UK Blocks Microsoft / Blizzard Merger

[Sensa1]

https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/26/tech/...ard/index.html

[Xilurm]

The Competition and Markets Authority said in a statement Wednesday that it was worried the deal would alter the future of the fast-growing cloud gaming market, leading to reduced innovation and less choice for UK gamers over the years to come.

Bunch of old farts making ignorant decisions again. Shouldn't that mean there would be MORE innovation since other companies would be forced to try and gain some foothold into the market?

[Malkiah]

Shouldn't that mean there would be MORE innovation since other companies would be forced to try and gain some foothold into the market?

that is literally not how innovation, or footholds, or markets work.
so... no.

[Xilurm]

that is literally not how innovation, or footholds, or markets work.
so... no.

Competition is good for innovation. Microsoft acquiring Activision would force others (Sony) to adjust.

[Malkiah]

Competition is good for innovation.

roughly equal competition is good for innovation.
unequal competition is horrible for innovation and leads to almost immediate stagnation.

Microsoft acquiring Activision would force others (Sony) to adjust.

perhaps, perhaps not. could just as easily force sony out of the market through brute force.
merging has that risk. not merging does not have that risk.

[Inoculate]

Competition is good for innovation. Microsoft acquiring Activision would force others (Sony) to adjust.

You know nothing of hope business and the markets work. Just stop lol.

Do you think Walmart was good for local specialty shops? Do you think amszon was good for all physical retail stores?

I'd hope you're seeing a pattern here - short term discounts followed by long term price hikes once you push out the competition.

[Xilurm]

You know nothing of hope business and the markets work. Just stop lol.

Do you think Walmart was good for local specialty shops? Do you think amszon was good for all physical retail stores?

I'd hope you're seeing a pattern here - short term discounts followed by long term price hikes once you push out the competition.

You're talking about 2 giants going against small businesses. This is about 2 giants going against each other. The Playstation outsells the Xbox massively. This acquisition would be good for the entire gaming industry in general.

[Segus1992]

You know nothing of hope business and the markets work. Just stop lol.

Do you think Walmart was good for local specialty shops? Do you think amszon was good for all physical retail stores?

I'd hope you're seeing a pattern here - short term discounts followed by long term price hikes once you push out the competition.

Do you have any examples that are digital? Your comparisons have no relevance. Or do you have local game developers that can't afford selling their games online?

If this move pushes out Sony/Nintendo as a competitor that's terrible for competition for sure - but it isn't going to push out indie developers any more than what already happens.

[Deus Mortis]

You're talking about 2 giants going against small businesses. This is about 2 giants going against each other. The Playstation outsells the Xbox massively. This acquisition would be good for the entire gaming industry in general.

It wouldn't as we have already seen with Microsoft's acquisition of Bethesda they are not past making long standing multiplat games exclusive. So while Microsoft was offering a 10 year deal, that is actually quite short. You know what would be good for the industry is if Microsoft used that 69B and made numerous new studios to make new games or just got the studios they already have to you know actually make games. Microsoft constantly proves they are awful at managing the studios they already have.

Also while Playstation outsells Xbox, Xbox has Microsoft money, and Microsoft has enough money to keep buying publishers which is not what the gaming industry needs.

[Stickiler]

You're talking about 2 giants going against small businesses. This is about 2 giants going against each other. The Playstation outsells the Xbox massively. This acquisition would be good for the entire gaming industry in general.

The Playstation outsells the Xbox, purely due to Microsofts own incompetence(and also their own market strategy). They've released nothing of note on their platform, and anything they've released has also come to PC, on Gamepass. So there's little to no reason to actually buy an Xbox. Purchasing Acti-blizz wouldn't change that, given Acti-blizz predominately produces PC games(Or mobile games which don't matter), and therefore it wouldn't change anything about the competition in the console market.

[Zardas]

You know nothing of hope business and the markets work. Just stop lol.

Do you think Walmart was good for local specialty shops? Do you think amszon was good for all physical retail stores?

Except that, in this context, Microsoft is the local speciality shop and Sony is Walmart

[Xilurm]

It wouldn't as we have already seen with Microsoft's acquisition of Bethesda they are not past making long standing multiplat games exclusive. So while Microsoft was offering a 10 year deal, that is actually quite short. You know what would be good for the industry is if Microsoft used that 69B and made numerous new studios to make new games or just got the studios they already have to you know actually make games. Microsoft constantly proves they are awful at managing the studios they already have.

Also while Playstation outsells Xbox, Xbox has Microsoft money, and Microsoft has enough money to keep buying publishers which is not what the gaming industry needs.

They can't just keep buying though. That would cause a monopoly on the market. It's why Disney is most likely going to have trouble buying any more studios after Marvel and Lucasfilm.

[Razzako]

Except that, in this context, Microsoft is the local speciality shop and Sony is Walmart

This is more like Walmart trying to acquire Aldi and Target stopping them from doing so.

[Zenfoldor]

This is huge. Huuuuuge!

/michaeljordan.gif

They are in a dark pit in a world of gamepass without acti/blizz. Their gaming output sucks this is all they had going for them, if this falls thru, they will have shat the bed for another entire gen and also Phil would be out imo.

Whatever you think of the decision, its impact will be felt across gaming for years at least, if not forever. The significance of this event would be difficult to overstate. We lived it folks.

Think of what is riding on Starfield now.

