5 ms·

I don't have an issue with this per se, but Sony, the biggest player in this space, has been gobbling up studios for years. Sony has by far the strongest set of

I don't have an issue with this per se, but Sony, the biggest player in this space, has been gobbling up studios for years. Sony has by far the strongest set of 1st party studios, and this deal wouldn't change that. The lack of consistent enforcement of these laws really makes this a mess. And, while CoD is a mega-seller, it is hardly unique, has been declining in quality (and was never top tier), and it is weird to assume it will be a huge phenomenon forever.

lkramer 4y ago
Sony hasn't bought anything on this scale (and the scale of Bethesda) though. Microsoft have also bought plenty of smaller studios without getting into much trouble. I personally am glad that they seem to react before it's too late for a chance. The gaming market still have a fairly healthy amount of competition. If 5 years down the road MS had managed to suffocate Sony, then it would be too late to react.
- hbn 4y ago
  Yup. Microsoft continuing to make purchases like this is how we end up with them being the Disney of gaming. A giant backlog of great stuff that was made by smaller studios placing their bets on a project they think is good and has passion behind it, and a bunch of perfectly mediocre, forgettable new stuff with logos of IPs we used to love, the product of numbers crunched from focus group testing that couldn't possibly offend anyone for any reason.
- Hamuko 4y ago
  >Sony hasn't bought anything on this scale (and the scale of Bethesda) though. Yeah. The biggest studio acquisition that Sony has done in the last decade was Bungie, that employs about 820 people. The next biggest would be Insomniac Games with over 400 employees? Meanwhile Activision-Blizzard had closer to 10,000 employees, and Zenimax had >2000 employees. The scales seem quite vastly different.
- activitypea 4y ago
  Bungie's ARR blows Bethesda's revenue out of the water.
  - 0x457 4y ago
    Yes, Bungie has 1 IP that is alive and people make "This is it, D2 is dying" video every year. Bethesda alone as more IPs even if you don't take other ZeniMax's IPs in to consideration.
eloff 4y ago
Also Microsoft offered to make Call of Duty available on PlayStation for the next 10 years, which is unprecedented. I think that kind of takes the wind right out of Sony's whining. It bothers me that Sony does worse monopolistic things, like blocking cross-play, and then goes crying to the law to prevent Microsoft getting a leg up. I mean it's totally expected, typical big business stuff, but it's hypocritical as fuck.
- hbn 4y ago
  > Also Microsoft offered to make Call of Duty available on PlayStation for the next 10 years, which is unprecedented. So what? That was obviously just a move to try and prevent the FTC from doing exactly this, not out of the goodness of their hearts. Great, 10 years of 1 series continuing to be cross-platform, and then you blink and 10 years is up and Microsoft has bought the entire gaming space and Sony dies a slow death because they didn't have infinite money like Microsoft. Or Microsoft buys them too! Here's your 12 new plates of gray goo to choose from, straight out of the Microsoft games factory. Enjoy.
  - eloff 4y ago
    And Sony is what? They're worse. They're just trying to get the FTC to do their dirty work for them. The thing about games, if they're gray goo, you don't buy them. There's lot's to choose from. Games are a meritocracy, they live or die on their own merits, regardless of which company produces them. If Microsoft turns them to gray goo, they only hurt themselves.
Sakos 4y ago
The AB acquisition wouldn't even budge the needle. The gaming industry is huge and none of AB's IP is big enough to be considered anything close to monopolistic. So they'd get CoD and WoW and a handful of dead franchises. What are the most sold and the most popular games on consoles and PC in the past year? Honestly, blocking this acquisition is a green light for Sony to continue buying up companies and not having to compete by, say, making their own AAA shooter again. I'm not sure how this makes us better off.
fomine3 4y ago
Isn't Nintendo biggest first party?
- pwthornton 4y ago
  Yes, you are probably correct. Nintendo has largely created its own studios, rather than acquire like Sony and MS.
dangus 4y ago
Don't mistake critical acclaim for sales volume and scale. The balance sheet doesn't care about how unique and good a game is. Sony's first party game studio segment of their business is not bigger than Activision-Blizzard. Looking at Q4 2021, around 20% of Sony's game unit sales were first party titles. It seems to vary between 10-20% depending on the quarter. Total game sales accounted for $2.5 billion in revenue, so we can assume that about $500 million of that revenue is from Sony's own published titles. We could be generous and assume that Sony games on average sell for higher than the typical game, you could bump that number up to something like $700 million. Now let's look at Activision-Blizzard: In Q4 of 2021, their revenue was $2.1 billion, so they're bringing in up to 4x more revenue from game sales than Sony's revenue from their self-published titles. Call of Duty alone brought in in $1 billion of revenue for 2021, so the Call of Duty business is about half the size of Sony's entire game development business. Sony's game sales including the cut they take from third party developers on their platform barely exceeds Activision-Blizzard's revenue. [1] https://gameworldobserver.com/2022/11/01/playstation-profit-drops-50-percent-in-q2-increased-costs https://gameworldobserver.com/2022/11/01/playstation-profit-... [2] https://investor.activision.com/news-releases/news-release-details/activision-blizzard-announces-fourth-quarter-and-2021-financial https://investor.activision.com/news-releases/news-release-d...

