | | There is absolutely no prospect of Microsoft deciding to | try and do that. Nil. None. | GalenErso wrote: | Because the UK is going to impose extortionary penalties | on one of the largest corporations of its no. 1 | geopolitical ally at a time when it needs the US more | than ever (trade, AUKUS, Ukraine/NATO, F-35s, etc.) and | jail their execs. Rishi Sunak would never allow that to | happen. | tolien wrote: | > a time when it needs the US more than ever (trade, | AUKUS, Ukraine/NATO, F-35s, etc.) | | Putting aside that there's technology from UK companies | in the F-35 (Rolls contributed to the lift fan in the B | model, Martin-Baker ejection seats etc), the US needs | AUKUS (as a bulwark to China) and the UK's contribution | to NATO (cf AUKUS and add Russia to the mix) more than | the UK does, especially in a post-Brexit world where the | UK's influence is significantly diminished. | | The EU are also still looking at the deal, with the | potential of imposing licensing requirements [1]. | | 1: https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/eu-unlikely- | demand-ass... | ThisIsNotNew wrote: | The US certainly needs UK help on Diego Garcia, which the | UK is negotiating to hand over back to Mauritius. | gbear605 wrote: | The US government is also suing to prevent the deal. They | would support the penalties. | epolanski wrote: | > Microsoft could ignore the regulators and keep doing | business in the country | | No it can't. You are immediately cutoff from payment and | transaction systems and you have no legal basis for selling | anything in the country. | | On top of that, there's the obvious factor of being it very | simple to completely block you online. | | Another example, you may not be aware of it, but many | companies can't do business in Europe or European | countries. E.g. several US media outlets don't want to | comply with European privacy laws. | | If they can't do business in a country they can't, simple | as that. | | Even the rest of your comment is even more ridiculous. | | A company trying to force its hand against legislation like | that is a business-harakiri. You can't possibly think such | stuff isn't looked upon by other business actors and | governments. | Zurrrrr wrote: | [dead] | diffeomorphism wrote: | > Microsoft could ignore the regulators and keep doing | business in the country. | | Openly breaking the law sounds like a great plan. Do you | have a podcast with other great tips like this? E.g. "just | don't pay taxes" or "you can steal stuff when nobody is | looking". | CoastalCoder wrote: | Taxes, no. But some examples are Uber (vs. taxi | regulations), and marijuana stores in the U.S. | acallaghan wrote: | It would allow them to operate but issue heavy financial | sanctions and penalties, rather than just disallow them at | first - | | These financial sanctions could swallow up any and all | profit from the UK market | ornitorrincos wrote: | When companies are so big that operate in multitude of markets, | yes, and depending on how many and the size of those | disapproving the merger gets cancelled or parts of the business | split, accommodations for those disapproving and so on. | | Which is why such mergers take a long time. | | Now, being both based in the US, the US could say no and it | would not happen and no need for any other regulator to | consider the merger. | johneth wrote: | Microsoft and Activision both have assets in the UK, both sell | products and services in the UK, and so the UK has a right to | regulate their activity in the UK market. | | Similar situation to other jurisdictions (EU, China, India, | etc.) | oneeyedpigeon wrote: | So the UK cannot stop the takeover, but it can -- of course | -- block Microsoft from carrying out any business in the UK | -- and that's, effectively, what's happening here? | ricardobayes wrote: | I cannot foresee anything good coming out of this, when a | country and a large corporation starts to play chicken with | each other. | ginko wrote: | When a country and a large corporation start playing | chicken with each other then the country wins. | Veen wrote: | Microsoft is a large corporation, but the UK is the 6th | biggest economic entity in the world. Microsoft is not | even close to the economic and legal power of a country | the UK's size. And if the EU acts in the same way, as | seems likely, there is absolutely nothing Microsoft can | do about it. | nashashmi wrote: | Activision UK cannot be part of the purchase deal. This | lowers the valuation. And stops activision from going along | with the merger in the other countries. | sleepychu wrote: | Is this realistic? The government is heavily reliant on | Windows as is much of their economy. It's hard to imagine | them evicting Microsoft from the market. | spookie wrote: | Given time and effort it's possible. If such a move were | to be done I'm sure every democratic country would be | most displeased. Which would in turn, warrant them all | the will in the world to completly reform their | dependencies on Microsoft. | | I don't see any reason as to why this couldn't happen, | the EU has already demonstrated its concerns on relying | too much in certain companies, and they don't have as | much of a flagrant issue as the aforementioned agressive | move would imply. | jalev wrote: | It's not all or nothing. Microsoft will not be able to | sell _gaming_ services in the UK. The other things will | be fine. | johneth wrote: | Pretty much. | | Microsoft and Activision do both have various subsidiaries | in the UK, too. | Mindwipe wrote: | They can block the companies from trading in that country | ultimately if the merger happens. | | Could Microsoft Activision in theory pull out of the entire UK | market and still merge (not just gaming, stop selling Office in | the UK for example)? Yes. Will they? Absolutely not. There are | significant chunks of Microsoft shareholders who don't want to | do this deal in the first place and they certainly aren't going | to torch the profitable bits of Microsoft for the gaming | division, which has terrible financial performance. | rsynnott wrote: | In practice, if you're a multinational, doing a big merger, | you'll want approval from authorities in at least the US and | EU, probably UK (their regulators tend to behave similarly to | the EU ones anyway) and maybe China if you do business there. | | Strictly speaking, _none_ of the regulators can individually | stop a merger (even if it's the home country regulator, the | multinational can just redomicile) but in practice they all | have a veto, because the multinational wants to be allowed do | business everywhere. | shudza wrote: | How come the UK is the one that blocks this? Aren't those US | based companies? | NicuCalcea wrote: | With British employees and customers. | ecf wrote: | I'd love to see the deal going through anyway and Microsoft | pulling COD out of Britain. Just once I want to see this | bluff get called. | klelatti wrote: | From the FT: | | Activision, maker of the hit game Call of Duty, said the ruling | "contradicts the ambitions of the UK to become an attractive | country to build technology businesses". It labelled the decision | a "disservice to UK citizens, who face increasingly dire economic | prospects", adding: "the UK is clearly closed for business." | | What a petulant response. | reedf1 wrote: | It is petulant - but it is also politically savvy. This is | exactly the kind of rhetoric the UK government tries very hard | to dispel. | klelatti wrote: | You can make these points without insulting the country. He's | not winning any friends with language like this. | sam345 wrote: | This strikes me as trying to mandate a particular market | structure while at the same time claiming free market | motivations. At what point will big tech structure themselves in | such a way as to avoid certain over-regulated regimes. | Vt71fcAqt7 wrote: | In general I agree that Big Tech is too big or is in some way | anticompetitive; In this case however there is no threat in my | opinion. Video games are not a utility and have no control over | utilities unlike eg. Amazon (where we can debate what control | Amazon has). That to me is the most important factor. Besides | that point, there is no inherent anticompetitive element to one | company owning a large portion of the video game market because | it does not prevent others from competing. Anyone can make their | own game, and indie games succeed year after year, even if 99% | fail. | | The real issue is tying computers to software. Computers and | software need to be considered two markets. Computers _are_ a | utility, whereas software is _sometimes_ a utility. But by tying | software and computers, these tying companies use their software | to be anticompetitive in the hardware market. That is, any | software which does not run on an untied hardware system is | anticompetitive even if it has procompetitive effects. All this | is to say that we need the Open App Markets Act to pass. | | (This is all ignoring the OS market and the hardware and software | tying that exists in it, which is more difficult to discus, but | in my opinion system calls are anticompetitive as well by nature | with the exception of a theoretical standardized set of system | calls.) | geuis wrote: | > Video games are not a utility and have no control over | utilities | | This is true, but the laws around this don't only apply to | utilities. In fact, they don't fully apply there at all (but | I'll circle back to that). | | As a big example, look at movie production companies and | theater chains. Way back when, lots of the most popular chains | were owned by production companies. So if you wanted to see | certain movies, they were only available at the theaters owned | by the companies that produced the film. | | Sounds a lot like what we've seen in video games for years now, | where lots of AAA games are exclusive on Xbox, Playstation, | Nintendo (biggest example), or PC. And let's not forget MacOS | and even Linux. Pretty much only the roughly equivalent spread | of so many platforms has forced the big publishers to largely | do multi-platform releases of popular titles. Let Microsoft own | Activision-Blizzard and we could be seeing lots of existing | titles and new ones be PC and Xbox only. | | In regards to the big utilities, the last major one of those to | be broken up was AT&T in the 80's. But beyond that, most of the | major utilities can't really be "broken up" because of what | they do. Power generation, water, and sewage. Those all require | shared public infrastructure for the most part. Because of | that, small pure commercial enterprises aren't possible. But | for the most part the companies that provide those services | _are_ still commercial entities, but they have a few extra | layers of government oversight that notionally should be | monitoring them for good governance and civic oversight. Sadly | we see where that falls apart like in Flint, MI. | | Only didn't mention trash/recycling pickup because that's a lot | more flexible. Much easier to have competing services, although | in places like SF we only have Recology. | jimmydorry wrote: | Anti-competition bodies are designed to regulate more than just | utilities. | | Are you really saying that Microsoft can't exert undue | influence on all other games and software studios to unfairly | compete in the gaming segment... even though they would be | controlling the operating system developed on and targetted | to... let alone their extensive cloud and console providings | that they could simply deny to the competition? | | In such a landscape, indie devs would be powerless. | Vt71fcAqt7 wrote: | >Anti-competition bodies are designed to regulate more than | just utilities. | | I was looking for a better word than "utility" but couldn't | think of one. What I mean is that games are unimportant. | Grain is a "utility" for me as are computers ect. And I don't | think it matters what Anti-competition bodies are "designed" | to regulated as I am already giving my own opinion on what I | think they should do so for me this isn't a such an important | point. | | >even though they would be controlling the operating system | developed on and targetted to... | | _That_ is the issue exactly, which was my whole point. It 's | an issue irrespective of whether they have 1% or 99% of the | video game market. They are the hardware/syscall railraod by | which developers ship their software oil. But large | marketshare alone is not an issue, and can be _assured_ to be | a non issue with something like the Open App Markets Act | whereas in something like grain or computers it is almost | impossible to show whether a dominant company has used their | monopoly to hurt competition. If we just give some basic | rules as to allowing users to decide how to use their | computers we won 't need to care about how large any video | game company is. | pers0n wrote: | I wish the US had the guts to do things like this, but I suppose | they don't due to lobbying. | kmlx wrote: | https://www.eurogamer.net/ftc-suing-to-block-microsofts-69bn... | | > FTC suing to block Microsoft's $69bn Activision Blizzard | acquisition | HumanReadable wrote: | Very sad about this decision. Blizzard has shown itself to be | entirely incompetent, and seeing how well Microsoft managed the | Minecraft IP I was looking forward to seeing what they could have | done with the excellent blizzard IP. | segasaturn wrote: | Minecraft is a great example of what could have been, for sure. | We're nearing the 10 year anniversary of the Mojang acquisition | (wow) and Minecraft is still flourishing and as popular as it's | ever been. It's kind of amazing how relevant Minecraft has | remained all of these years instead of fading into the | background as a 2010s fad game. It's also stayed aggressively | cross platform, available on basically every device known to | man, including a Linux port that's still developed, which | throws a bit of water on the fears that Microsoft would turn | Call of Duty exclusive. | edgyquant wrote: | > which throws a bit of water on the fears that Microsoft | would turn Call of Duty exclusive. | | No it doesn't since Microsoft is doing just that with | Bethesda. The Minecraft acquisition was at a time when MS had | no good will and needed to earn some, plus it's a lot of | children playing that who can't be bullied into buying | another platform. This is not the case with future releases | on games that basically every adult who plays games takes | part in. | mturilin wrote: | Can someone explain how a UK regulator can block a deal between | two US companies? | can16358p wrote: | They also operate in UK. Of course if they were "just" two US | companies UK can't do anything but these companies also have | legal presence in the UK. | Leherenn wrote: | What would they have to do if they were to decide that the | deal is more important than the UK? | | - merge everywhere else but the UK (presumably that would | mean spinning off/closing one of Microsoft or Activision UK | branch). I guess that wouldn't be enough? | | - both companies have to pull off of the UK? | [deleted] | AraceliHarker wrote: | I can't understand at all why CMA accepts the overwhelming share | of the current PS5 high-end game console market for the reason of | cloud gaming, which has hardly started up yet, and even if they | say "protect the innovation and choice of cloud gaming", gamers | who only have Xbox Series S|X think "if you say that, let me play | Collapse: Star Rail or FF16 on Xbox", don't they? | justinclift wrote: | This is good news. :) | tallanvor wrote: | It isn't, though, when they haven't been blocking Sony from | making significant purchases. | jeppester wrote: | Thats because Sony's most significant purchase (Bungie) is | completely insignificant compared to ActiBlizz. It is also | much smaller than Bethesda, which MS acquired without much | scrutiny, and before the Bungie deal. | | When you look at the numbers there is just no way to make the | conclusion that Sony are "just as bad" when it come to | aquisitions. | | I am however absolutely in favor of Sony getting blocked, | should they for instance plan to acquire EA, Ubisoft, | Rockstar etc. | justinclift wrote: | Well, 1/2 is better than 0/2. At least in this context. | | Maybe they'll get Sony sorted out too at some point. | flohofwoe wrote: | What significant purchases has Sony done though in the gaming | space? IIRC it was mostly smaller game development studios, | not the (until quite recently at least) largest game | publisher in the world. | tallanvor wrote: | Bungie was a $3.7b acquisition, which I wouldn't consider | to be small by any means. | madeofpalk wrote: | Orders of magnitude smaller, but I don't think Sony | should be buying game studios also. | ErneX wrote: | 69 vs 3.7? plus the difference on the amount of IP is | huge, not in the same league | spookie wrote: | I understand your concerns in the video game industry | landscape, even though I may add that Microsoft may just have | been buying out many more studios in recent years. | | However, I don't believe that tto be the bigger issue. Let's | look at this from a bigger perspective: Microsoft is much | bigger than Sony. The western world is very much dependent on | this giant. Should it have even more power? | bluescrn wrote: | Is it? | | Putting MS in charge might have saved Blizzard from Activision. | Maybe they'd have brought WoW to Xbox, or done something new | with the Starcraft IP. Perhaps even a new Blizzard MMO... | Reason077 wrote: | Activision selling _Blizzard_ to Microsoft would be a deal I | could get behind! | | On the other hand, as a Mac gamer, maybe it wouldn't be so | great? Blizzard have been great at Mac support, with all | their titles - except Overwatch - being available on Mac | since day 1. But Microsoft hardly releases anything for Mac | now days. | istor wrote: | Diablo 4 won't be released on Mac either. I feel the days | of Blizzard being a champion for Mac gaming have ended. | They will continue to support it in WoW and the other | legacy titles they continue to update. | | I'd be surprised, merger or not, if they ever release any | of their new AAA titles on Mac again. | bluescrn wrote: | There's not many Macs with suitable GPUs for higher-end | gaming, are there? | | And between the move to Metal as a graphics API and the | transition away from Intel CPUs, porting PC games to Mac | seems like it'd be rather more of a pain these days. | Reason077 wrote: | Arguably, all modern Macs (with M1 and M2 chips) have | GPUs suitable for reasonably high-end gaming. These have | the same GPUs used in high-end iPhones and iPads, but | with more cores, more RAM, and more memory bandwidth. | | Some of Blizzard's titles (World of Warcraft, | Hearthstone) were already ported to be M1-native. But | even the older titles that haven't been ported (StarCraft | 2, Heroes of the Storm, etc) run great despite being | emulated. In fact, they run much faster and smoother on | my M1 Mac than they ever did on my Intel Macs!! | | You're right, though, that Apple's attachment to Metal | and lack of built-in support for industry standard APIs | like Vulkan is an issue (although a 3rd-party Vulkan | implementation is available). | officeplant wrote: | I can play Subnautica, Prodeus, Total Warhammer III, WoW, | Metro Exodus, etc. Various settings all at 1080p on the | monitor I have connected externally. | | And that's on a base M1 macbook Air with the 7C GPU | setup. Although it does have a fan rigged up underneath | my laptop stand. Every other Apple Silicon Mac has even | more gpu oomph. | | Friends with M1/M2 Pro machines are plenty happy with | their GPU performance but most of them all just play WoW. | One with a M1 Max Studio is enjoying plenty of | performance at 4K. | Reason077 wrote: | There's also a simple mod you can do to the MacBook Air | (installing a thermal pad on the SoC) which significantly | improves heat dissipation - check YouTube. | | I have a similar