5 ms·
This is weird. The judge says that because there won’t be any anticompetitive effects in the next 10 years (because MS made a pinky promise), this merger is fin
by Aeolun 3y ago
This is weird. The judge says that because there won’t be any anticompetitive effects in the next 10 years (because MS made a pinky promise), this merger is fine?
What about after those 10 years? What about anything not Call of Duty?
- tnel77 3y agoActivision’s portfolio of games aren’t that great. I think we’ll be fine.
- ScoobleDoodle 3y agoActivision / Blizzard / King includes: Candy Crush, World of Warcraft, and Diablo which are all heavy hitters.
- mustacheemperor 3y agoAnd their gigantic IP portfolio includes Arcanum, creator of which Tim Cain is now under MS' employ. Tim has recently said he has the full source code to the original and the design doc to the planned sequel...
- tnel77 3y agoI don’t like any of those games, but their sales numbers obviously show that others do haha.
- madeofpalk 3y agoI don’t think US competition law should be based on your personal taste for video games!
- tnel77 3y agoI agree!
- beebmam 3y agoNot really sure how anyone could say that these games are somehow cornering the gaming market.
- johnnyanmac 3y agoToo bad that's how half the arguments go here. People were more upset about the Zenimax aquisition than this one.
- Dalewyn 3y agoJust going to point out Candy Crush is the inferior Solitaire and Minesweeper equivalent of the current generation.
- Jochim 3y agoI don't think I've ever seen anyone under the age of 40 play Candy Crush.
- thaumasiotes 3y agoThe question that immediately raises is... what did Activision contribute?
- tills13 3y agoSo a mobile game (not relevant to Sony), a PC game (not relevant to Sony), and a PC game (...)
- cwkoss 3y agowere all heavy hitters
- pb7 3y agoCall of Duty, Diablo, World of Warcraft, StarCraft, and Overwatch are some of the most popular games in the world. They may not be to your liking or mine but this is objectively not true.
- rpvnwnkl 3y agoIm hoping Microsoft will altruistically stop producing these addictive “games”. As a new console player, the differences between a game like Halo Infinite and Overwatch (FPS 4v4/5v5) are enough to put me from playing and in control to binging. Here’s a tangent: The most popular sports leagues in the world are mimicked by people all over the world who play casual and team sports. The game itself is not proprietary. Why can’t we make popular open source video games? If games were not owned by a single entity, anyone could host tournaments and leagues, more similar to baseball, basketball, and football. We could all play the same game.
- spullara 3y agoArtists don't work for free.
- kneebonian 3y agoIt costs $3 bucks to make a basketball. It takes thousands to produce the simplest video games.
- nwiswell 3y ago> Why can’t we make popular open source video games? Well, there are some. Check out Bitburner, Battle for Wesnoth, 0 A.D, etc. The serious answer is that it's very hard work that requires a multi-year development cycle and a diverse variety of talent (design, art, etc) in addition to software engineering. In addition, a lot of the tools and game engines used to create AAA titles are very expensive (and closed-source). If you've got a team working on a game in just their spare time, it's going to be very dated by the time it actually launches.
- Pufferbo 3y ago10 years is also nothing in game development. Games now can take up to 7 years from conception to release, and then there is post release content. Based on the “10 years”, that would mean like what, 1 game out of each series would be cross platform? And for Sony, they would need to start developing a competent competitor to Call of Duty immediately. Or Sony could just buy EA and create a Titanfall 3 since I guess it’s okay for big ass companies to buy one another now.
- tourmalinetaco 3y ago> I guess it’s okay for big ass companies to buy one another now. Unfortunately that’s just the standard. I mean look at AT&T.
- lotsofpulp 3y agoAnd yet ATT ($109B market cap) is in last place, quite a bit behind Tmobile ($168B) and Verizon ($147B).
- manuelabeledo 3y agoThis is why market capitalisation is not always the best of metrics. AT&T assets are valued at almost twice of T-Mobile (~$400B vs ~$211B). AT&T is also ahead of Verizon (~$377B) by a nice margin. It’s also right behind Verizon in revenue, and ahead of T-Mobile ($136B for Verizon, $120B for AT&T, and $80B for T-Mobile).