lkramer 4y ago

Sony hasn't bought anything on this scale (and the scale of Bethesda) though. Microsoft have also bought plenty of smaller studios without getting into much trouble. I personally am glad that they seem to react before it's too late for a chance. The gaming market still have a fairly healthy amount of competition. If 5 years down the road MS had managed to suffocate Sony, then it would be too late to react.

hbn 4y ago
Yup. Microsoft continuing to make purchases like this is how we end up with them being the Disney of gaming. A giant backlog of great stuff that was made by smaller studios placing their bets on a project they think is good and has passion behind it, and a bunch of perfectly mediocre, forgettable new stuff with logos of IPs we used to love, the product of numbers crunched from focus group testing that couldn't possibly offend anyone for any reason.
Hamuko 4y ago
>Sony hasn't bought anything on this scale (and the scale of Bethesda) though. Yeah. The biggest studio acquisition that Sony has done in the last decade was Bungie, that employs about 820 people. The next biggest would be Insomniac Games with over 400 employees? Meanwhile Activision-Blizzard had closer to 10,000 employees, and Zenimax had >2000 employees. The scales seem quite vastly different.
activitypea 4y ago
Bungie's ARR blows Bethesda's revenue out of the water.
- 0x457 4y ago
  Yes, Bungie has 1 IP that is alive and people make "This is it, D2 is dying" video every year. Bethesda alone as more IPs even if you don't take other ZeniMax's IPs in to consideration.

eloff 4y ago

Also Microsoft offered to make Call of Duty available on PlayStation for the next 10 years, which is unprecedented. I think that kind of takes the wind right out of Sony's whining. It bothers me that Sony does worse monopolistic things, like blocking cross-play, and then goes crying to the law to prevent Microsoft getting a leg up. I mean it's totally expected, typical big business stuff, but it's hypocritical as fuck.

hbn 4y ago
> Also Microsoft offered to make Call of Duty available on PlayStation for the next 10 years, which is unprecedented. So what? That was obviously just a move to try and prevent the FTC from doing exactly this, not out of the goodness of their hearts. Great, 10 years of 1 series continuing to be cross-platform, and then you blink and 10 years is up and Microsoft has bought the entire gaming space and Sony dies a slow death because they didn't have infinite money like Microsoft. Or Microsoft buys them too! Here's your 12 new plates of gray goo to choose from, straight out of the Microsoft games factory. Enjoy.
- eloff 4y ago
  And Sony is what? They're worse. They're just trying to get the FTC to do their dirty work for them. The thing about games, if they're gray goo, you don't buy them. There's lot's to choose from. Games are a meritocracy, they live or die on their own merits, regardless of which company produces them. If Microsoft turns them to gray goo, they only hurt themselves.

Sakos 4y ago

The AB acquisition wouldn't even budge the needle. The gaming industry is huge and none of AB's IP is big enough to be considered anything close to monopolistic. So they'd get CoD and WoW and a handful of dead franchises. What are the most sold and the most popular games on consoles and PC in the past year? Honestly, blocking this acquisition is a green light for Sony to continue buying up companies and not having to compete by, say, making their own AAA shooter again. I'm not sure how this makes us better off.

fomine3 4y ago

Isn't Nintendo biggest first party?

pwthornton 4y ago
Yes, you are probably correct. Nintendo has largely created its own studios, rather than acquire like Sony and MS.

dangus 4y ago

Don't mistake critical acclaim for sales volume and scale. The balance sheet doesn't care about how unique and good a game is. Sony's first party game studio segment of their business is not bigger than Activision-Blizzard. Looking at Q4 2021, around 20% of Sony's game unit sales were first party titles. It seems to vary between 10-20% depending on the quarter. Total game sales accounted for $2.5 billion in revenue, so we can assume that about $500 million of that revenue is from Sony's own published titles. We could be generous and assume that Sony games on average sell for higher than the typical game, you could bump that number up to something like $700 million. Now let's look at Activision-Blizzard: In Q4 of 2021, their revenue was $2.1 billion, so they're bringing in up to 4x more revenue from game sales than Sony's revenue from their self-published titles. Call of Duty alone brought in in $1 billion of revenue for 2021, so the Call of Duty business is about half the size of Sony's entire game development business. Sony's game sales including the cut they take from third party developers on their platform barely exceeds Activision-Blizzard's revenue. [1] https://gameworldobserver.com/2022/11/01/playstation-profit-drops-50-percent-in-q2-increased-costs https://gameworldobserver.com/2022/11/01/playstation-profit-... [2] https://investor.activision.com/news-releases/news-release-details/activision-blizzard-announces-fourth-quarter-and-2021-financial https://investor.activision.com/news-releases/news-release-d...