setup (except 8 core) and with the mod I | don't feel any need for an external fan for gaming. | officeplant wrote: | Yeah I was tempted to do it to make my fan cooling work | even better, but I want to be able to resell this Air | soon. It's being replaced with a M2 Mini with 24GB of | RAM. Finally tired of the 8GB life. | hinkley wrote: | Blizzard was never really about the high end. Couldn't | have had 10 million active subscriptions on an MMO if | they did. | hinkley wrote: | Fuck, even Torchlight is going PC only. Still don't know | why Apple had to steer away from OpenGL. | Reason077 wrote: | It's weird how most small indy titles/studios on Steam | seem to support Mac just fine but it's the big guys that | seem (increasingly?) reluctant to do so! | | Perhaps because small studios start with ready-made game | engines that are already ported to Metal? | bluescrn wrote: | Yes, if you're using Unity and primarily developing on | Windows, most things will 'just work' on Mac. But if | you're a big studio with an in-house engine and toolset, | supporting a new platform and additional graphics API can | be a whole lot of work. | hinkley wrote: | People developing their own frameworks make a lot of | simplifying assumptions that turn out not to be true, and | then it makes it very difficult to walk them back later. | Often people get defensive and try to argue that this is | a feature. | | Leaving out your deep pocketed customers seems like a | pretty dumb move to me. | pbalcer wrote: | But would have prevented many players from actually enjoying | Blizzard games. Personally, I am not interested in purchasing | an Xbox or installing Windows on my PC, even if the merger is | finalized. | francislavoie wrote: | That's not true, they've committed to continuing to release | on other platforms. | bluescrn wrote: | Platform-exclusive titles have been around for as long as | games consoles, that's not going to change. | | It's annoying that so many great Nintendo games are only | available for Switch, and I can't run them at 4k/60fps+ on | PC or higher-end console. But that's just how things are. | And at the end of they day, they're unimportant | entertainment products, we're not talking about | monopolies/oligopolies controlling something important. | Adverblessly wrote: | > It's annoying that so many great Nintendo games are | only available for Switch, and I can't run them at | 4k/60fps+ on PC or higher-end console. | | You technically can via emulation, though how legal that | is depends on the laws where you are I guess. | samwillis wrote: | Other thread and link to the government release here: | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35711913 | | https://www.gov.uk/government/news/microsoft-activision-deal... | kkan wrote: | Anybody who plays games is not happy about this. Activision is | the worst of the worst and the Microsoft deal was a chance to | make their offering more refined and accessible via GamePass. | Especially it was about saving Blizzard from turning into total | shitshow. Id this deal will not go through, nothing will change. | CoD will remain trash, Diablo IV will have micro-transactions in | addition to its $70 price tag. | segasaturn wrote: | Unfortunately Microsoft's overall size causes people to have | knee-jerk reactions about them being "too big" without looking | into the context: Microsoft is in last place in console market | share this gen and the previous gen. In the gaming space | Microsoft isn't a monopoly, they _are_ the underdog that | antitrust is supposed to product. | madeofpalk wrote: | Maybe Microsoft should make a better console if they want a | higher place in the console market, rather than just buy | their way into ancillary markets. | ErneX wrote: | MS also puts micro-transactions on their 1st party titles, plus | their 1st party titles have not been so great since the Xbox | 360 days. Halo is a shade of what it was for example. | diffeomorphism wrote: | Anybody who plays games is very happy about this. Activision is | the worst of the worst and the Microsoft deal was a chance to | cement this problem or make it even worse. | segasaturn wrote: | Per the agreement in the deal, when the deal closed Bobby | Kotick would be out as CEO and replaced with Phil Spencer who | is VERY well respected in the gaming community. | stale2002 wrote: | You actually have to make an argument, which you didn't. | | The argument for why Microsoft would make things better is | that we can look how great Microsoft has been handling | similar gaming acquisitions, like Minecraft. | | Your "argument" though seems to be repeat back someone else | statement while saying "Nuh uhh!". | | Do have an actual original thought here, as for _why_ you | think Microsoft would make things worse, when the evidence we | have shows otherwise? | | Or is the extent of your argument "Nuh Uhh!" And "I said the | opposite of what you just said!" | pcurve wrote: | Microsoft has done ok with not bastardizing its acquisitions | under the current CEO, no? | newsclues wrote: | No, unhappy about this. | | As you say, Activision is the worst of the worst and the MS | deal was a chance to change this. | | You think Activision is going to ditch the terrible | leadership and change on its own? haha | sensanaty wrote: | You really think M$ wouldn't stick microtransactions out the | ass out of anything they touch coming from ActiBlizzard? | segasaturn wrote: | I know a lot of people here are anti-big tech and I am too, to a | certain extent, but I want to play devil's advocate here and | provide my case for the deal: | | Activision-Blizzard was in total corporate chaos before the deal | was announced, the CEO (Bobby Kotick) was accused of permitting | workplace sexual harassment and employees at the company were on | the verge of mutiny. They were also seen as a stagnant publisher | that only cared about its billion dollar franchises (Call of Duty | and Candy Crush) while letting its other IPs like StarCraft and | World of Warcraft rot and turning the beloved Diablo into a cash- | grab pay-to-win mobile game. The Microsoft acquisition would have | likely breathed some new life into the company and allowed | corporate to clean up shop. This will probably lead to | Activision-Blizzard continuing on its previous, doomed trajectory | that it was on back in 2021. | edgyquant wrote: | Right, the merge would have been good for activision and | microsoft, but bad for the consumer. | spprashant wrote: | As far as devil's advocate argument goes I suppose its valid. | | But I wouldn't think this changes the opinion on any antitrust | violation concerns. | | If a company has problems, especially cultural issues, it | should fix them or die. | nonethewiser wrote: | > The Microsoft acquisition would have likely breathed some new | life into the company and allowed corporate to clean up shop. | | This is irrelevant to the committee's decision. The question is | if the merger is too anti competitive. | capableweb wrote: | If you wanna play devil's advocate, at least try to answer the | concerns voiced by the watchdog. | | The concern is not who can develop the existing IPs the best or | if Activision/Blizzard will continue to exist. The concern is | that Microsoft already has a strong position, and consolidating | it further will make it even harder than it is for new entrants | to have any chance. | | > "Microsoft already enjoys a powerful position and head start | over other competitors in cloud gaming and this deal would | strengthen that advantage giving it the ability to undermine | new and innovative competitors," Martin Coleman, chair of the | independent panel of experts conducting this investigation, | said. | | If you're still up for playing devil's advocate, come up with | an argument against that this acquisition wouldn't consolidate | anything in Microsoft's favor, and as a result lead to fewer | consumer choices. | segasaturn wrote: | Microsoft is pretty consistently in last place in console | market share and the Xbox brand is dwarfed by Sony and | Tencent (China). | | Microsoft's strong current position in Cloud Gaming isn't | because XCloud is devouring all the competition, its because | the competition barely exists in the first place. Google and | Amazon left their cloud gaming products to rot and GeForce | now is very janky (but still quite popular from what I've | heard!). Google and Amazon's mismanagement of their products | doesn't automatically make XCloud into an aggressive anti- | competitive monopoly, especially when you consider the fact | that Microsoft inked a 10-year deal with Nintendo's cloud | gaming provider to provide Call of Duty to the platform last | month. | capableweb wrote: | You can read the summary yourself if you want, but it's | 400+ pages, so might take a while. It's here: https://asset | s.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/644939aa529ed... | | Key takeaways: | | > In relation to console gaming services, we found that | Xbox (Microsoft) and PlayStation (Sony) compete closely | with each other, and that Activision's Call of Duty (CoD) | is important to the competitive offering of each. The | evidence suggests, however, that Microsoft would not find | it financially beneficial to make CoD exclusive to Xbox | after the Merger. We also found that making CoD available | on Xbox on better terms than on PlayStation would not | materially harm PlayStation's ability to compete. On this | basis, we found that the Merger would not substantially | reduce competition in console gaming services in the UK. | | > In relation to cloud gaming services, we found that | Microsoft already has a strong position. It owns a popular | gaming platform (Xbox and a large portfolio of games), the | leading PC operating system (Windows), and a global cloud | computing infrastructure (Azure and Xbox Cloud Gaming), | giving it important advantages in running a cloud gaming | service. With an estimated 60-70% market share in global | cloud gaming services, it is already much stronger than its | rivals. | | > We found that the Merger would make Microsoft even | stronger and substantially reduce competition in this | market. | | According to the people who done this research (CMA), they | seem to say MS already have a 60-70% marketshare, and | making that higher via a acquisition, will make it harder | for others to enter the market. | | CMA of course cannot make competition to step up, but they | can try to stop incumbents from becoming monopolies, which | is what's happening here. | amrocha wrote: | This is just my opinion obviously, but I don't think | those advantages particularly matter for gaming. | | 1. Gamers don't want cloud gaming. Latency matters. Cloud | gaming is at best an addon for when you can't use your | console. | | 2. Xbox is the least popular gaming platform. If things | keep going the way they are I would not be surprised if | Microsoft got rid of Xbox before the next console cycle. | | 3. Windows being the leading operating system has no | impact on the gaming industry | | This honestly reeks of an analysis done by outsiders that | don't actually understand the industry. On the other | hand, this consolidation also sucks to see. | capableweb wrote: | Again, CMA is not investigating what matters for gamers | or not, but investing what market hold the entity has, if | they are likely to abuse it and if the acquisition would | make the market hold stronger. | | In the case of consoles, their own argument is that no, | the market hold would not grow stronger. | | In the case of cloud gaming, their argument is that | Microsoft already have a strong hold on the market (in | the UK) and the acquisition would likely lead to a | stronger hold. | | Xbox as a console and Windows as a OS and nothing to do | with the case they're making. | | > This honestly reeks of an analysis done by outsiders | that don't actually understand the industry. On the other | hand, this consolidation also sucks to see. | | Yes, because they are not experts in the gaming industry, | they are experts in the industry of businesses in | general, and monopolies. | | Same could be said about your own argument, it reeks of | an analysis done by someone who have no grasp on wider | markets and monopolies, but happens to have knowledge | about gaming to some degree. | dmonitor wrote: | I don't like this method of measuring a company's | competitiveness with how popular they are with consumers. | Just because MS can't cobble together a decent product that | people enjoy doesn't mean that they should just be allowed | to buy sectors of the market until they have a good | majority. Maybe they are just releasing shit products | despite having as many or more resources at their disposal | compared to their competitors. | | Picture this feedback loop: | | - Microsoft has 20% market share | | - Microsoft buys company Y, bringing them up to 35% | | - Microsoft ruins company Y's product with their awful | leadership | | - Microsoft now has 21% market share | xzel wrote: | As someone who was using GeForce during the pandemic it is | a great service but janky is an understatement. There are a | huge number of common "edge" cases I've run into: getting | long passwords into games, passing mac keyboard commands to | essentially windows buttons, etc. Still, it is AMAZING | being able to play any game anywhere. But I'm not sure if | the market for these products were/are big enough for so | many players so pretty much everyone has dropped out. | mehlmao wrote: | Microsoft acquiring Bethesda fixed none of their management | issues; why would this be any different? Further, Microsoft | lied to EU regulators about what they'd do with the Zenimax / | Bethesda acquisition. | lofaszvanitt wrote: | :DDDDDD | | The gaming landscape already looks like a barren desert. More | consolidation will lead to more desert like features. | newsclues wrote: | Microsoft needs to clean up Activision-Blizzard, I totally | agree. | | Two big bag companies, but surprising Microsoft is the better | one. | madeofpalk wrote: | If the company is bad, then the company should fail. | AlexandrB wrote: | > and turning the beloved Diablo into a cash-grab pay-to-win | mobile game. | | A decision which has made them a metric shit-ton of money. Why | would they stop when they've found a winning formula? And why | would Microsoft decide to stop such an easy revenue stream? | Sure the Diablo name is being dragged through the mud (among a | particular demographic, at least) but the consequences for that | are years or even decades away. If anything, "cleaning up shop" | might mean shutting down the less profitable divisions - | something Blizzard has been actively doing anyway. | | > This will probably lead to Activision-Blizzard continuing on | its previous, doomed trajectory that it was on back in 2021. | | _Maybe_ their trajectory is doomed when measured in decades. | Right now they 're printing cash. I think they're happy to | abandon their legacy "core" audience in exchange for the gacha | whales that will pay them multiples more for a cheaper-to-make | experience. | | I realize that a lot of us grew up with Blizzard games, I | myself have all the CE boxes they shipped since Warcraft III. | But the people who made those experiences are generally long | gone. A change of ownership is unlikely to radically change | priorities or bring back the magic. | maxsilver wrote: | I agree with most of this, but this isn't an argument for | Activision-Blizzard merging with Microsoft, this is an argument | that Activision-Blizzard shareholders need to throw out Bobby | Kotick and his folks, and replace them with competent | leadership (or really, anyone with a pulse who won't union-bust | and won't sexually harass people, would be more qualified at | this point). | | It's ridiculous that a company with this many talented people, | and this much treasured IP, is languishing in this state and | tied up with such easy-to-avoid internal-only mistakes. | | > The Microsoft acquisition would have likely breathed some new | life into the company and allowed corporate to clean up shop | | Maybe. But it seems more likely that Microsoft would have | cleaned up leadership a _tiny bit_ and then left Activision- | Blizzard to slowly quietly rot away, in much the same way that | Microsoft has treated Halo. | fireflash38 wrote: | Agreed. But tossing leadership & getting new supposedly | 'better' leadership is high risk, whereas an acquisition is | low-risk and more reliable at getting short term gains. | | There's a substantial portion of the tech startup sphere | whose entire goals are: get big enough to get acquired and | get a big bag from the sale. It kind of runs counter to | current sentiment around here. | Salgat wrote: | One is a solution that fixes the issue now, the other is us | hoping for shareholders to eventually do the morally right | thing (which is a silly thing to expect). | ddtaylor wrote: | Shareholders can get rid of Bobby Kotick and do all kinds of | other leadership changes and it's not going to fix some of | the problems that some of us were hopeful for. | | Microsoft has shown some resolve when it comes to supporting | games in spaces that aren't absolute gold mines, specifically | in the Real Time Strategy (RTS) genre. They are publishers of | Age of Empires, which all things considered is a drop in the | bucket when revenue wise, yet it still is allowed to exist. | Blizzard (via Activision) mostly exploits or kills all of | it's "less-than" products, which increasingly is almost | everything when compared to the behemoths like Call of Duty | and Candy Crush. | | It was probably a bit of wishful thinking, but some of us | were actually excited that Microsoft would get access to some | of the games that don't get supported very well while the | customer base is literally holding their wallets out asking | to pay to support the game. For example, Heroes of the Storm | does have a dedicated following and we're ready to pay $10/mo | or something similar to help support the game, but it's | literally spent the last three years patching after every | time it runs because it's broken. It still plays fine, but it | eats gigabytes per month of bandwidth all because nobody | cares enough to modify an XML file or something. | | The same is true of Diablo II: Resurrected. It's a great | game, but we can't pay for extra stash tabs which in the ARPG | genre is kind of the go-to monetization strategy these days. | Everyone would be fine paying $5 for a few stash tabs and it | would be a good way to support ongoing development and maybe | pave the way to getting the long awaited "Act 6" content | everyone would love or even just allow the team to spend a | bit more time adding more end-game meta content. | nashashmi wrote: | > It's ridiculous that a company with this many talented | people, and this much treasured IP, is languishing in this | state and tied up with such easy-to-avoid internal-only | mistakes. | | It's why they are languishing. It's the "resource curse". On | the contrary, It's one of the reasons why Microsoft is a | killer machine. They are disciplined and focused. That kind | of discipline stifles away creativity (like Skype and | yammer). | ericmcer wrote: | It is crazy how Blizzard was a few hundred employees when they | released Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo over a couple years. | Now with 50X as many employees and 23 years of effort they have | done nothing but coast off their original hits. | | I don't know why this happens but it seems to occur again and | again in gaming with indie studios that get acquired. | lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: | When I consider that this turnaround seems to have happened | right after they were acquired by Activision, it becomes less | of a mystery. I suspect many of those original few hundred | employees didn't stick around after their employer suddenly | changed and those who left would have primarily been the most | influential Blizzard