- stale2002 3y ago> since I guess it’s okay for big ass companies to buy one another now. Thats not really the case, no. Sony is the monopoly market leader in the console space right now. It would be more likely to be illegal for Sony to do this, and it is not illegal for microsoft to do the same, because Microsoft is not the monopoly market leader in the console space.
- jaredhallen 3y agoI get your point for the industry at large. For example, Skyrim 2011. ES6, 2026? Maybe? But CoD, I swear, you sneeze and there's a new title. CoD: Modern Warfare 2: Black Ops: 2023 reboot. For the record, I'm mostly being tongue in cheek here, but the franchise does seem to release unusually frequently.
- willis936 3y agoWhat about it? Will the FTC rule that SqEnix titles must be released on Xbox?
- manuelabeledo 3y agoA more accurate comparison would be to force Sony to release their exclusive titles on Xbox. Sony does not own Square-Enix.
- mighmi 3y ago> force Sony to release their exclusive titles on Xbox. How much do ports normally cost? How many units would they need to move to hit even?
- Jochim 3y agoIt depends on the engine but indy studios are frequently able to port to all of the major platforms: PC, Xbox, PlayStation, and Switch. The exclusive addressable market for each is definitely big enough to outweigh porting costs. A good first step would be to ban exclusivity agreements, rather than mandate cross platform availability and to fine both parties heavily for suspected foul play. Exclusivity agreements are a great example of something that is directly harmful to consumers. It removes choice, increases cost, encourages electronic waste, and leads to an inferior experience.
- pjmlp 3y agoThey are the ones making the deals with the game devs anyway, doesn't matter if the studio isn't an internal one.
- johnnyanmac 3y agoIt's not illegal to make publishing deals in any way. And Square isn't beholden to anyone in particular. They have made deals with Nintendo and even Microsoft for various games, promotional material, etc. And that's not even getting into their game-adjacent deals (AMD, various cloud services) and the dozens of crossovers with the stragest companies (remember when Final Fantasy 13 released some Louis Vuitton fashion line?)
- throwaway2990 3y agoMS would shoot them selves in the foot if they took call of duty off the PS. They will make exclusives. But not COD.
- oneTbrain23 3y agoJudge is very sus. Microsoft hardly kept their promises if we look at their past records.
- onion2k 3y agoMicrosoft don't need to make Call of Duty an exclusive. They only need to put new CoD games on Gamepass and Sony are screwed. It'll make Sony's platform look much more expensive.
- LegitShady 3y agoI hear what you're saying but also understand that putting games on gamepass costs money to microsoft in lost sales. It's like Disney - if all their movies go directly to disney+ they're training customers to not spend $60-80 on buying new games and instead wait for them to come to the cheaper monthly subscription. That isn't free - they still have to develop the game, and the return on the game is lower.
- Etherlord87 3y agoYou could argue similarly for dumping, and yet it is regulated. Companies shouldn't be allowed to invest in eliminating competition.
- LegitShady 3y agoYou can't pretend moving to a monthly recurring revenue model thats still profitable is dumping, at least not honestly. My point was that just releasing everything day one on xbox live cannot be a long term sustainable strategy as you're only making $15/month or whatever from that user, but it isn't dumping.
- Etherlord87 3y agoI never said it is dumping, I made an analogy to dumping. Dumping is not a long term sustainable strategy either, and yet governments decided to make it illegal (well some forms of dumping at least).
- NovaDudely 3y ago10 years... I give them 3. Either they will just break the deal and pay the fines (I'm not sure of the exact details of the punishment) or they will just give themselves enough technical advantage to make the competition versions unfavorable. I mean, we don't question a Tiger when it eats someones face - it is just what a Tiger does. This is just how Microsoft and big business works.
- tjbiddle 3y agoI was thinking the same thing. So much emphasis on Call of Duty. Did a quick search of Activision's most profitable games and Call of Duty is definitely #1 by nearly 3x the next, but there are plenty of other heavy-hitters to make it diversified.