Microsoft To Buy Activision Blizzard for $68.7 Billion

[MoanaLisa]

It is. They never said it's on sale. How do you know there would not be a higher bidder if it was public?

Think what you like. Companies are acquired all the time without a public bidding process. The only times it becomes a public thing is when a company announces that it wants to be bought or in the case of a hostile takeover.

I understand you think that Microsoft is a monopoly in the game space. That's wrong but I don't expect you to believe it. And again, there was no 'bidding' as such. People sat down and worked out a deal. No one is legally forced to announce they're in negotiations to be acquired or merged. It's not how it works.

[MrLachyG]

Don't hold your breath. The DOJ will likely have something to say about this.

They’re not a monopoly so it should be fine yeah?

[rhorle]

There was no bidding process. There was no first; just 1 bidder.

Right. That is what happens when something is free to be sold how it wants. You can call up X person and make them an offer. So it is a good example of a free market. X company paid Y company for a price both agreed upon. You don't have a solid grasp of free market though I can certainly understand wanting a system that has strict rules and requirements for a "fair" process to everyone.

[DragonsBeard]

I think WoW as an IP still has some value. With the right leadership and development, a few good expansions under their belts, you would be surprised at how quickly memories of bad times fade.

WoW still holds a lot of value. So many people think the game is beyond repair when realistically, it's not even that far from being a great game again. Every single complaint everyone has is of Minor issues. The problem being that there are so many of them it just looks worse than it really is.

If They connected it to GamePass in some way, like a $20 for a GamePass sub that includes a WoW sub, which would bring WoW players to GamePass, because what's an extra $5 for a bunch of other games to try and to GamePass Subs, what's another $5 to check out WoW. Win Win there. Then just clean up the 3 layers of shit on the game and people will come back.

As for the simple fixes, Cut the Player Power from Covenants, Torgast, and The Maw, would reduce the frustrations of endless grinding, Put Sockets back on gear by default would allow people to adjust and set up gear returning value to JC. Then let Covenants, Torgast, and The Maw stand on it's own with mounts, pets, and Xmog. People would be a lot happier to play. It's not that people don't want to play anymore, it's that the game is designed to actively discourage you from playing with how much crap you have to do just to keep up.

I know i'll get asked, so what to do with Conduits. Let them stand on their own. No rep grind, you just have them and you socket what you get. Legendaries, already crafted base item. Change the currency to Honor or whatever you get from doing Dungeons (been a bit, don't remember if we got Valor points back or not lol) Then you get them by doing the content you would be doing for gear anyway. And for the Maw gems, already said. Just let gear have sockets by default.

Also, just let people get flying easier.. No need to put it behind 2 patches and a massive grind.

All the rewards are already there, it's the forced into everything that ruins the fun. Sorry, know you didn't ask for my rant. Just think the game isn't completely destroyed. People want to play. It's just not fun to be forced into doing everything just to keep up in base level content.

[MoanaLisa]

Right. That is what happens when something is free to be sold how it wants. You can call up X person and make them an offer. So it is a good example of a free market. X company paid Y company for a price both agreed upon. You don't have a solid grasp of free market though I can certainly understand wanting a system that has strict rules and requirements for a "fair" process to everyone.

It should be noted that there's nothing to prevent say, Amazon, to announce tomorrow that they will engage in a hostile takeover of ATVI and offer $100/share or something like that. There are very few companies that can raise nearly $70 billion dollars for a cash deal but Amazon would be one, Disney another. That sort of thing can happen anytime before the deal finally closes. I don't think anyone expects that but it's possible. If you really want to shiver, Facebook would have that sort of cash to make a big splashy entrance into the gaming space. Again, not expected but not impossible either.

[sunxsera]

I hope Mike and the boys at dreamhaven will make some great games. We need them in these dark times we're currently in.

Ohh .. that Mike that looked away for years while shit happened?
That Mike who built the foundation for the downfall of Blizzard?

Tell me more about this saviour in these dark times.

[bowlink]

Its funny, BFA predicted this corperate take over.
Jastor Gallywix gets ousted, and Gazlowe who is a steamweedle took over

Though seeing AB's current track record they might have forgot he's a steamweedle rather than a bildgewater.

[arkanon]

There was no bidding process. There was no first; just 1 bidder.

This is a disgusting monopoly of 1 bidder.

First, that is not what a monopoly is - any entity or individual had the right at any stage to present an offer.

And yes, there was a first, and you have NO IDEA if it was Microsoft, or if they were the 2nd, 5th, or 9th offer presented.

[T-34]

Uhhhh what? I'm going to need a link to wherever you saw WoW brings in $1 billion a year because I can't find anything to support that.

In 2020 Blizzard had a revenue of 1,9 billion US$, with a operating income (that is before taxes) of 693 million US$.
We only have the numbers for the first 3 quarters for 2021
https://investor.activision.com/stat...8-fd27f34775af
How much of that is WoW nobody knows as Acti_Blizz has never given out data for the performance of specific products, only for Activision, King and Blizzard respectively.
By the way the exact same goes for any other game company...
But my guess is that WoW makes out (far) more than half of Blizzard's business, so a revenue of 1 billion US$ seems a conservative guess for me.
In 2020 Microsoft had a revenue of 143 billion US$
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/c...rosoft/revenue
In 2020 Microsoft had a operating income (that is before taxes) of 52,95 billion US$
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/c...erating-income

So 0,63/53*100 we get that Blizzard's operating income is 1,18% of Microsoft's operating income, or with other words Microsoft's operating income in 2020 was about 80 times as big as Blizzard's.

[epigramx]

Companies are acquired all the time without a public bidding process.