people. There really is no "Blizzard" | anymore except as it's tacked on to "Activision-". | doikor wrote: | Modern games are just way more complicated and all the assets | have to be a lot higher quality. The assets especially just | take a lot more work to do. | | A single character model can have more polygons then a whole | game back in the day. The textures are also way more | detailed, animations are more fluid/realistic, etc. | | This is why a lot of effort is being put into helping | developers to make content faster with things like | automatically generating large parts of levels/worlds | (basically a developer puts in the important parts manually | and some system fills in the rest) and automatically | generating and animating humanoid models (MetaHuman), etc. | | For example here is nice video about using MetaHuman with | basically just a phone for face capture as input | https://youtu.be/pnaKyc3mQVk?t=72 | | UE5 procedural generation stuff | https://youtu.be/akIqVM0gh4w?t=435 | enraged_camel wrote: | >> Modern games are just way more complicated and all the | assets have to be a lot higher quality. The assets | especially just take a lot more work to do. | | I mean... if this is the case, how did Vampire Survivors | become a huge hit and win multiple game of the year awards, | and result in countless clones? | seventhtiger wrote: | I call this "throwing cards in a hat phenomena". | | Even if we have brain-interface full immersion virtual | reality, you can still have fun throwing cards into a | hat. In fact you will prefer it. | | Games are like food rather than cars. In food, high | quality food doesn't really push out low quality food. | Even a billionaire will want a grilled cheese sandwich | sometime. While in cars, you can say that in general | people would like the more expensive cars rather than | cheaper ones. | | To me this puts a hard limit on upside of quality for | games. It doesn't matter how many thousands of hours of | dialogue you have voiced and motion captured if a vampire | survivors could always eat your lunch. | mrguyorama wrote: | >Modern games are just way more complicated and all the | assets have to be a lot higher quality. | | This is nonsense. Very few gamers actually care about how | many polygons make up each tree and that some texture in | the background is 10mb compressed. Meanwhile the actual | product of video games from AAA companies has stagnated | immensely. You can make your game ugly as sin, and if it's | actually fun, people will love it. Every indie darling is | an explicit disproving of this claim. We have Minecraft, | factorio, cruelty squad which is entirely built around | being horrible to look at but fun to play, an entire genre | of "old" looking games that don't actually look old. | There's even an entire world of games that look good with | assets that you can buy on an open market for a few dollars | each. | J5892 wrote: | You're not wrong. But if I'm paying $70 for a game, I'm | definitely going to be annoyed if the trees look like | they were pulled from Ocarina of Time. | rightbyte wrote: | I got a feeling developers nowadays are so much less | efficient than 10-20 years ago. | | The tools are so bloated and arcane compared to the can-do | approach. | | Also agile messes up productivity alot due to its inflexible | and process heavy nature. | ErneX wrote: | Producing game assets of the quality expected nowadays | takes a lot of time. | danbolt wrote: | I think that's a big element of this. The sort of quality | bar we see in _StarCraft_ or _WarCraft III_ would come | across as kit-bashing or stylized low-budget indie today. | Shipping a AAA-style game in a timely fashion needs a | larger production process than earlier works. | | The sort of issues around engineering and linked-lists[1] | in the original _StarCraft_ wouldn 't really be an issue | today. Teams are operating in a very different way. | | [1] https://www.codeofhonor.com/blog/tough-times-on-the- | road-to-... | rightbyte wrote: | Ye that's true. | mritchie712 wrote: | * Success often brings bureaucracy to protect against losing | what you've got going for you | | * The bureaucracy drives away the types of misfit maniacs | that build incredible and unique products. | | * You're left with people more worried about fucking up then | they are about building something awesome. | beebmam wrote: | How do you reconcile this belief with big tech companies | being some of the largest bureaucracies on Earth, yet they | continually build incredible and unique products? | mritchie712 wrote: | What big tech company built a unique product well after | they were big? | | * Google is still mostly search | | * Amazon is still mostly an online store (small exception | with AWS, but that was charcoal[0]) | | * Meta is still mostly facebook (unique products were | acquired) | | etc. | | 0 - https://www.thehenryford.org/collections-and- | research/digita... | SeanAnderson wrote: | > Amazon is still mostly an online store (small exception | with AWS, but that was charcoal[0]) | | What? I would express the opposite of this sentiment. | Amazon is mostly AWS. Their online store's profit pales | in comparison to AWS. | | https://www.fool.com/investing/2022/07/07/aws-chief-says- | ama... | | > Amazon overall generated $24.8 billion in operating | profits in 2021, and AWS was responsible for $18.5 | billion (or 74%) of it. Basically, a business segment | that contributes 14% of overall revenue is generating | roughly three-quarters of Amazon's total operating | profits. | mritchie712 wrote: | Right, I'm saying AWS is an outlier. | cma wrote: | Doesn't Amazon bucket their store ads (sponsored | listings) under AWS? | chippiewill wrote: | Yeah, just take a look at Hearthstone. | | It was developed by a small independent team within | Blizzard who iterated like crazy and created prototypes | with Adobe Flash. At one point they transferred basically | the entire team to work on finishing StarCraft 2 | temporarily and left the two principal game designers to | continue iterating for 10 months. | | Hearthstone ended up being a smash hit and their first | properly new game since they released World of Warcraft. | All because they gave a small creative team the freedom to | explore those ideas. | misssocrates wrote: | Was that proven? And how close did employees get to taking over | the company? | segasaturn wrote: | Employees weren't staging a literal mutiny, I was using the | term creatively. | | Here are some links about the worker unrest at ABK prior to | acquisition announcement: | | Activision Blizzard worker organization: https://en.wikipedia | .org/wiki/Activision_Blizzard_worker_org... | | Activision Blizzard employees stage open-ended strike and | union drive: | https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/12/activision- | blizzard-w... | | Its noteworthy that the employee strikes mostly stopped after | the acquisition was announced - seems they believed like I do | that Microsoft would have cleaned things up. | samstave wrote: | The price of ~~content~~ games is too damn high! | | - | | Basically this, the cost for a AAA game at ~$69.99 is just | fucking ridiculous. | ErneX wrote: | There were 70 USD games in the 90s. Yeah those were cartridge | games but still, it's probably the sector were inflation has | been felt the least. | mrguyorama wrote: | In the 90s I didn't have to give Rare $5 to play as oddjob, | and another $5 to make heads big, and another $5 to fight | slaps only, and another $5 to..... | | That's the difference. Those games were $70 because the ROM | chips nintendo forced you to use were basically unavailable | at sufficient quantities. Playstation games were cheaper | despite being able to use literally 10x the amount of | assets. | | The only people forcing AAA studios to add a billion | polygons to every stick are themselves. They haven't tried | anything different, so of course they think it's the only | option. Meanwhile billions of dollars a year go to people | who spent $10 on an asset in the unity store to back up a | game that actually is interesting. | | Actually, even worse, they often AREN'T wasting millions on | assets. Grand Turismo 7 has plenty of cars that are just | copy/pasted from the previous release. | nluken wrote: | AAA games take thousands of hours of labor from huge teams to | create. When you consider how much work goes into it, $70 | seems like a bargain. Also, if you account for inflation | these kinds of games are cheaper now than they've been for | most of gaming's history. | | In practice, however, many games fail to break out of super | basic gameplay loops. I usually prefer cheaper indie games | where I have more fun. | Art9681 wrote: | The trending story on the Microsoft gaming division side is how | badly Xbox is doing. I don't think Microsoft is doing anyone a | favor by acquiring gaming companies at this point. It's evident | that Microsoft is where game development studios go to die. | | Bethesda's acquisition is extremely demoralizing due to this. I | hope Starfield succeeds as it's my most anticipated game of all | time. | kernal wrote: | >the CEO (Bobby Kotick) was accused of permitting workplace | sexual harassment and employees at the company were on the | verge of mutiny. | | >Microsoft received 721 employee complaints of discrimination | and harassment in the U.S. between 2019 and 2021, and Microsoft | investigators found most allegations to be "unsubstantiated". | | Excluding the 2022-23 complaints, I'm just wondering which | company do you think is under more "chaos" and on the verge of | "mutiny" right now? | rvz wrote: | Or maybe we should not be supporting horizontal integration of | already large companies in the same industry acquiring other | large companies. | | The acquisition of Bethesda doesn't help Microsoft's case of | horizontal integration or even their future intentions with | cloud gaming with the potential integration of their existing | Xbox game pass service even if they acquired Activision- | Blizzard. | | Seems like the UK regulators decision in that regard was the | wise decision and it was the right one. | [deleted] | TheCaptain4815 wrote: | Microsoft has practically destroyed every major game franchise | it's owned in the past decade and Xbox only exists because it's | being subsidized by Azure. Very happy with this decision. | edgyquant wrote: | It's nice that this was blocked, but they really should have | blocked the Bethesda acquisition. Buying the best selling game | franchise (Elder Scrolls) and making it an exclusive is a cut | and dry anti-competitive move and Microsoft should have been | punished for even trying. | muststopmyths wrote: | The new Gears of War was quite good, I thought. Nowhere near as | bad as the new Halos. | myrmidon wrote: | Disagree somwhat; Age of Empires would be unlikely to do better | under any other publisher IMO. | | The whole Gamepass thing also appears functional to me (i.e. I | know people who pay money for it and are satisfied, unlike | former Stadia). | | But I strongly believe that stopping consolidation in that | market is a laudable move and am super happy with the decision | to block this. | nonethewiser wrote: | Minecraft and Mojang studios more broadly did great | greenyoda wrote: | Archive with full text of article: https://archive.ph/B5GYo | crims0n wrote: | | Britain's antitrust watchdog vetoed the gaming industry's | biggest ever deal saying it would harm competition in cloud | gaming | | Cloud gaming? Really? Seems a bit tone deaf. Is the CMA known for | not understanding the markets they regulate? | OJFord wrote: | What's wrong with that? | flohofwoe wrote: | I guess the Xbox Game Pass subscription service can be | considered a 'cloud gaming' service, and IIRC most concerns | were about CoD vs Game Pass (e.g. if a new CoD game is | available on Game Pass on day one of release that would indeed | be an unfair advantage). | crims0n wrote: | Fair assessment, but I still think that is tangentially | related at best - and only relevant to the cloud due to a | bundled subscription. | newsclues wrote: | "e.g. if a new CoD game is available on Game Pass on day one | of release that would indeed be an unfair advantage" | | Timed exclusives are not an unfair advantage, both Sony and | MS have bought or paid for timed (or perpetual) exclusive | games for their platforms. | | Are we going to make a rule that bans all exclusive games, | and force developers to create ports for all system that | launch on the same day? | edgyquant wrote: | This is a bs argument. There's a difference between having | exclusives and buying up the producers of the worlds most | popular cross platform games and making them exclusive. | Adverblessly wrote: | > Timed exclusives are not an unfair advantage, both Sony | and MS have bought or paid for timed (or perpetual) | exclusive games for their platforms. | | I don't think just because the two biggest actors can | afford to pay for exclusivity that means that paying for | exclusivity is fair. Would you expect itch.io to pay for | exclusivity in order to compete in the games market? | | > Are we going to make a rule that bans all exclusive | games, and force developers to create ports for all system | that launch on the same day? | | If you made a rule about this, it would be about banning | paying for exclusivity. If a developer wants to make a game | exclusive to the PS5 that's up to them, but Sony can't pay | them for the privilege. | flohofwoe wrote: | This is more like the Netflix model than the traditional | timed exclusives model. | | E.g. the platform owner also owns all content production to | stuff its channel with content. | | In the short term this can be good for gamers (as long as | the platform owner throws absurd amounts of money around | for content production in order to grow the subscription | base), but I can't see this being good for the long run, | especially when there are only two or three big players on | the market, and no more independent game developers and | publishers are left (Activision/Blizzard isn't exactly a | fountain of creativity of course, so that's a bad example). | panick21_ wrote: | Cloud means internet. | [deleted] | johneth wrote: | Cloud gaming is a growing market - they're preventing the deal | on the hypothesis that it will give Microsoft a huge advantage | in a growing market. | crims0n wrote: | In my opinion, it is only growing because it is bundled with | popular subscription services like Game Pass. I don't think | the sector has it's own legs to stand on, but time will tell. | rwalle wrote: | Look up GeForce NOW service. It's going well. | sofixa wrote: | The biggest cloud gaming services up until ~1-2 years ago | were Geforce Now and Google Stadia (RIP). Xcloud gaming or | whatever they call it today was extremely poor (latency and | UX issues) and in limited beta, with a very limited | library. | | Nowadays Stadia is dead, Xcloud is kind of usable under the | condition you use a controller (which makes it a non- | started for pretty much any non first-person game) and pay | for Game Pass. Geforce Now is still going strong, has much | better and stable quality and is the gold standard. | tsgagnon wrote: | _Cloud gaming is a growing market - they 're preventing the | deal on the hypothesis that it will give Microsoft a huge | advantage in a growing market._ | | How does any large company build into a new/growing market | without having a "huge advantage"? Do they have to wait until | the market is matured from smaller companies before they can | get into that market? | jarym wrote: | They are known for it but you've heard the old saying... even a | broken clock is right twice a day. | nottorp wrote: | I would have thought the same, but then i tried GeForce Now. | | It works Just Fine(tm) (with fiber internet) but guess what's | missing: a lot of AAA titles. | | So yes, there's a problem with cloud gaming. | | Not sure if it's mine or theirs though. I don't have a gaming | PC right now, only a PS5. Since we're speaking of ActiBlizzard, | i maybe would try Diablo 4 if it were available on GeForce Now. | But it isn't and I won't. | | Incidentally, I doubt there will be a console Diablo 4 for the | PS5 either. They were too far into the acquisition process to | not dump non Microsoft platforms. | PretzelPirate wrote: | Didn't Microsoft agree that Nvidia could stream ABK games on | GeForce Now if the deal closed? It seems like it could have | helped GeForce Now grow. | KaoruAoiShiho wrote: | Yes but the deal only lasts 10 years, and there's been a | hold up, even after a couple of months the games are still | not on it. Presumably this is because MS want the games on | their windows store instead of being buyable through Steam | which is already integrated with GFN. It seems problematic. | PretzelPirate wrote: | 10 years is more than enough to attract a player base and | establish themselves as a place where games need to be | launched. | | I'm not sure what you mean by there being a hold up. I | assumed the deal was dependent on the ABK deal going | through, which the CMA just blocked and they've all but | guaranteed that GeForce Now won't get Call of Duty. | nottorp wrote: | Tbh I'm not interested in multiplayer shooters, so they | can keep Call of Duty, but a lot of other titles i'm | interested in (and sometimes even own on steam) aren't | there either. | mdemare wrote: | > Incidentally, I doubt there will be a console Diablo 4 for | the PS5 either. | | https://www.playstation.com/en-us/games/diablo-iv/ | pbalcer wrote: | By cloud gaming they probably mean things like Playstation Plus | and Xbox Game Pass, because, in the higher tiers, they come | bundled with streaming access to the games in the service. | justeleblanc wrote: | You can read their 418 pages report here and see if they | understand what they're about: | https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/644939aa529ed... | Section 8, "Theory of harm 2: Vertical effects in cloud gaming | services", starts on page 192 and contains 442 paragraphs. The | conclusion is about two pages long, I encourage you to read it. | nonethewiser wrote: | What is your opinion on that text? | jerrygenser wrote: | Why is this tone deaf? A lot of aaa gaming today could be | considered cloud gaming -- although I'm not sure of the exact | definition. | | Consider dota 2 -- it's a service entirely on the cloud | continuously updated. | | The list goes on with in terms of aaa games offered by either | company where the main offering is actually multiplayer. | rwalle wrote: | Eh, most people looking at this don't consider dota 2 in the | same bucket as the cloud gaming concerned here. It means | Assassin's Creed played on Geforce Now or Forza Horizon | played on Xbox Game Pass. My very loose definition is that | these are games that usually have a single-player mode are | originally intended to be played on a game console, but are | run and rendered on cloud services and then transmitted to | user (of course you can find lots of exceptions). Dota 2, by | contrast, is an "online" game, more specifically MOBA -- this | is on Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dota_2 | [deleted] | crims0n wrote: | Typically it means gaming workloads rendered in the cloud, | which artificially appears popular at the moment because it | comes bundled with game subscription services such as | Playstation Plus and Xbox Game Pass - but as Stadia's failure | would seem to indicate, nobody wants to pay for a dedicated | cloud gaming service. Doesn't seem like a profitable sector | of the market. | | Nonetheless, my point was that cloud gaming is probably the | least concerning part of the merger. | rwalle wrote: | I know it's not your main point, but I need to mention that | the failure of Stadia does not indicate the failure of | cloud gaming in general but the problem of Stadia itself. | There are plenty of other cloud gaming options growing | every day. | 0x457 wrote: | > Stadia's failure would seem to indicate, nobody