[qwikz]

It wouldn't as we have already seen with Microsoft's acquisition of Bethesda they are not past making long standing multiplat games exclusive. So while Microsoft was offering a 10 year deal, that is actually quite short. You know what would be good for the industry is if Microsoft used that 69B and made numerous new studios to make new games or just got the studios they already have to you know actually make games. Microsoft constantly proves they are awful at managing the studios they already have.

Also while Playstation outsells Xbox, Xbox has Microsoft money, and Microsoft has enough money to keep buying publishers which is not what the gaming industry needs.

What games from Bethesda are exclusive to Xbox? Becaus last time I checked, all their games release on PC, even on Steam who is a huge competitor on the PC market.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1716740/Starfield/

I dont see how the games not being on Playstation makes them exclusive, yet Sony frequently pays off 3rd party developers to keep games exclusive on their platforms, the biggest titles being the recent Final Fantasy games. And somehow that is OK but the Activision Blizzard deal is somehow awful for consumers.

[Alcsaar]

Bunch of old farts making ignorant decisions again. Shouldn't that mean there would be MORE innovation since other companies would be forced to try and gain some foothold into the market?

That isn't how it works.

When companies monopolize they either buy out or crush competition under legal fees/etc in order to stay a monopoly. Innovation suffers. There have been countless examples of innovative new companies that get bought out and their their products simply vanish.

[Nymrohd]

They will appeal. There will probably soon be some background pressure about moving some work there from MS and/or ATVI (or relocating jobs away). If it falls through, we are stuck with Kotick after all the scandals and the company will take a serious dive in the stockmarket.

- - - Updated - - -

That isn't how it works.

When companies monopolize they either buy out or crush competition under legal fees/etc in order to stay a monopoly. Innovation suffers. There have been countless examples of innovative new companies that get bought out and their their products simply vanish.

This is not a monopoly though. It is an oligopoly and it will remain an oligopoly due to the significant capital required serving as an effective barrier to entry to small entities. So this is more about balancing out the oligopoly so there is no dominant player. This level of service will never be a proper free market.

[PrimiOne]

Cloud gaming. Focus on that because that's what every single organism is worried about this deal and you guys are talking about local gaming.

Right now AWS( Amazon), Azure ( Microsoft) and GCP ( Google) concentrate around 70% of the cloud services with hundreds and hundreds of other providers competing for the remaining 30%.

When ( and I want to remark that I'm not saying "If"...and saying "When") cloud gaming expands its market Sony is hilariously out of muscle to compete with those providers. This is not about local gaming: UK , USA, EU....regulators are worried that Microsoft can simply push Sony out of the market ( no cloud infrastructure) and Amazon and Google ( no studio infrastructure) becoming a gaming behemoth.

[Zenfoldor]

What games from Bethesda are exclusive to Xbox? Becaus last time I checked, all their games release on PC, even on Steam who is a huge competitor on the PC market.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1716740/Starfield/

I dont see how the games not being on Playstation makes them exclusive, yet Sony frequently pays off 3rd party developers to keep games exclusive on their platforms, the biggest titles being the recent Final Fantasy games. And somehow that is OK but the Activision Blizzard deal is somehow awful for consumers.

Apples to oranges. An exclusivity deal for one relatively minor game doesn't equal buying the biggest publisher in the world and taking the biggest drawing game(s) off Playstation forever, which would, in turn, harm the Playstation userbase forever, causing it to wither.

- - - Updated - - -

Cloud gaming. Focus on that because that's what every single organism is worried about this deal and you guys are talking about local gaming.

Right now AWS( Amazon), Azure ( Microsoft) and GCP ( Google) concentrate around 70% of the cloud services with hundreds and hundreds of other providers competing for the remaining 30%.

When ( and I want to remark that I'm not saying "If"...and saying "When") cloud gaming expands its market Sony is hilariously out of muscle to compete with those providers. This is not about local gaming: UK , USA, EU....regulators are worried that Microsoft can simply push Sony out of the market ( no cloud infrastructure) and Amazon and Google ( no studio infrastructure) becoming a gaming behemoth.

Yep, this was their obtuse take, and more power too them. I don't care if they got there for the wrong reasons, I'm just glad they got there.

Local hardware will not be replaced nearly as quickly as everyone in tech wishes, imho. It's very hard to under-estimate how much gamers hate latency and service issues. Local hardware will always have a prime seat in the revenue pie, imo. I think it is just too ironic that cloud gaming, a service which mainly benefits publishers not gamers imo(and which most consumers currently either ignore or reject), is what got this deal canned and not any kind of real argument about content competition.

MS own buzzy marketing "statistics" and "trends" concerning cloud gaming used to destroy this deal. "The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed."

It's the games, always will be, but sometimes it is better to be lucky than good.

Nobody on here can even argue about it, because it is silly. MS can't buy the biggest IP in the industry, but it isn't because of market forces right now, but because when cloud gaming takes off, they would be in too strong a position. lololol. It's "wait for E3" all over again.

[Gorsameth]

Cloud gaming. Focus on that because that's what every single organism is worried about this deal and you guys are talking about local gaming.

Right now AWS( Amazon), Azure ( Microsoft) and GCP ( Google) concentrate around 70% of the cloud services with hundreds and hundreds of other providers competing for the remaining 30%.

When ( and I want to remark that I'm not saying "If"...and saying "When") cloud gaming expands its market Sony is hilariously out of muscle to compete with those providers. This is not about local gaming: UK , USA, EU....regulators are worried that Microsoft can simply push Sony out of the market ( no cloud infrastructure) and Amazon and Google ( no studio infrastructure) becoming a gaming behemoth.

Why is it Microsoft's problem that Sony ignored the cloud market for to long?