You appear to imply that I think that it is illegal; I do not think it is illegal; I think it's kinda fishy and potentially not good for us.

What actually this process implies is: that Activision probably selected Microsoft as their buyer without advertising to others.

Activision could claim "but we think it's good if MS is the buyer" but that raises questions like: "why exactly is MS the best?".

- - - Updated - - -

nothing to prevent say, Amazon, to announce tomorrow that they will engage in a hostile takeover of ATVI and offer $100/share or something like that.

That would be a meaningless attempt, because the Activision acquisition is signed and for practical purposes:it already belongs to Microsoft for that sort of thing (notice half of the reporters already say "Microsoft bought Activision" even if in legal terms it's not completely).

In simple words: it would be like Amazon attacking Microsoft which is a bigger game.

[MoanaLisa]

Uhhhh what? I'm going to need a link to wherever you saw WoW brings in $1 billion a year because I can't find anything to support that.

This is speculation for sure but if WoW isn’t doing a billion per year and Blizzard revenues come in somewhere around two billion what games are making up the difference? The Diablo II remake did pretty well, ok. It wasn’t released until later in the year so that’s one thing. Hearthstone and Overwatch especially together seem unlikely to be doing a lot. I don’t get the sense that everything not-WoW is doing a billion a year and that still leaves WoW at about the billion mark. So if you doubt that WoW isn’t doing well, then where is the rest of that two billion coming from?

[epigramx]

This is speculation for sure but if WoW isn’t doing a billion per year and Blizzard revenues come in somewhere around two billion what games are making up the difference? The Diablo II remake did pretty well, ok. It wasn’t released until later in the year so that’s one thing. Hearthstone and Overwatch especially together seem unlikely to be doing a lot. I don’t get the sense that everything not-WoW is doing a billion a year and that still leaves WoW at about the billion mark. So if you doubt that WoW isn’t doing well, then where is the rest of that two billion coming from?

I heard Overwatch was pretty big from the start, e.g. I just googled it had 5 mil a month in 2021 which might be beating even WoW.

BUT: let's also not forget that it's pretty fuzzy; battle.net has multiple games; a lot of players play multiple of those games.

[MoanaLisa]

I heard Overwatch was pretty big from the start, e.g. I just googled it had 5 mil a month in 2021 which might be beating even WoW.

OK. $5 million a month is $60 million for a year. If WoW is doing less, say $50 million a year just to make up a number that’s $110 million. So where is the other $1.8 BILLION coming from? An overpriced remake of Diablo II? Hearthstone? I don’t see it.

[Mojo03]

Jeff Kaplan started working at blizzard in 2002.... id say that's original blizzard. Anyone that came over from Everquest is probably original blizzard considering how old that game is. I was just thinking of people that were there during creation of vanilla wow.

They had 6 massively popular games come out before WoW that he had nothing to do with.

That’s not even including their 3 console games (which, I think did pretty well, but not as popular)

So no, he’s definitely not original Blizzard.

[Merie]

So the solution to gross misconduct was to give the guy responsible 200 mil to go away. That'll show em'.

[Gadzooks]

It should be noted that there's nothing to prevent say, Amazon, to announce tomorrow that they will engage in a hostile takeover of ATVI and offer $100/share or something like that. There are very few companies that can raise nearly $70 billion dollars for a cash deal but Amazon would be one, Disney another. That sort of thing can happen anytime before the deal finally closes. I don't think anyone expects that but it's possible. If you really want to shiver, Facebook would have that sort of cash to make a big splashy entrance into the gaming space. Again, not expected but not impossible either.

Apple could easily double the offer tomorrow, they're sitting on mountains of cash. And it would be an interesting purchase for them, as their game portal doesn't have much going for it. But people have been speculating about Apple buying movie studios and such, and Apple seems content to sit on their cash, so far.

I read today that the deal is far along enough contractually that if the deal falls through, MS will have to pay a break fee of 3 billion if they are blocked by the SEC. Break fees are also implied for ATVI if they were to stop the sale and take a higher price from someone else.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/m...on-2022-01-18/

However, a source familiar with the matter said Microsoft would pay a $3 billion break-fee if the deal falls through, suggesting it is confident of winning antitrust approval.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/breakfee.asp

So, a new deal would be on which side decides 3 billion is a good price to pay for another agreement. It sounds like papers have been signed, and they're past the point of no return without significant penalty.

[cozzri]

Literally Blizzard's biggest franchise. And Wow expansions are self-financing. Did you think Blizzard had to go ask Daddy Kotick for money whenever they wanted to make a WoW expansion??

Yes, actually. That’s why the expansions have been getting scaled back in quality and scope. Money goes straight to the top; and they budget how much gets reinvested and that’s what the developers have to work with. I honestly think garrisons in some iteration would still be a part of the game if the budget allowed for development of continuous systems going forward. Currently, the team adds a system and abandons it for the next because they don’t have the finances to keep that snapshot of the game in ongoing development. One could argue development bloat, but at the end of the day, adding and cutting these systems so quickly is negatively affecting player retention; all your hard work is stripped away. No player housing because they don’t have the financial capability to do it within the budget they are given.

[MrLachyG]

another interesting tidbit I just read was that Microsoft GamePass has 25 million subs. so if WoW is included in the GamePass how many more people, and I would assume there are quite a few who didn't want to play WoW because of the sub but do have a GamePass account, will start playing WoW simply because it is there?

[Hawg]

It is. They never said it's on sale. How do you know there would not be a higher bidder if it was public?

Everything is always for sale.... for the right price

[epigramx]

OK. $5 million

no I mean players