wants to | pay for a dedicated cloud gaming service. | | Not so sure about this. Stadia was an odd service - even | google's own devices (new google tv for example) didn't | support stadia. You had to pay for subscription + a whole | game price in most cases. | | Combine that with the fact that people already made peace | with stadia being shutdown before it even launched - who | wants to pay money for a game that can disappear any day. | | I had Stadia and played from time to time. I know people | who used Stadia exclusively. I play xCloud all the time on | my iPad... Stadia had a market, just it being from Google | killed it. Well, publishers also played their role there - | they wanted consumers to buy games again instead of just | giving them access to steam. | | Shadow, GeForce Now and Amazon Luna are still alive. | doikor wrote: | In this context it means streaming the game from cloud | (xCloud, GeForce NOW, Luna, etc) | jokoon wrote: | I wonder what are the actors who invest in small indie games. It | seems like the indie game market is quite a complex, with a lot | of bad games, but still a few games of high quality who deserve | so much more attention. | | I really wish there were investors who could better invest in the | indie game market and at least take more risks and burn more | cash, even if it's socially questionable. | | Every respectable gamer knows, deep in his heart, that the AAA | game business is a horror show. | | I restrict myself to indie games and I have more and more trouble | finding a game that I can actually like and spend time with, it's | hard to say if that's because I'm old or if I have very specific | tastes or if I set the bar too high. | | There are a lot of developers out there who are ready to make | games, yet it seems the market rarely lets them. Of course, | quality matters, but the top reason I want to make games, is | because I cannot find games I can enjoy, would they AAA or indie. | | Important note: I dislike capitalism. | jxf wrote: | > I really wish there were investors who could better invest in | the indie game market and at least take more risks and burn | more cash, even if it's socially questionable. | | The challenge is that many games are labors of love that are | fantastically unprofitable. AAA games with microtransactions | are unpopular but very lucrative. | jokoon wrote: | Profitability cannot be the only motive. A small fraction of | those profits could be invested in indie games to diversify | and just have "better games", not just profits. | | Stop using the devil's advocate at every occasion. | Dudeman112 wrote: | Whenever people mention the awful state of the industry, I | feel an urge to point out that the only thing that matters in | a capitalist society is what the consumer votes for with | their wallet | | Ubisoft is far from bankrupt. EA is far from bankrupt. All | the microtransactions, all the stupid "big open world" | bollocks, all mind numbing grind-a-thons, the sheer creative | bankruptcy that AAA games often show... they are what people | consistently vote for, _every year_ | | In the last month, the last Carl On Duty has made more money | than Ultrakill ever will. By a few orders of magnitude. And | the same will happen for the next one | | If gamers wanted quality, they should have spent their money | accordingly instead of consistently buying shit | mschuster91 wrote: | > If gamers wanted quality, they should have spent their | money accordingly instead of consistently buying shit | | The key thing is marketing. The giants have _insane_ | amounts of budget to market their games to heaven and | beyond. | andsoitis wrote: | > unpopular but very lucrative. | | How do you resolve that oxymoron? | newsclues wrote: | There are a small number of whales that support micro | transaction games. | | These games tend to be F2P to have a community for the | whales to play with, but the games aren't particularly fun | and popular enough to attract a large player base that will | pay for the game. | | Free things that people play because it's free aren't the | most popular, they are just available. | mirages wrote: | Can someone explains me why a UK court is able to block a deal | between 2 US corps ? | | How can they overreach ? | desas wrote: | The two US corps both want to do business in the UK. If the two | US corps don't want to do business in the UK, they can feel | free to ignore the UK authorities. | unionpivo wrote: | Well if the two US companies that do business in US and with US | residents, than UK court would not have any jurisdiction. (And | would not even try, it's not like they don't have other things | to do.) | | But in this case, you have two US businesses, that own local UK | business and do business on UK soil with UK customers. That is | why they fall also under jurisdiction of UK. | | MS and Activison could close their business in UK, and stop | serving their customers and then they would not be affected by | UK courts. | | Bottom line is, if you do business in multiple places, you need | to play by the rules of all that places. | | It's similar how the legislation in lets say California can | affect products in all the USA. | drumhead wrote: | It only relates to their activities in the Uk. MS would have to | either comply with any remedial measures or just stop operating | in there. | Jowsey wrote: | Presumably by banning them from business in the UK if they go | through with it | M2Ys4U wrote: | Microsoft are free to withdraw from the UK market to avoid | being regulated by UK regulators. | | But unless they do, the UK has the right to regulate its own | market in the way that they see fit, irrespective of whether | that impacts on other markets (modulo international trade | agreements). | agd wrote: | I'm glad with this decision. Not sure the exact logic makes | sense, but in general the top US tech companies (Google, Amazon, | MS, Meta, Apple) are too big. They wield huge power and can snuff | out entire startup sectors with loss-leading products. | | The argument is always 'but we don't have a monopoly in this | artificially small sector X', however I don't think that argument | is the one we should be looking at when the companies involved | are $1trillion+. | | Can we prove exact consumer harm in each case? No. However, I | think most people can accept that there's a risk to consumers, | markets, and democracy if companies become too big. | | Edit. Seeing a lot of comments saying UK couldn't function | without Microsoft which kind of supports my point. | somenameforme wrote: | At least in the US it wasn't even about monopolies, but about | whether or not a merger would negatively affect competition. | [1] But at some point it feels like the FTC simply stopped | enforcing its own guidelines, at least when large enough | players were involved. Because it's somewhat self evident that | the overwhelmingly majority of big corp mergers over the past | couple of decades have completely crippled competition. | | That said, I think this indirectly feeds off your core point - | this 'new direction' of the FTC is almost certainly because | these companies have become far too 'influential' owing to | their size and power. I think one could even generalize a | simple test: "Would the immediate collapse of this company | meaningfully imperil the US economy, security, or other | significant interests?" If so, that company needs to be split | up until the answer is no. | | [1] - https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition- | guidance/gui... | fallingknife wrote: | Large tech companies are nothing like banks and have no | mechanism to immediately collapse. In fact, the fact that | their collapse would imperil the US economy is a 100% | guarantee that they won't collapse because it means people | are dependent on buying their products. | | And if you did break them up, it wouldn't solve the problem | at all. Whatever company is in charge of Windows is still | going to be critical no matter the size. It depends on the | importance of the software product in the tech industry, not | the size of the company like it does in banking. | vxNsr wrote: | The difference is that if Windows corp isn't part of the | O365 corp then they're both forced to work with competitors | instead of forcing you into their walled garden. | | How nice would it be if all the features that you get from | the windows/O365/Onedrive synergy were available to any | cloud competitor? So I could pair word/excel sync with my | own self-hosted cloud. I could back up all my files using | the native tools to any cloud provider. That's the sort of | benefit you could theoretically have by breaking up | Microsoft. | throwaway675309 wrote: | This. This is exactly why I am ideologically opposed to working | for a FAANG. You can do more than just avoiding purchasing | their products - giving them your labor and resources allows | these companies to gain even more power and influence than they | already have. | crazygringo wrote: | > _but in general the top US tech companies... are too big_ | | > _I think most people can accept that there 's a risk to | consumers, markets, and democracy if companies become too big._ | | I don't think that's true at all. If you want to make an | argument that companies are too big, you need some exact logic | to support it. | | The only solid arguments I'm aware of are specifically | regarding banks because of their systemic impact on the economy | -- the become "too big to fail" and thereby become a moral | hazard situation. Although given the efficiencies of large | banks, the solution has become to regulate them more tightly to | prevent moral hazards, not to break them up. | | But the idea that tech companies are too big doesn't have the | same kind of logic behind it, and your assertion that they | "snuff out entire startup sectors" doesn't seem to be supported | by any evidence. To the contrary, they _invest_ in entire | startup sectors and competing top tech companies buy competing | startups to supercharge them. Competition is _thriving_ as the | big tech firms compete _with each other_. | | In the modern era of Big Tech, consumers seem to be doing | great, markets seem to be doing great, and Big Tech's _size_ is | probably not even in the top 50 threats to democracy. The | effects of _social media_ is surely in the top 5 threats to | democracy, but that has nothing whatsoever to do with the size | of the company that owns a social network. | agd wrote: | > Competition is thriving as the big tech firms compete with | each other. | | Thriving competition wouldn't result in super profits year on | year. | safog wrote: | Organic growth towards computing and digital does that. | Time spent online is increasing, services are getting | better, people are moving to the cloud from on-prem etc. | etc. | | It's not a zero sum game right now. The moment FAANGs are | in a zero sum game trying to cannibalize each others' | market shares I predict HN won't even have an argument | around if tech firms are too big. That means tech has | plateaued and has become a mature business like Coca cola | or Kroger. | Brusco_RF wrote: | Why is profit a metric that you want to minimize? Do you | have any other metric that shows lack of competition? | Because the above poster outlined some pretty strong | positive ones | rglullis wrote: | > consumers seem to be doing great | | I want some of that stuff you are smoking. | | Vendor lock-in. Planned obsolescence. Common, established | features being removed in favor of proprietary protocols or | connectors. Data privacy violations. | | All of that because we like free/cheap stuff. Saying Big Tech | is good to consumers is like saying Big Pharma is good | because their opiods are chemically pure. | istjohn wrote: | Reducing the number of companies reduces the competition that | drives up wages and drives down prices and drives up service | and product quality. Consider this: | https://fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2018/08/corporate-profits- | ve.... | jpetso wrote: | My big concern with large companies is cross-selling. For the | sake of argument, let's assume that Google rightfully won the | Internet, Apple rightfully won smartphones, Microsoft | rightfully (?) won operating systems, etc. | | All of them tried, competition was hot, the market picked a | winner. | | But what's next is a market distortion. Google uses their | front page to push Chrome over Firefox, Apple doesn't care to | make any of their other devices (e.g. Watch, HomePod) | interoperate with other platforms, Microsoft packs Windows | with ads for Office 365, OneDrive, and so on. All of Big Tech | is perpetually obsessed with owning platforms as opposed to | products, because once you control a platform, it gives you | the leverage/"moat" to continue profiting without the | corresponding investment into competing fairly. Thriving | competition would be to have to compete independently in each | market, rather than winning one and then extending that win | to other markets by tilting the playing field. | | Activision Blizzard falls nicely into this category as it's | explicitly designed to gain an edge over Sony in gaming. | Cloud gaming or not, it's clear to everyone that the general | idea is improve the standing of Xbox products and Windows PCs | by using the leverage of CoD as an existing market winner. As | opposed to making the platform compete on its own terms. | That's a market distortion. | | The fact that large companies put large amounts of resources | into startups and developing new markets doesn't mean that | they compete fairly, or that it's a better outcome for | society/consumers than an alternative reality where each | product by itself would compete on its own merits, and | companies could win markets independently rather than having | to sell to existing market leaders for extra leverage. | Brybry wrote: | Big Tech companies have a history of buying smaller tech | companies and ending or decreasing the products/services that | the smaller companies provided which makes life worse for | consumers. | | In game development specifically there's a line of successful | studios that were devoured and their game franchises | destroyed or made creatively poorer. | nine_k wrote: | My question is always: why did they sell? I suppose a small | company is usually private, so it can't be a target of a | _hostile_ takeover. | | The owners likely saw it as a better deal financially. Sad | but usually true. | | I like the idea of "meat" and "milk" startups, like cow | breeds; "meat" companies are created to grow fast and be | sold (and usually butchered), and "milk" companies are kept | more stable and independent, to fulfill their purpose, not | (just) in hopes of a purely financial gain. | pyrale wrote: | > My question is always: why did they sell? I suppose a | small company is usually private, so it can't be a target | of a hostile takeover. | | https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/07/emails- | detail-am... | | Similar stories exist for every single of the big tech | companies. | nine_k wrote: | How can a game franchise be destroyed by price cuts from | a competitor? (Honest question.) | orra wrote: | > I don't think that's true at all. If you want to make an | argument that companies are too big, you need some exact | logic to support it. | | It's well known that oligopolies are bad for efficient | pricing, just like with (though not as extreme as) | monopolies. | | That's why EU competition law rightly focuses on "significant | market power", rather than US competition law which cares | little unless there is a literal monopoly. (Currently, the UK | retains EU competition law). | nine_k wrote: | When resources of a private company seriously outweigh those | of a government, it may become a problem; see "banana | republics" [1]. That is, regulations cannot work against a | sufficiently overwhelming force. | | "Snuffing entire sectors" is unlikely, even though buying and | shutting down a potentially viable competitor is not uncommon | in the business world. Google in particular bought and | eventually closed a number of startups, but, to my mind, it | was mostly because they did not happen to be fast enough | growing, not to kill competition. There is some research [2] | showing that companies do buy other companies to kill a | competitor, but this is very far from being the majority of | cases. | | [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_republic#Honduras | | [2]: https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/do-companies-buy- | comp... | markus_zhang wrote: | Sadly we are probably too late now. Need to dissect them into | multiple entities (and maybe create more jobs) earlier. | snapcaster wrote: | What makes you think it's too late? | markus_zhang wrote: | They already got enough political power. | jerjerjer wrote: | Maybe "artificially large"? | passwordoops wrote: | >"Seeing a lot of comments saying UK couldn't function without | Microsoft" | | _Too Big to Fail_ should be recast as _Too Big to Exist_ | rqtwteye wrote: | Totally agree. These huge companies are terrible for the | overall economy, destroy innovation and contribute to | inequality. | 015a wrote: | Its extremely frustrating how we let the tech companies get to | be this large, such that now we really have to consider | blocking every acquisition, even though this one in particular | I think wouldn't be all that bad and may actually be a positive | for consumers. Activision is an unusually cruel and extremely | horrible company, whereas the Xbox Division of Microsoft has | been one of maybe only a couple "great" stewards of the gaming | industry for consumers (Epic is also a great company, but | beyond those two when it comes to major developers/publishers | there's far more bad than good). I'm genuinely of the opinion | that all of Xbox, Activision, and their customers will be | worse-off without this deal. | | This is a HackerNews Arm Chair Quarterbacking Stretch, but I | think a really positive move for Microsoft would be to spin-off | Xbox into a separate company. I can't imagine the division is | all that profitable; its grown to confer practically zero | positive network effects for Microsoft's other businesses. | Culturally its got to be the weirdest thing Microsoft does | nowadays. This AB deal likely single-handedly increases the | valuation of the division by, jeeze, 50%? Maybe more. | zopppo wrote: | > Its extremely frustrating how we let the tech companies get | to be this large, such that now we really have to consider | blocking every acquisition, even though this one in | particular I think wouldn't be all that bad and may actually | be a positive for consumers. | | As an avid world of warcraft player, the community as a whole | has been hoping the merger goes through for exactly this | reason. Activision has seemingly forced through a lot of bad | changes over the years to try wring out as much money as they | can. | segasaturn wrote: | I'm a part of the StarCraft 2 community and we were | similarly hopeful about this deal as StarCraft has been | neglected by the company for years. The community was | already in full doom mode over Korean tournament funding | getting pulled, this is not going to improve the | atmosphere. | taeric wrote: | I'm curious on how a MS merger would be good? At the start, | they would almost certainly try to merge user accounts into | MSN accounts. Likely force a migration down the line, after | merging doesn't work. | 867-5309 wrote: | >force a migration down the line, after merging doesn't | work | | like the Mojang --> Microsoft --> XBox fiasco | taeric wrote: | Exactly what I was referencing. I should have said it. :D | themitigating wrote: | If they merge user accounts but you can support for older | products or other game changes it's possible people would | be ok with that | taeric wrote: | Certainly many would be ok with it. The ones it will hurt | will be the heavy users that have multiple accounts, is | my guess. Also is annoying to families. Game accounts are | just game accounts, even if that has grown. Giving the | kids an MSN account did not sit well with me. | happy54672 wrote: | The way I think others are thinking about it is that to | Activision, making innovative new franchises or long term | investments in general is a big risk since they are 100% | a games company. Whereas if Microsoft owns them may face | less pressure to cut costs/long term investments since it | would make up a much smaller part of Microsoft's | financials. | | Whether that is how things usually turn out in practice | with these sorts of acquisitions is a question I don't | have a good answer to. | taeric wrote: | I just don't think I've seen evidence from MS that they | foster that sort of thing, either? Have they shown that | they can do a new franchise? | | Or is the idea that MS would just dump a lot of money on | them? Do they have a track record of that? | kelnos wrote: | I'm not sure "I want my favorite game to get better" is a | good reason to allow more mega-conglomeration. | pb7 wrote: | >Epic is also a great company | | No, it's not. It does the exact same shit that Activision | does except it targets an even younger more vulnerable | demographic. Did you forget about this? | https://www.ftc.gov/business- | guidance/blog/2022/12/245-milli... | waboremo wrote: | I wonder when the FTC is going to crack down on mobile | gaming for this reason. Google and Apple profit | tremendously from various companies targeting vulnerable | demographics in their games. | 015a wrote: | I don't agree with the FTC's conclusion on that case, and | while it doesn't reflect positively on Epic, its not nearly | as negative as the myriad of things other gaming companies | do on the regular (lootboxes being a big one, which are | still very common in Activision, EA, & Valve games, among | others). Epic is one of the good ones; that doesn't mean | they always do good things. | panopticon wrote: | > _Epic is one of the good ones_ | | Maybe if your only comparison is Activision and EA. When | you consider all the dark patterns Fortnite employs to | encourage logging playtime and making purchases, they're | only separated from those others by degrees. Stacked up | against developers that largely avoid those patterns | (FromSoft, Nintendo, CDPR, etc), Epic is most certainly | closer to the "bad" side of the spectrum. | majormajor wrote: | I have a tough time coming down to hard on free to play | Fortnite. You _can_ spend more. They incentivize you to | spend more. That 's been a staple in fashion for a long | time. | | But at the same time I think there's something cool about | being able to hop in without shelling out $60. And | getting updates and new content for years. | pb7 wrote: | Their target demographic is kids whose brains haven't | developed yet and are unable to resist buying shiny | digital things with their parents' credit cards and Epic | makes sure to add as little resistance as possible. It's | no surprise they wanted to add their own payment system | to Fornite on iOS: Apple's has too much friction and | parental controls to prevent abuse like this. The | commission Apple collected was just a drop in the big | bucket they were after. | | From the FTC blog post: | | >The FTC alleges that with millions of consumers' credit | cards conveniently in hand, Epic failed to adequately | explain its billing practices to customers and designed | its interface in ways that led to unauthorized charges. | You'll want to read the complaint for details, but here | are a few of the dark patterns the company allegedly | used. | | >According to the complaint, Epic set up its payment | system so that it saved by default the credit card that | was associated with the account. That meant that kids | could buy V-Bucks - the virtual currency necessary to | make in-game purchases - with the simple press of a | button. No separate cardholder consent was required. | | Scum. Glad Apple booted them from the App Store and the | courts sided with Apple. | pb7 wrote: | Yeah, I have no idea how GP thinks Epic is the gold | standard. There are way better developers with extremely | successful games that don't have this bullshit: Naughty | Dog (Last of Us, Uncharted), FromSoft (mentioned, Elden | Ring), Portkey Games (Hogwarts Legacy), Guerrilla Games | (Horizon), Insomniac (Spider-Man), Santa Monica Studios | (God of War), Sucker Punch (Ghost of Tsushima), Rockstar | (Red Dead Redemption, Grand Theft Auto[0]) and many | others. Epic is near the bottom of the list, not the top. | | [0] The online has micro-transactions but even if it | didn't exist, the single player experience is well worth | the money alone and is on par with all the others. | throwaway7679 wrote: | Listing Microsoft and Epic as good guys is wack. | "Disagreeing" that Epic's practices are clear-cut | intentional abuse had me searching for a punchline. | 015a wrote: | > I have no idea how GP thinks Epic is the gold standard. | | Where, exactly, did you read "gold standard"? No one said | that. No one hinted to that. The words stated were "great | company" and "one of the good ones". | pb7 wrote: | Epic is neither of those so it doesn't matter. | | >Epic is also a great company, but beyond those two when | it comes to major developers/publishers there's far more | bad than good | | I listed all major developers, many of which are owned by | mega publishers like Sony. | mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: | Hogwarts Legacy certainly looks good, but the mobile game | hogwarts mystery(or something like that) by the same | studio was full of dark patterns and also devoid of | actual gameplay. | 015a wrote: | But you just listed companies that aren't even | comparable; they're at _entirely_ different market | capitalizations. FromSoft and CDPR are babies compared to | Xbox, Sony, Nintendo, Activision, EA, and Epic. FromSoft | has a rough valuation (its hard, because they 're owned | by Kadokawa) of maybe the low nine figures. CDPR is | larger, in the low billions. Epic is like $40 billion. | Activision, clearly, around $85B. EA, around $35B. And | Microsoft/Sony, obviously, a lot, lot more. | | Team Cherry and concernedape are also extremely amazing | and ethical developers. But they aren't peers to the | companies we're talking about. Its easy to be ethical | when you're small. Its laudable to maintain a sense of | those ethics when you're large, even if the absolute | measure isn't a perfect score. | | Nintendo is _far_ scummier than you let on; they 're | among the scummiest video game companies on the planet. | It just doesn't come through in their fantastic and | "pure" gaming experiences; but the fights their legal | team chooses to engage in are ugly, despicable, and very | unique among gaming companies. | pb7 wrote: | Then what you meant to say is that it's a good _business_ | , not a good _[video game] company_. Good video game | companies make good video games, of which there are many | others. Epic, Activision, and EA have high valuations | because their games are filled with micro-transactions, | not because their games are superior to others. This is | good for investors but not consumers (who your original | comment was championing). | thaumasiotes wrote: | > Team Cherry and concernedape are also extremely amazing | and ethical developers. | | Team Cherry produced a great game. I wouldn't be willing | to call them a good company or a good team; their track | record shows as plainly as you could possibly wish that | they are terrible at developing games. | munificent wrote: | The solution to Activision being horrible shouldn't be to let | it get eaten by a marginally less horrible even more giant | company. | | It should be to break it into smaller pieces so that | consumers have the flexibility to avoid the more toxic | segments of the company and the market can decide whether | their bad behavior matters or not. | giantg2 wrote: | "Its extremely frustrating how we let the tech companies get | to be this large," | | With how quickly tech changes and the risks involved, | companies have to find multiple revenue streams if they want | to survive. Pretty much every startup dream is to one day | become a huge company. | iepathos wrote: | > spin-off Xbox into a separate company. I can't imagine the | division is all that profitable | | only like $5 billion in annual revenue, doubt they'll want to | let that go for no reason. | ldoughty wrote: | Is part of what makes companies like this horrible the fact | they WANT to get bought? | | The one company I have in depth knowledge of going through an | acquisition tried to drive employees away where possible, and | fire others, down to a skeleton crew of overworked | disgruntled employees because it makes them look REALLY good | in the short term for being acquired. | | If you couldn't count on acquisitions by larger companies | being approved easily, the only other way to game companies | can generate profit is by maintaining current games (at least | to being playable, without terrible reviews from bugs), and | /or develop new games... | toyg wrote: | _> Activision is an unusually cruel and extremely horrible | company, whereas the Xbox Division_ | | Even if this were true, there is no guarantee that the | acquiring culture will actually be imposed on the acquired. | In fact it's often the opposite, with the acquired | "infecting" the parent company - particularly when the | acquired comes with a large headcount. | stonemetal12 wrote: | Games aren't bad for MS, It brings in more than 3 billion a | quarter. | | How many times have you seen I do most of my stuff on Linux | but I still boot in to windows for games. An independent xbox | would be less likely to use Windows for their OS. | InitialLastName wrote: | Given how badly the Xbox for Windows system functions (lots | of games don't even support the Xbox Series S/X controller | reliably until you set them up to use Steam as their | launcher), it already seems like the Xbox organization | doesn't think much about Windows. | dmonitor wrote: | Xbox is loss leading _hard_ for Microsoft right now. Profits | are down, console sales are down, and things on the horizon | are looking not too great. If Xbox spun off, they'd go out of | business within the decade because there's no reason to own | one besides taking advantage of Microsoft's net-negative | gaming subscription. | davemp wrote: | It seems like video game consoles aren't competing based on | practicality (hardware) anymore and are mostly just rent | seeking with ways to abuse the legal/IP system. | | There used to be a much bigger moat to assemble a platform | that could play cutting edge games. Now PC game | engines/graphics drivers are getting so good the console | SDKs aren't such a big boon and the hardware is basically | just CotS. | dmonitor wrote: | Yeah. Sony and Nintendo still try to shake things up with | their bespoke controllers and hardware doohickeys, but | Microsoft's approach is just to release plain old PCs | that only run their code. | seventhtiger wrote: | Nintendo would be successful even without hardware. Their | IPs have firmly planted themselves in global awareness to | an unimaginable level. They'd give Disney a run for their | money. | | Then on top of that they built an ecosystem of toys and | software to monetize their adoring customers. | | Nintendo recognized the deadend of the hardware race in | the early 2000s, and continued developing their "mascots" | while Sony and MS abandoned theirs. I don't think | Microsoft and Sony have the DNA to pull of something like | this. They are still software and hardware companies | respectively. | [deleted] | mikepurvis wrote: | I feel like with Gamepass and all their exclusives being day | 1 on Windows as well, there's probably more crossover | nowadays than there has been in years, but overall you're | right that spinning out Xbox entirely would make a lot of | sense. | newswasboring wrote: | Is the xbox division the main gaming division of MS? | mehlmao wrote: | They can't spin out Gamepass because it is a money pit. | There aren't enough subscribers to fund large budget game | development. At the same time, Gamepass trains subscribers | to not purchase new games, because they'll be on Gamepass | eventually. | PaulHoule wrote: | I hate the idea of Gamepass because I saw it happen to | cable television. | | In the 1980s, for instance, MTV really showed music | videos. It got bought by old fogey Sumner Redstone who | decided unilaterally that we couldn't see music videos | anymore -- funny now that we have YouTube it's been | discovered that people want to watch music videos when | they can. (A bit of destruction like Musk buying | Twitter?) | | If you buy a game you are voting with your dollar, if you | subscribe they're going to make an _Assassin 's Creed_ | game this year, and next year, and the year after that, | and the year after that. The game industry is going to | make whatever games it wants to make, and Microsoft will | pay them, and I guess people will play them because they | don't have a choice. We saw that with cable, since they | get paid whether or not you watch, they can skimp on | quality and collect increasing payments year after year. | The movie and TV industry has been driven mad by | streaming because suddenly performance matters... Disney | is completely capable of producing a product that upholds | it's brand but why do it when you can get $7 a month from | every cable subscriber for ESPN whether or not they watch | sports? | kbenson wrote: | I'm confused why you think they aren't tracking what | games are played for how long, and won't optimize based | on that. I would assume there's some royalty type | situation with gamepass where the games that get played | more get some percentage of a pool. | | You can rail about cable all you want, but some of the | best shows of the last few decades were on cable. | Breaking bad, mad men, the shield. Greatly expanding the | choices allowed for networks to take risks in attempts to | gain a small but I yerested audience, rather than having | to appeal to the entire general public, and what we got | was amazing. | 0x457 wrote: | Because that's not what gives them money. They are | tracking what games bring in new subscribers. | smolder wrote: | More time spent does not equal enjoyment. Some games | treat their players like employees and make them work | pretty hard for their imaginary prizes. I wouldn't want a | games library optimized for maximum time expenditure. | kbenson wrote: | While I agree paying out based on time spent may | incentivize games into poor behavior, I think there are | ways to account for that (e.g. weeks of the month the | game was played more than an hour or two total). Greatly | reducing the up-front investment to try out a game allows | for different types of games to find an audience. | | If I have to pay $20 to try out some indie title, I might | put it off a long time until it's on sale or never try | it. If it's already included in a subscription I pay for, | I might try it early or right after hearing some buzz | about it. More people jumping in on that buzz can create | a wave of enthusiasm that greatly increases the reach of | the game that wouldn't happen if a similar number of | sales trickled in over an extended period, which might | increase players (and possibly sales on other platforms) | more than otherwise. | | It's been noted many times in the past, some of the big | breaks for indie studios were when they got accepted into | these programs or ones like it. | PaulHoule wrote: | I've only seen a few games so I can't say this is | universal but when I play Japanese games on the Xbox all | of the achievements say something like "5.4% of gamers | accomplished this" which indicates that very few people | finish this games, but a few western games I played | didn't seem to show these percentages and I wonder if | this is an attempt to work on people's psychology. | AlexandrB wrote: | I didn't realize this was a thing that could be | enabled/disabled per-game. I think _all_ achievements on | Steam come with the "x.x% got this" stat. | AlexandrB wrote: | No kidding. The whole idea of (even partially) evaluating | a game's value/quality by how long it takes to finish it | is a mind virus. It leads to bloated, grindy experiences | where a shorter game might have been more appropriate or | even more fun. | coldpie wrote: | > I would assume there's some royalty type situation with | gamepass where the games that get played more get some | percentage of a pool. | | My understanding is for non-exceptional games (like, not | Fortnite-scale), they just provide a flat fee with a | fixed-length contract. Your studio gets $X and it will be | on GamePass for Y months. I'm sure gameplay stats are | taken into account for future contract renewals or for | other games with the same studio, but no, I don't think | there is any kind of explicit revenue sharing going on. | It can be a hard decision for studios, since they have to | balance lost income from sales against the guaranteed | income and added publicity from being on GamePass. | | Source: Stuff I remember from podcasts, mostly Brandon | Sheffield on Insert Credit. Sorry, I know that's not a | great reference =/ | mustacheemperor wrote: | >has been one of maybe only a couple "great" stewards of the | gaming industry for consumers | | I'm not sure I'd give them much credit on this, since MS/Xbox | hasn't achieved much at all in the gaming industry over | recent years. Maybe there's not much egregious evil there | a-la Activision's leadership scandals, but the track record | is not great. | | As a gaming industry consumer who's been playing Microsoft | consoles and games my entire life, MS has recently: | | - Ruined the Halo franchise | | - Stymied the current console gen with the Series S' weak | memory capabilities | | - Acquired multiple beloved studios and released little to | nothing over 5+ years, with their highest profile release | being Starfield, the game Bethesda was already developing | when MS bought them and made it a platform exclusive | | - Edit: Forgot trying to turn the Xbox One into an always- | online TV set-top box | | Spinning off Xbox might be a good idea, if it's MS' senior | leadership that keeps hamstringing their success. Because if | the Activision acquisition proceeded like their previous | studio acquisitions, we would see one or two Activision games | release in the next decade, along with maybe a mediocre COD | TV show. | waboremo wrote: | Xbox's role in the gaming industry has, funny enough, very | little to do with Xbox itself. It's their competitive | presence that has kept Playstation from stagnating and | making terrible decisions. You can see this extremely | clearly when the 360 was outselling the PS3 and | Playstation/Sony made plenty of management changes to shift | directions. | mustacheemperor wrote: | I can agree there - MS has an important competitive role | in the marketplace and it's not like Sony has always been | a great steward to the community by comparison. I have | mixed feelings about exclusives in general, but Sony has | certainly played that game more than MS. | | But the 360 was unveiled in 2005 and was replaced in the | market a decade ago. My criticisms are really oriented to | the last 5-10 years. On that note, I'm reminded of the | Xbox One "your game console is for watching TV and will | always be connected to the internet" release. And in that | generation, it was the clamoring market and Sony's | response (like the classic 'how to share secondhand | games' video[0]) that pushed Microsoft to stop acting | unreasonably. | | [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48nCBnc9VBs | waboremo wrote: | Yes that's very true! Much to their benefit, Playstation | has been positively aggressive in recent years, I would | attribute a lot of that to Mark Cerny (and the core | platform tooling team) learning from PS3 mistakes and | making the platform prioritize ease of development, and | also from Xbox's mistakes on trying to pivot to general | entertainment. | sleepybrett wrote: | > - Edit: Forgot trying to turn the Xbox One into an | always-online TV set-top box | | people call this a terrible idea, i thought it was a great | fucking idea. At the time, and frankly still, streaming | apps are mostly what we use tvs for these days, and the | platforms to run them that are shipped INSIDE of the tvs we | buy fucking suck, uniformly. | | While the xbox was built as a gaming console initially all | they really wanted to do was expand that notion. It could | be an everything box for your '10 ft experience' It could | play games, and be a dvr, and be a streaming interface, and | and and. They could easily spin out another sku with lower | specs to curtail some of the gaming power and make a more | streaming focused box (like an apple tv but by microsoft) | and sell that to the parents while selling the beefy gaming | one to the kids. | | I think the thing that sunk it was some Orwellian notion | about the kinect. It's awesome tech, get a siri/alexa plus | body tracking. The biggest downside being that MS's stance | on privacy is 'peasants get no privacy'. At the time | siri/alexa were still in their early stages and people were | creeped out by them. Siri with eyes was extra repellent. | | Well that and gamers throwing a fit because they didn't | want their gaming console to be useful to their parents and | other non gamers ... | hbn wrote: | You're misrepresenting what people were actually upset | about with the Xbox One's original plans leading up to | launch. If they wanted to add that Kinect functionality, | whatever, but they announced it in a state where the | Kinect was REQUIRED and had to always be plugged in. And | it wasn't just always-on motion-tracking sensors, but an | always-on microphone. In addition to that, your Xbox had | to do a call to home every 24 hours to make sure you were | still allowed to play physical games you purchased. You | couldn't buy or sell used games, or lend them to a | friend. | | The DVR stuff wasn't a big issue for anyone, but it was | emblematic of the fact that Microsoft didn't give a shit | about gaming. Sony was already pulling ahead with | exclusives people wanted by the end of the previous | generation, and all Microsoft had to show for the next | generation was a home entertainment system that had too | much DRM and focused on their motion control gimmick at | the point where everyone knew it was a fad that came and | went in 2006 with the Wii. And on top of all this it was | an extra $100 on top of the PS4's price. | | Saying gamers were mad because the system could be useful | to their parents is incredibly disingenuous. | mustacheemperor wrote: | >Well that and gamers throwing a fit because they didn't | want their gaming console to be useful to their parents | and other non gamers ... | | I think it's worth revisiting the announcement. Gamers | were upset because the launch presentation of the new | console spent very little time talking about games. That | presentation was followed by a Q&A with the notorious "we | have a console for people without reliable internet, it's | the xbox 360" quip. The "peasants get no privacy" | attitude really felt like it was just part of a bigger | "the peasants will buy what we say" attitude. | | I'm with you on the utility of the basic concept. I | actually really enjoyed using the Kinect to control | Netflix. There was a good concept buried in the xbone | vision that I would still like to use today - but | Microsoft fumbled the execution tremendously badly and in | particular, did so in a way that did not show "good | stewardship to gaming." | | On that note, the Kinect almost ended Rare as a | studio...and the cool media features introduced with the | Xbox One are now as dead as the Kinect. | pdntspa wrote: | Microsoft has sought to dominate the living room long | before Xbox.... remember Windows Media Center? I don't | know if it is still their strategy (seems like not by | your post, I don't have an Xbox One S and my living room | runs Kodi on Android TV) but it has been their intention | for a while. | WorldMaker wrote: | Windows Media Center is truly dead and all the TV- | focused/Roku-competitive parts of the Xbox One were | turned off years ago in OS changes. (Many were turned off | _only months_ after that sad launch. Some of them were | great features and there is reason to lament their loss | in the massive turnaround.) The Series S /X successor | consoles have never had any of those parts of the OS and | the above comment that this "Xbox One living room | debacle" being "recent" feels outdated at best. | | Microsoft seems to have given up on the living room | entirely outside of gaming ambitions. | Arrath wrote: | Its funny, prior to getting a SmartTV I used my Xbox One | basically as Microsoft imagined. Game console, dvd | player, and box to run my streaming apps. | 7952 wrote: | I guess it could reduce the risk of another platform creating | network effects. | waboremo wrote: | Xbox is Microsoft's only consumer division that has | substantial revenue. Even consumer office brings in half of | what Xbox does. | | Microsoft is making the right moves here slowly shifting away | from hardware (no profit) into software in the gaming space, | but it's going to take some more time to do so. | | Potentially it makes more sense to drop xcloud (huge black | hole for the next ~10 years), to adhere to CMA's claims of | them dominating the cloud gaming space, so they can continue | with Game Pass (the part that actually matters for Xbox). | that_guy_iain wrote: | My personal opinion it it really stops Microsoft being able to | fully compete with Sony. Sony did a good job of buying up game | studios to make PlayStation exclusive games. Microsoft tries to | get into the game and it appears at first glance they're | prevented. | shubb wrote: | Remember that time meta set up a free vpn app with no meta | branding so they could monitor traffic and upcoming rival apps | in real time to copy their features and neuter them? | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onavo | | Onavo vpn | cubefox wrote: | Note that Microsoft has an extremely high operating margin of | 40%, which indicates insufficient competition. Even Apple has | "just" 30%. With all that money laying around, they can just | gobble up anything but the biggest fish. | kgwgk wrote: | Different industries have different margins. Apple and | Microsoft are not really comparable businesses. | drawfloat wrote: | You have to take quite a narrow view of the business world | to say Apple and Microsoft aren't comparable. They might | have different products, but it's not like Apple is a | greengrocer. | kgwgk wrote: | 80% of Apple's revenue is from selling products and 20% | from services. | | The gross margins on those segments are completely | different - twice as large for services. | | Microsoft reports three segments with roughly the same | size and similar margins. | ubermonkey wrote: | Apple is a hardware company. | | Microsoft is almost entirely a software company. | sleepybrett wrote: | xbox, surface, HID devices, hololens, ... microsoft is | TRYING to be a hardware company, they just suck at it. | fauxpause_ wrote: | From a profit margin perspective they are wildly | different. Amazon profits are mostly just AWS. Microsoft | is, I think, driven by their enterprise software. Apple | is, I think, more hardware and App Store. | | We shouldn't expect them to have similar margins. | cubefox wrote: | Nobody said we should, but they have. | safog wrote: | And so it's a meaningless correlation. Telsa has a 30% | margin too. Do you want to lump them along with Apple and | MSFT? | cubefox wrote: | This source says 15%: | https://companiesmarketcap.com/tesla/operating-margin/ | edgyquant wrote: | The entire argument behind capitalism is that high margins | attract competition that drives those margins down towards | zero. If that isn't happening, it's due to an environment | that isn't competitive (e.g. too high a barrier to entry.) | birdyrooster wrote: | If the opposite were true, that low margins attract | competition, then the margins would increase towards | 100%. How do you tell if these companies are going | towards 100% or 0%? Wouldn't we need to see a change over | time? How do you account for businesses which are | acquired during that time which affect their margins? | 1980phipsi wrote: | In the economic model of perfect competition, price | equals marginal cost, so margins will be zero, as you | say. Though you don't explicitly argue it, it is worth | making clear that capitalism doesn't mean that the | perfect competition model will always hold for all | markets. There are plenty of reasons why monopolistic | competition could occur, even in a strawman version of | capitalism. People could pay attention to branding, for | instance. Firms that spend more on branding might be able | to maintain higher margins. So even in the strawman | capitalism, margins could be high for reasons other than | a lack of competition. | | In the real world the technology industry does tend to | have higher margins than other industries. There might be | perfectly normal explanations for that, such as network | effects, but there are also government policies that have | the effect of reducing competition. For instance, | intellectual property laws reduce competition in order to | attempt to encourage innovation. The strawman version of | capitalism doesn't exist in the real world. Margins can | remain high for some time. | | That being said, there are competitors for Microsoft's | bread and butter products. If you want an alternative to | Windows, try Linux. If you want an alternative to Office, | try Open Office. For many users, however, they get a | better experience with the Microsoft products than these | alternatives, even though they are free. Microsoft has to | keep making their products better than the alternatives | or people will use others (though there are costs of | switching and network effects that mean that MS probably | doesn't need to have the absolute best product on the | market in order for customers to keep using them). | cubefox wrote: | Microsoft has no real competitor for Office 365, it's | basically free money for them. | Spivak wrote: | Realistically the competition is "not buying it." Nothing | in o365 is business critical until you buy into the | Microsoft world and make them so. They have solid | competitors in every vertical and "but <alternative> | isn't as good" is overblown since outside of Office and | managing Windows (which is a problem of your own making) | they're not best-in-class for much. People vastly prefer | Dropbox and Slack when it's on offer. Their offerings are | attractive because they're good enough and cheap. If you | don't buy into overbearing Windows IT administration | world, pick any other email provider, and buy Office | licenses ad-hoc for people who care and everyone else | gets LibreOffice you can just pretend they don't exist. | | Unless you go out of your way to buy cheap laptops the | difference between macbooks and your favorite dell | business longitude isn't as bad as you think. | ukuina wrote: | True for larger companies, but a whole bunch of SMBs use | Google Workspace, and some larger players have both | subscriptions. | mbernstein wrote: | Just to note - you're talking about economic profit | (subtracting out opportunity cost) not accounting profit, | which is what is being measured in these cases. | edgyquant wrote: | Just because we can't guarantee a perfectly competitive | market doesn't mean the government can't try to ensure | one. E.g. you mention Linux as a competitor to windows, | yet the government itself is a huge buyer of windows and | Microsoft products in general. A role of government | should be setting up and ensuring as close to perfectly | competitive markets as possible. | 1980phipsi wrote: | "A role of government should be setting up and ensuring | as close to perfectly competitive markets as | piasible.[sic]" | | Your argument is not that different from people who say | things like "we don't have perfect competition, that is a | market failure, the government must fix it". As I said | before, perfect competition is a model. It isn't some | utopian ideal. The argument as I phrase it is basically | the Nirvana fallacy, and I don't think I'm | mischaracterizing your views. | | I would be more sympathetic to arguments like: "anti- | competitive corporate behavior, like the formation of | monopolies or cartels or other means that reduce output | and raises prices, is not socially optimal. The | government should prevent such behavior" | | In other words, I think you adopt a position that tries | to prove too much. This merger may be bad (or it may be | good, I don't really know), but you don't have to rely on | the argument that if competition isn't perfect then the | government should step in in order to oppose it. That's | not a good argument. | bmicraft wrote: | While I agree that governments shouldn't buy Microsoft | products, it's not really a competition when nobody there | aren't any companies trying to develop or sell linux as a | client os for end-users. | cubefox wrote: | In what industry is a 40% operating margin considered | normal? For comparison, Elsevier has an operating margin of | 37%. | kgwgk wrote: | McDonalds has an operating margin over 40%. And for | Altria is above 50%. And for Visa or CME Group above 60%. | | How are any of those things relevant for the | comparability of the businesses of Apple and Microsoft | anyway? | brookst wrote: | Wait, what? You expect software companies to have low | margins? | | Apple's gross margin is about 40% because the marginal cost | of hardware is somewhat expensive. Software companies | typically gave gross margins of 65% or more, because the | marginal cost of software is zero. | | This is an odd take. | runako wrote: | A focus on margins irrespective of industry leads to | incorrect analysis. For example, look at Comcast, a company | that truly operates as a monopoly/duopoly in most of its | markets. It has an operating margin of 7.6%. | | On the other hand, Exxon Mobil has an operating margin of | nearly 20% despite selling an undifferentiated commodity in a | market with many well-capitalized competitors. (They are not | the only one: ConocoPhillips also sports an operating margin | in the range of 20%.) | | The particulars of a market often drive margins more than | does the competition. | iudqnolq wrote: | That's why the person you're replying to didn't look at | margins irrespective of industry. They compared Microsoft | to Apple. | intelVISA wrote: | I'm all for free market competition etc., although in truth | I've never seen it being 'good for innovation' quite as | people describe. | | The first big player in a space e.g. Atlassian just acquires | any competition and guts it. Sure, that's as free market as | it gets (ignoring anti-trust?) but I don't see the benefit to | the consumer. | | Or, at the other end, as a Canadian, UK taxpayer (and many | others) your money goes to keep afloat gov't subsidized | startups that could never compete in the free market | otherwise... is this beneficial as well? | | I just write ANSI C so maybe it's all lost on me somewhere. | AlchemistCamp wrote: | > _Atlassian just acquires any competition and guts it_ | | Did Atlassian "gut" Trello or Bitbucket? I was using both | before Atlassian acquired them and don't fully understand | what you're talking about. | | Can you elaborate a bit more about your theory? | sefrost wrote: | Which subsidized startups are you referring to? | kypro wrote: | I don't think size is really relevant to the issue at all, it's | simply the general anti-competitive practises that size has | enabled these companies to pursue as aggressively as needed to | crush all competition. What Microsoft is doing with bundling | for example is far more destructive to competition than | acquisitions. | | I think what we need is more nuanced regulation to give smaller | competitors room to compete with big tech products, if this | were the case then who cares about their size or acquisitions? | So long as smaller competitors can always rise and challenge | the big players then size is fine since it would just correlate | to quality and value, rather than an ability and willingness to | crush competition. | | The question to be asking is if a practise is unduly | restricting competition. Having a market share of 95% is fine | in my eyes so long as there is competition. | 29athrowaway wrote: | So what would be better then? Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, Huawei, | Bytedance? | | At least FB doesn't promote stupid challenges that send people | to the hospital with cracked skulls like TikTok. | Hamuko wrote: | Yeah, I cannot see this merger being a net benefit for | consumers. It reads completely like Microsoft just flexing its | financial muscles gained entirely from things unrelated to | gaming, and using that money to take over the industry in the | long-term. | | Sure, they did sign on their games with services like Geforce | Now for 10 years and bring Call of Duty to Nintendo consoles. | However, these all seem like short-term theatre to make | everything look nice. | | First of all, the reason why Microsoft games were not on | Geforce Now was because Microsoft PULLED them from it [1]. And | considering that Activision-Blizzard is (allegedly) worth $69 | billion, I don't believe that they couldn't bring their games | onto Nintendo platforms if they saw a market there. Seems like | Microsoft is just making up imaginary markets to be able to say | "look at all these people who will get Call of Duty because of | US". | | [1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/20/21228792/nvidia- | geforce-n... | gigel82 wrote: | In general I agree with you; but in this particular case, this | is a "win" for Sony who can continue with their vast array of | exclusives unhindered, and a "loss" for gaming customers due to | that. | Waterluvian wrote: | I don't think extra large tech companies are uniquely capable | of any meaningful innovation. Ie. there's no benefit to | everyone by having them exist at that size. | | In fact, I think their size makes them uniquely incapable of | innovation. All they can do is push everyone down to stay on | top. | lotsofpulp wrote: | I imagine hardware innovation these days requires huge | amounts of money. | beebeepka wrote: | But you mostly need the money, not the headcount | lotsofpulp wrote: | Where is the money going to come from? The large tech | companies are the ones with the best cash flows. | beebeepka wrote: | They give the money to smaller teams and swallow them | upon success. Isn't that how it's been working for a | while? | lotsofpulp wrote: | I am confused what we are conversing about. Waterluvian | wrote the big tech companies are not capable of | innovation, so my response was the funding still needs to | come from them. | | Whether or not it is a large group of employees or a | small group of employees doing the innovating is a | separate matter, but the need for huge cash flows is | there (if my assertion is correct). | beebeepka wrote: | Then we agree. I must have missed something as I was | finishing a bottle of 7.5% alcohol beer. | lotsofpulp wrote: | I recently learned about Chimay. | | https://chimay.com/ | kartayyar wrote: | In other words, a shallow big == bad without taking specfic | context into consideration? | | Imo I want competition and choice as a consumer. This basically | sets things up so that consoles become a non competitive market | because Xbox lacks exclusives that Sony has. | AraceliHarker wrote: | Have you seen the press release from CMA? They only mention | cloud gaming and game pass price increase as the reasons to | oppose Microsoft's acquisition of AB, right? | pyrale wrote: | > Edit. Seeing a lot of comments saying UK couldn't function | without Microsoft which kind of supports my point. | | The replies advocating for Microsoft to strong-arm a country | into submission are chilling. | zitterbewegung wrote: | This is especially pertinent to Microsoft which wants video | games for their own hardware while Sony might have exclusives | Destiny 2 is still on all platforms. Not to say that Sony is a | perfect example in every situation and they do have exclusives. | ronnier wrote: | This will make it easier for large Chinese companies to rule | over you that can "snuff out entire startup sectors with loss- | leading products". | 3327 wrote: | [dead] | traceroute66 wrote: | > Edit. Seeing a lot of comments saying UK couldn't function | without Microsoft which kind of supports my point. | | Yup. | | The NHS (UK National Health Service) is Microsoft's biggest | single account for Office/Office365 and probably other stuff | too. | | So I guess add on other parts of UK gov and yeah, "couldn't | function without Microsoft" is not far from the truth. | | I mean, some might argue that the UK government hasn't | functioned much since 2016/Brexit anyway, but that's another | story. :) | Tycho wrote: | Plus, as we saw recently with Twitter, they are massively over | staffed and depriving other companies of workers. | adql wrote: | A lot of people want to see it purely on hope that under MS | Actiblizzard will be less shit of a company. Which is... | optimistic. | AlexandrB wrote: | It's very optimistic. Even under new leadership the creative | talent that Blizzard has lost over the last 10 years is not | coming back. Microsoft themselves aren't particularly good at | picking talent either - see the Halo Infinite/343 Studios | debacle. _Maybe_ there would be less of a push for player- | hostile monetization, but I wouldn 't count on it. The people | who made and executed those decisions at Activision/Blizzard | aren't magically going away either. | bgorman wrote: | The logic doesn't make sense, and Microsoft also doesn't have a | market power advantage here. | | The Xbox Series X/S has been a bit of a boondoggle and Sony is | vastly outselling Microsoft this generation. Not to mention the | existence of Nintendo, Valve and other PC gaming stores. The | argument that this would weaken competition for gaming consoles | is laughable. | | Sony and Nintendo have exclusive games to gain an advantage. | Now an American company wants to do the same thing, and they | are blocked. | | American companies are being put at a competitive disadvantage | due to ridiculous anti-trust interpretations. Basically the CMA | and FTC are trying to prevent any American tech company from | acquiring another tech company for political points at home. | How did we get to this point? | | It is extremely dangerous to throw logic out the window, as | this results in bureaucrats picking winners and losers. | izacus wrote: | > hey wield huge power and can snuff out entire startup sectors | with loss-leading products. | | More importantly, they're becoming complacent and lazy, using | their legal and financial clout to kill competition, not | product improvements. | | This is why China is so scary - their companies have started | being very competitive to US behemoths which have been | buying/killing their competition for decade(s) now. | paganel wrote: | > This is why China is so scary - their companies have | started being very competitive | | When it comes to tech regulation the Chinese authorities have | at least a 2-3 year advantage against the US/UK, notice how | the likes of Alibaba and Tencent have been brought | (relatively) down compared to what was expected of them 5 | years ago. | panick21_ wrote: | Lets all celebrate dictatorships not wanting other powerful | entities in their country. | eunos wrote: | Unironically | paganel wrote: | You make a good point, that is which institution has more | legitimacy inside a de facto authoritarian state? The | state itself and its authoritarian leaders? Or a private | corporation that got so big as to "submerge" the state? | (for the latter case think Samsung and South Korea, if | South Korea had kept its 1970s-1980s state-policies). | izacus wrote: | No, let's all celebrate market competition, the most | critical part of a functioning economy. Chinese companies | aren't competitive due to CCP or authoritarian regime, | but they're competitive because they're the underdogs on | western markets and can't just curbstomp the competition | with lawyers and DRM like US corporations can in their | markets. | | So they're forced to compete on price, quality and | features (to some extent - it's not like they're not | getting daddy Xis helping hand). Just like companies in | other healthy capitalist markets which haven't completely | broke due to consolidation. | mschuster91 wrote: | > Chinese companies aren't competitive due to CCP or | authoritarian regime, but they're competitive because | they're the underdogs on western markets | | China has been accused multiple times of assisting their | companies with absurd amounts of government subsidies | (leading to at least Europe and the US enacting counter | tariffs), as well as using government and private | industrial espionage and hacking campaigns to clone | Western products. | bigbillheck wrote: | What major power doesn't do this? | izacus wrote: | Absolutely, and that's toxic to the market the same way | as US corporate consolidation is. | wesapien wrote: | PRC "progress" was a form of control. CCP basically | handed everyone "rings of power" to rule over them. All | their wealth is meant to be kept inside because that's | control of the nation. Imagine if they didn't have | currency controls, every rich person there would dump the | Yuan for other currencies and overseas real estate. | Meanwhile, all the inflated properties in the PRC will | drop significantly. Unrest or instability is not good for | CCP. | izacus wrote: | Which is all besides the point - the point is: you need | market competition for capitalism to work. As soon as | competition is broken, your economy starts stagnating and | other incumbents start eating away at it. | capableweb wrote: | Countries (or their leadership) can be good and bad at | the same time, for different reasons. | | China - Awful way of treating people, illusion of | democracy, but at least they reign in huge companies. | | US - Democracy but companies wield huge power. Doesn't | seem to care about people's health much. | | Many European countries - Huge focus on caring about | public healthcare, companies under control but innovation | stifled a lot of times | | Same goes for basically every country, and it's important | to be able to see the good and bad at the same time, to | have a bit perspective. No country is 100% good, nor is | any country 100% bad. | pipes wrote: | Kidnapping CEOs who dare speak out against your regime, you | see this as an advantage? | paganel wrote: | In general I don't have much sympathy for the CEOs of | multi-multi-billion-dollar companies, if at all. And | considering the current dire political and economic | climate, including in many Western countries, I think | that that view of mine is shared by many. | barry-cotter wrote: | People like paganel are why you should keep an eye on | politics even if you hate everyone or are basically | satisfied with the status quo. There're always those who | has no problem with political violence as long as the | violent are on their side. Be watchful. | paganel wrote: | I'm going to quote Chateaubriand, talking about the | French of his time: "the French instinctively go where | the power is; they don't love freedom at all; equality | alone is their only idol. And equality and despotism have | secret connections between them. Seen under that light, | Napoleon's rule drew its power from the very hearts of | the French people" (badly translated by me on a small | iPhone while reading Compagnon's _The Antimoderns_ ) | | As such, it isn't me or people thinking like me that you | should fear (i.e. people who quote Chateaubriand to a | total techie stranger on the web), you should fear the | "quintessential" French (or Westerner, in today's age) | that goes "where the power is" by instinct (on this La | Boetie was right centuries ago). That is if you people | really care about your freedom. | pipes wrote: | So which CEOs would you blame for the dire economic | climate? | brookst wrote: | Never confuse morality and efficiency, even when tray ng | to make a moral point. | jjallen wrote: | The methods definitely aren't great but the effects may | be. Although some of the goals the government has are not | really about the populous and more about limiting private | sector power vis a vis the government and not the | populous. | bigbillheck wrote: | As an American I think I and most of my fellow citizens | would be better off if CEOs started getting tossed in | jail. | pipes wrote: | What CEOs do you want sent to jail? And what were their | crimes? | kevingadd wrote: | One idea: PG&E has killed lots of California residents | through neglect, not to mention all the damage caused by | fires that were their responsibility. Someone ought to | pay for that other than the tax payers, if only to make | an example. | bigbillheck wrote: | Let's start here: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_H._Shaw | pipes wrote: | Did he do something criminal or was this a bad accident? | Would you prefer if your government could just decide who | to toss in jail (which is what the CCP does). I'd prefer | I had the right to a trial. Also a judiciary that is | separate to from the rest of government to protect the | population from politically motivated prosecutions. | AlexandrB wrote: | > Did he do something criminal or was this a bad | accident? | | Even is something is an accident, gross negligence is | still a thing and may be criminal depending on the | consequences of said negligence. | capableweb wrote: | Was this proven in one way or another? You speak of it as | it's 100% sure it happened, but I haven't seen anything | but rumors about this, you wouldn't spread hearsay on HN | right? | prewett wrote: | Given that the CCP frequently "disappears" its nationals | that it has some problem with, I think giving the CCP the | benefit of the doubt is unwise and harmful. Given it's | demonstrated pattern over many years, I think we can | safely assume malintent. | | Nothing is 100% sure, anyway, and the CCP does these | things in secret to provide it deniability. | | https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/04/tycoon- | xiao-ji... | | https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/china- | billi... | 015a wrote: | Microsoft is maybe the _only_ big tech organization that | feels like they 're still actively trying to out-innovate | their size. They invested in OpenAI (not acquired; invested) | then weeks later made substantial improvements to Bing. They | made a concept hardware device 10 years ago (the Courier), | then finally made it real (it's not great, but that's beside | the point). They're possibly the single largest funder of | insanely critical open source software projects; Kubernetes, | TypeScript, VSCode, etc. They acquired Github then | practically speaking left them alone to continue being a | really high quality product, while simultaneously investing | in internal direct competitors (Azure DevOps). They released | Loop a few weeks ago; now they're going after Notion. | | You can argue that they're leveraging M365 and their | enterprise contracts to out-innovate smaller competitors like | Slack, Notion, etc. Yeah, ok; I don't love it. But I really | can't help but feel: At least they're doing it. At least | they're releasing new products that don't totally suck. I | literally can't think of one thing Google has released in the | past five years that left a fingerprint on the world. | Facebook is a similar story. Apple is a very different | company, but its not dissimilar: M1 was incredible, but if | you put that aside (because, really, the past three years has | been "M1 Catchup" for them) the iPhone is the same thing it | was four years ago, the iPad is the same, the Watch is the | same, the software is overwhelmingly the same, I guess they | have a new Savings Account (when companies start running out | of ideas to innovate, they turn to financial engineering). | | Microsoft is a cool company, and I'll die on that hill. I'm | not happy with everything they do. I think the entire Windows | division leadership needs to be gutted and replaced, and they | need to think long and hard about what Windows looks like for | the next 10 years (and maybe they're already doing that!). | But putting that aside, even considering Microsoft's very | light anti-competitiveness, I'd take them over the rest of | big tech nowadays. They're mostly just lame ducks. | AlexandrB wrote: | > I think the entire Windows division leadership needs to | be gutted and replaced, and they need to think long and | hard about what Windows looks like for the next 10 years | (and maybe they're already doing that!). | | I think the reason Windows is getting crappier is the same | reason that Microsoft is doing everything else in your list | - they're transitioning to an SaaS/services company and | leveraging their existing strengths/monopolies to elbow | their way into various SaaS markets (see: Microsoft Teams | shipping "free" with O365). Changing windows to respect | users again would require changing the whole corporate | culture you are praising, not just the Windows division. In | my opinion what's happening to Windows is entirely | consistent with everything else Microsoft is doing, not | some aberration. | TheKarateKid wrote: | Microsoft tried moving away from legacy Windows with UWP. | The long term plan was probably for UWP to replace core | Windows with that. | | Windows will be around for at least a few more decades | until everything is a web app. But leadership under Nadella | knows the clock is ticking and that's why they've moved | their focus to making Office 365 (Office/OneDrive/Teams) | and Azure their bread and butter. | enedil wrote: | Kubernetes is from Google. | 015a wrote: | Its not Google's project anymore. They're still the | largest contributor, but Red Hat, VMWare, and Microsoft | are all massive contributors [1] | | [1] https://k8s.devstats.cncf.io/d/9/companies- | table?orgId=1&var... | izacus wrote: | That's all great, but... | | > Microsoft is a cool company, and I'll die on that hill. | | "cool" companies stagnate. Remember, Microsoft was that | "cool" company who left us with rottin IE6 until | competition came. | | So let me channel Ballmer, leader of said cool company: | COMPETITION, COMPETITION, COMPETITION, COMPETITION, | COMPETITION, COMPETITION. That makes our world better. | ricardobayes wrote: | While morally I can agree with it, from a pragmatic and gaming | perspective I think this is terrible since it will 100% lead to | some games not being available in the UK. | kmlx wrote: | > it will 100% lead to some games not being available in the UK | | beyond the hype and the takes, it's probably 0%. | | > FTC suing to block Microsoft's $69bn Activision Blizzard | acquisition | | what are they going to do, ban games from the US? | ricardobayes wrote: | Why? What other realistic scenario do you see playing out | here? In my mind there is no question the merger of the US | companies will go through. They will either create some other | entities to make this ruling work or simply make Activision | games unavailable in the UK. | lunchladydoris wrote: | Why? Revenge? I would think that all parties involved prefer | money over revenge. | mrkwse wrote: | Well it depends on how Microsoft's accountants manage the | maths: | | Hypothetically, if MS + Activision - UK > MS + UK - | Activision (assuming it's only blocked in UK), it's plausible | that Microsoft withdraws from UK to pursue its business with | the merger everywhere else. The UK is a decent sized market, | but it's far from the biggest. | DashAnimal wrote: | There is another possibility here, which is MS + Activision | - Cloud Gaming > MS + Cloud Gaming. | | I wonder if MSFT is considering that at all. They obviously | have the numbers, but I wouldn't be surprised if cloud | gaming hasn't seen the growth they expected and it makes | sense to kill it entirely. | ricardobayes wrote: | That was also the thought process of many smaller companies | to implement EU data privacy rules. It was easier to stop | serving the market instead of complying. | ricardobayes wrote: | I personally don't see how it can happen but of course I'm | not a corporate lawyer. The parent companies merge so they | might keep up some local branch to support the UK market, but | how would that be connected to the parent company? What level | of separation is needed, in the UK's eyes? Will the UK | Activision branch workers allowed to work with Microsoft US? | Or would that be seen as evading the ruling? | latency-guy2 wrote: | I've been petty enough to cut off quite big deals in my life, | I wouldn't expect the moral outrage company that Microsoft | harbors to not do something similar. As we know, MSFT did | remove Twitter from their ad network due to API pricing | changes, price of business is cheap compared to the benefits | they got there, so that's quite a ridiculous cut of spending | to say the least. | | Then again, we know they operate in countries fundamentally | opposed to their "corporate values". So who knows. | dzonga wrote: | maybe the CMA worded it wrongly in terms of cloud gaming. | | but the gist of it remains the same. Microsoft wants to weaken | Sony's exclusive moat by buying their own big property to make it | an exclusive down the line, thereby either increasing the value | proposition of Game Pass, or Xbox cloud gaming anywhere. | | by now Microsoft already knows they're not going to catch up to | Sony or Nintendo in terms of console sales. | | game pass is probably one of the best deals in entertainment | though, and by that I mean all forms of entertainment whether | sports, film, music etc. | Laaas wrote: | How come the UK has the ability to block two American companies | from merging? Why can't they just ignore the CMA? | kmlx wrote: | > If the merging parties were to ignore the CMA's decision they | could face significant legal and financial consequences. For | example, the CMA could fine the companies, force them to unwind | the merger, or take legal action to enforce its decision. | Additionally, ignoring the CMA's decision could damage the | companies' reputation and relationships with UK customers, | regulators, and stakeholders. | etempleton wrote: | How does the CMA reconcile the fact that Sony also has a cloud | streaming service and it is larger than Microsoft? If this makes | Xbox too big doesn't it mean that PlayStation is also too big? | And how is anyone to compete against Sony if they can't grow | their own exclusive content? | htag wrote: | > And how is anyone to compete against Sony if they can't grow | their own exclusive content? | | 1. Xbox Live/Game Pass is still a better service, and one of | the best deals in gaming. | | 2. Microsoft already owns (or has owned in the past) tons of | gaming IP. Halo, Minecraft, and Bethesda are huge names. | Microsoft Game Studios was used to publish some fantastic games | in the past. | | 3. Cloud streaming is largely theoretical at this point. | There's potential, but will customers choose a $20-40/mo | subscription instead of buying a ~$500 console every ~5 years. | I'm doubtful. The math says it's a bad deal for console gamers | and worse performance for the top 1% of the market. Sony's lead | here probably isn't the killing blow for Xbox. | | 4. Microsoft could always make it's own games, instead of | acquiring them. | | 5. Microsoft has some benefits with owning both platforms Xbox | and Windows that they have never been able to fully capitalize | on. | | I own an Xbox, a PS5, a Switch, a Steam Deck, a high powered | gaming desktop, several arcade games, and basically all the | retro consoles. | etempleton wrote: | > Cloud streaming is largely theoretical at this point. | There's potential, but will customers choose a $20-40/mo | subscription instead of buying a ~$500 console every ~5 | years. I'm doubtful. The math says it's a bad deal for | console gamers and worse performance for the top 1% of the | market. Sony's lead here probably isn't the killing blow for | Xbox.But that is | | But that is the CMAs argument. That this will make Microsoft | too dominant in the cloud streaming space. | rvz wrote: | Very unsurprising. [0] This is just basic horizontal integration | and this is the right decision to block this deal. | | [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33518102 | samwillis wrote: | It's important to take this decision in the context of the CMA's | wider investigation into "Mobile browsers and cloud gaming" | | https://www.gov.uk/cma-cases/mobile-browsers-and-cloud-gamin... | | They intended to investigate the cloud/mobile gaming and App | Stores, plus look at mobile browser competition (or lack their of | on iOS). | | Sadly Apple, clearly feeling threatened by it, forced it to be | stopped on a fairly stupid technicality. Hopefully they will be | able to relaunch it soon. | | https://www.reuters.com/technology/apple-wins-appeal-against... | | If this decision re Microsoft+Activision is anything to go by, | the wider investigation and potential regulation coming from it | could have been very impactful. | rjh29 wrote: | [flagged] | shubb wrote: | Probably good for Microsoft- the acquisition was agreed at bubble | prices, and driven by copying a business that hasn't worked out. | | SEA Ltd had great promise in 2021 - they made a hyper popular | game and used those revenues and user mindshare to branch out | into ecomerce, financial services and all sorts. It was seem as | an important part to cradle snatch Gen A before they signed up to | meta and amazon. | | With metaverse ideas also peaking it seemed like a must do | strategy for every conglomerate to get into games. Amazon did | too! | | In 2022, SEA and Meta are not healthy. Thier plan to invest | heavily and get paid later does not make sense in a higher rate | environment where the payoff is less than you'd make saving your | money in bonds. | | Microsoft has a long term interest in games, but it doesn't need | to supercharge it. There are better uses for the 70 billion. | CodeWriter23 wrote: | Cloud Gaming is always going to fall on its face, like Stadia, | for one simple reason. Latency. It's bad enough when latency | interacts with multi-kilobyte telemetry messages in the client- | rendered model. Cloud Gaming replaces that messaging with pumping | multiple megabytes of video data to one's screen. | jeremyjh wrote: | Do you have a lot of experience with this? I have used GeForce | Now to play Fortnite and other games for years and I think it | works great. I've also used PS Now to play Bloodborne which is | very sensitive to feel and timing and that works well too, it | actually plays better there than it did on the original PS4. | dopeboy wrote: | Admittedly I was coming in with the same perspective as OP so | I wasn't aware you could smoothly play triple A titles via | streaming. No catch, no hang ups? | smolder wrote: | The catch as stated is slightly worse input latency. You | can still win games. It might feel fine to you. But even a | practically imperceptible 10-20ms of extra input lag | compared to the gamers with their own hardware puts you at | an unavoidable statistical disadvantage. You will be 10ms | too late with aiming your shots some percentage of the | time. | beebeepka wrote: | What about latency, though. Fortnite may be possible but | Quake or StarCraft? Sure, on the lowest of the lowest of | tiers. People used to say 24 fps was great, too. Only took us | 20 years for the masses to catch up. | | Anything below 120 feels sluggish to me. At 60 fps local, I | move my mouse and the picture is changed after what feels | like an eternity. Can't imagine cloud rendered 60 being | better. In fact, it's guaranteed to be worse. | planede wrote: | There is already inherent latency in networked games. Cloud | gaming could somewhat compensate by having the servers | running the game clients close to the game hosts. | CodeWriter23 wrote: | The display still has to be rendered on the player's | screen for them to react to it. Cloud gaming only | increases the volume of data coming down to the client so | it seems logical any latency issues would be amplified, | even if using a top video codec. | beebeepka wrote: | I am talking about input latency. The cloud solutions | cannot compensate for it unless they start rendering all | possible frames all the time which makes zero sense, | nevermind being impractical to borderline impossible | right now. | | Read carefully gpm's comment, or, I don't know, start | playing games? It really helps | gpm wrote: | Fast paced networked games typically solved that by | running a local simulation ahead of the server. The | button you clicked looks depressed the instant you click | it, not once the server knows about it. In FPS style | games your character typically starts walking forwards | the instant you press the forwards key, and you shoot the | instant you click, not when the server finds out about | it. | | This has weird effects. Each player is actually playing | in a slightly different world. You might see yourself | hitting something and they might see themselves blocking | the shot, and only one of you can be right. The different | worlds will retroactively correct themselves to be | consistent in some form or another (depending on the game | it might be that the person shooting is always correct, | or it might be that the person blocking is always | correct, or it might be that whoever's packets reached | the server first is correct, or really some complex | combination of all of the above). The weird effects are | worthwhile because people are really sensitive to latency | in response to their inputs. | | Even in slow placed games that use simpler networking | models, I'm pretty sure the UI is basically always local. | For example you might press the button that says "do the | thing" and see the button style into it's "pressed | state", but the server decides that the thing doer is | dead before that button press reaches the server, so it | ignores that button press. | chandler5555 wrote: | moving the latency to the player client just makes | everything feel terrible. its like playing in mud because | your actions take 50ms-100ms of time to show up on your | screen | HDThoreaun wrote: | The most competitive games in existence are all online games | that suffer from the same latency issues a cloud gaming service | would. They seem to get along fine even though they require | much more precise movement than the types of games that | gamepass users would play. | beebeepka wrote: | But moving these games to the cloud is adding more problems | on top without fixing any of the latency issues | MikusR wrote: | There are games that on Geforce now ultimate tier have lower | latency than playing locally on console. | CodeWriter23 wrote: | *reported latency | | Not saying reported is unequal to actual on that system, just | pointing out the reality, a cloud gaming vendor is saying | "this is out latency" | jerrygenser wrote: | Will this prevent the merger from happening in other markets too? | jalev wrote: | No. It's only relevant in the UK. If other regulators want to | go forward with it then they can. | paol wrote: | That's not how it works. Companies with global presence (like | these 2) need to have regulatory permission in every | jurisdiction where they operate. If a jurisdiction forbids | the merger then they would no longer be able to operate | there. | | Consequently any regulator in charge of a sufficiently | important market has de-facto veto power globally. | paganel wrote: | And if anything I don't expect EU regulators to be more | lenient than the British ones. | M2Ys4U wrote: | Have the Commission _approved_ this takeover, or have | they just not made a decision yet? | | Because it could just be a matter of the CMA being the | first to say no... | drumhead wrote: | No, but the EU and US regulators will look at the Uk's | reasoning for blocking the bid and it may influence their own | decisions. | dustedcodes wrote: | Honest question, how does this deal make any financial sense to | Microsoft if the plan wasn't eventually to implement anti- | competitive practices much later down the line? Just buying | Activision and then continue to run it as if they were neutral | surely makes no sense. That's clearly not why they want to buy | them. | | I am glad that this deal has been blocked. In fact Microsoft is | already too big. It shows in their products. | Hamuko wrote: | Microsoft said that it wouldn't have an incentive to withold | games from other platforms in 2021 when they acquired ZeniMax. | | > _" [Microsoft] submits that Microsoft has strong incentives | to continue making ZeniMax games available for rival consoles | (and their related storefronts)."_ | | 2023/01: Hi-Fi Rush is exclusive to Xbox and Microsoft Windows. | | 2023/05: Redfall is exclusive to Xbox and Microsoft Windows. | | 2023/09: Starfield is exclusive to Xbox and Microsoft Windows. | | So yeah, I'm gonna err on the side of "they'd probably restrict | a lot of games afterwards". Maybe some big existing properties | like Call of Duty might be available, much like Minecraft, but | I don't foresee Microsoft-ABK being a win for competition. | etempleton wrote: | Microsoft also owns Minecraft and they put that everywhere. For | Microsoft it is all about GamePass. They want to be the Netflix | of games, but to do that they need a large library of games on | their service that people want to play to make it a no-brainer | subscription. | dustedcodes wrote: | > They want to be the Netflix of games, but to do that they | need a large library of games | | You don't need to buy Activision for that to happen. Netflix | hasn't bought Universal or MGM. They purchase the rights to | offer movies on their platform and at the same time produce | their own content via their own production. Also Netflix | doesn't own the hardware. That makes it very different to | Microsoft, who own the hardware, the platform which you speak | of (game pass) and also wants to own the production | companies. This stinks of anti-competitive behaviour from | miles if you ask me and is nothing like Netflix. | caskstrength wrote: | > You don't need to buy Activision for that to happen. | Netflix hasn't bought Universal or MGM. They purchase the | rights to offer movies on their platform and at the same | time produce their own content via their own production. | | I think Blizzard infamously refused to release their games | on any other online distribution platform besides their in- | house battle.net launcher. Don't know how it is with other | Activision titles, but the only way to get Diablo 4 in MS | library of games is apparently to buy the whole company. | bagacrap wrote: | Netflix isn't very profitable. If you have to license | content then the content owner is going to continuously | squeeze you for as much of your profit as possible | (especially when direct competitors crop up --- and there's | no shortage of Hulus out there trying to eat Netflix's | cake). | etempleton wrote: | You do if you want day and date releases. And Amazon bought | MGM and Netflix pays for exclusives regularly. | | The video game space has always been about exclusives. | Nintendo publishes no where else. Sony just started to | publish on PC for some games. What is the difference? | AmericanChopper wrote: | > how does this deal make any financial sense to Microsoft if | the plan wasn't eventually to implement anti-competitive | practices much later down the line? | | It makes perfect sense. These huge companies have a lot of | unused capital, which they have to find productive uses for. | Acquisitions in markets they already have competencies in are a | rather obvious way to make use of it. | | Internal R&D and launching new products is the best use of this | capital (as it's the most tax efficient), but it's difficult to | infinitely scale that spending efficiently (but acquisitions | can effectively be one way of scaling this over the long term). | | The alternative is dividends, or the much more tax efficient | stock buy back. But long term, acquisitions are better for | shareholders. | coldpie wrote: | > how does this deal make any financial sense to Microsoft if | the plan wasn't eventually to implement anti-competitive | practices much later down the line | | I'm also not a fan of this deal, but I think this is a good | question worth an answer. I think you'd need to suggest exactly | what practices they may want to implement. | | For example it's not hard to see why they would continue to | want to put COD on PlayStation systems: that brings in a ton of | money. You can imagine a world where yanking it helps Xbox, but | I don't think that's an inevitable result; would they really | want to give up $X Billion in revenue from PlayStation if that | only brings in $Y Million in new Xbox sales? Obviously it all | depends on the numbers, but it's an example of why they can | still benefit from this transaction without implementing anti- | competitive practices. | [deleted] | gtm1260 wrote: | Does anyone else think its crazy to unwind these acquisitions | years afterwards? Where the companies have already been operating | as a single entity for years? | endianswap wrote: | What are you talking about? The deal hasn't closed yet AND was | only announced a year ago. | runako wrote: | Microsoft has to be calculating whether to (temporarily) pull out | from the UK as a result of this. | | Their sales there are in the neighborhood of $5B annually (~2% of | their overall run rate). Add a guess of $500m for Activision's UK | sales for a total of $5.5B. | | The hit to sales would be temporary; the UK government would | eventually capitulate as their citizens revolt at not being able | to buy Windows or Office. (Yes, there are other options but a | sudden loss of access to Microsoft products would be | devastating.) | | Based on the numbers, it's not clear to me that the UK has the | leverage to stop this merger. If they were still part of the EU, | this calculus wouldn't begin to make sense. | seatac76 wrote: | MS cannot possibly do this, it would mean giving up any | business with NATO. It's insane to me that a game studio | acquisition gets such emotionally charged responses. | runako wrote: | > MS cannot possibly do this | | They obviously can. They don't operate in every country in | the world, and there is nothing forcing them to operate in | the UK. It would be irresponsible not to consider a move like | this weighed against the relatively small contribution the UK | makes to their global revenue. | | > giving up any business with NATO | | I am suggesting that they have to be weighing temporary loss | of the entire UK market; losing direct purchases by NATO | would presumably be smaller than the entire UK market. | | This isn't emotional at all. I am just suggesting that it has | to be something they are considering as an option for | completing the merger that their executives believe is | important. Relatively speaking: they are willing to spend 14 | years of their UK sales to buy Activision, so presumably they | think it's important. | segasaturn wrote: | I highly doubt that Microsoft is going to go nuclear to acquire | ABK. I don't think this merger is do or die for them. It would | also do irreparable harm to their brands, including the UK Xbox | owners who would no longer be able to play their games! | justeleblanc wrote: | Don't be absurd. Microsoft and AB decided themselves to make | their deal conditional on the CMA's approval. They're not going | to pull out of the UK market. I'm amazed that this kind of take | rises to the top of the comments. | d3ckard wrote: | That would be a country/corpo war and too cyberpunk to my | taste. I don't agree with the decision, but this is not the way | to solve this. | runako wrote: | That's the interesting thing here. Unlike recent regulatory | actions by the EU, there doesn't appear to be a solution | provided other than to let the UK CMA make business strategy | decisions for Microsoft. | | I don't think it is necessarily how Microsoft will proceed, | but it would be irresponsible for them not to consider such | an approach. | | I also do think the CMA is overplaying its hand; sooner or | later they will make a decision like this and a company will | pull out of their market. Alone, they simply don't have the | economic heft to regulate global companies domiciled outside | their borders. | gigel82 wrote: | No. | | But I'd absolutely love to see one of the big guys try this, it | would be super interesting to watch. | worrycue wrote: | > their citizens revolt at not being able to buy Windows or | Office. | | The UK will probably allow those to be sold. | | If MS refuse to sell them, the politicians will just spin it as | Microsoft vs the UK and get everyone worked up over | "sovereignty". Maybe even fund and promote a standardised Linux | Desktop distribution to replace Windows ... which has a chance | to spread in popularity worldwide. | | Either way, Microsoft might be jeopardising future sales of its | products in the UK by going on the offensive. It might also | make other countries' governments warily of the company and | impacting sales in those countries too. | | It would leaves the market wide open for their competitors to | claim without any resistance from Microsoft as well. | runako wrote: | > The UK will probably allow those to be sold. | | Fair! Playing it out...if the UK allowed Microsoft products | to be sold, but not products from the gaming division, that | also might cause consumer unrest. Other than fines and/or | preventing sales, there aren't all that many sanctions | available to regulators in a situation like this. | | > Maybe even fund and promote a standardised Linux Desktop | distribution to replace Windows | | I'm old enough to have gone all-in on Microsoft alternatives | around the turn of the century. European countries have been | pushing initiatives like this for decades without meaningful | results. Maybe this time it would work? | | > It also leaves the market wide open for their competitors | to claim without resistance from Microsoft. | | This could be good overall for the long term of the software | ecosystem, although the sudden transition would be | detrimental for UK citizens in the near-to-medium term. | worrycue wrote: | > but not products from the gaming division, that also | might cause consumer unrest | | Some people will complain. Others will just buy a | PlayStation. Sony can even "sweeten the deal" by giving | discounts on the console and maybe talk publishers into | allow people to swap their Xbox copy of a game for the PS | version for maybe a small fee, and come off looking like a | hero. | | Basically if the Xbox gets banned in the UK. It's pretty | much free real estate for Sony and Nintendo to move in. | | > I'm old enough to have gone all-in on Microsoft | alternatives around the turn of the century. European | countries have been pushing initiatives like this for | decades without meaningful results. Maybe this time it | would work? | | Frankly, no one has really made a focus effort to replace | Windows. It's more trouble than it's worth. But if MS | declares war on the UK and Windows is out of the picture | ... and once the ball gets rolling and should a | standardized Linux Desktop get critical mass, there is a | chance it can become an viable competitor to Windows | worldwide. | [deleted] ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-04-26 23:01 UTC)