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[Goalus]

Good thing the CMA isn't basing their decision on what an Internet forum members think.

They do use in their decision what Microsoft's executives say and/or planning, however. Phil Spencer thinks that Cloud is super important.

"When you talk about Nintendo and Sony, we have a tonne of respect for them, but we see Amazon and Google as the main competitors going forward," Phil Spencer told Protocol, a new technology news website. "That's not to disrespect Nintendo and Sony, but the traditional gaming companies are somewhat out of position."

According to this forum, Phil talks a lot.

 

[Varteras]

It is mental gymnastics.
The same kind of mental gymnastics the blue ones exhibit on a daily basis in this forum. MS should simply start buying Activision shares on public exchanges.

Cheer up. Those games will still be on your favorite platform. You'll just have to... BUY THEM!

 

[Heisenberg007]

Aaron? Surely not

How It Started vs. How It's Going.

 

[Heisenberg007]

Cheer up. Those games will still be on your favorite platform. You'll just have to... BUY THEM!

 

[Yoboman]

So where does Activision go from here? It's not common for a company looking to sell, suddenly change their mind.

There can't be many buyers for a price that large. Maybe spin off Blizzard? Then sell?

Assuming they are back to square one and looking for a way to sell

Divide the COD license up into Black Ops/Modern Warfare/Warzone/Mobile etc. and sell them individually amongst Sony, MS, EA, Tencent etc. Obviously with their associated developer and maybe support developer or two

Sell them at $5-10 billies a pop and you could make close to $30-$40 billion here alone

Sell off the rest of Activision IP and devs as a whole. Probably not worth as much $2-$3 billion

Sell off Blizzard and King to the highest bidders. Will be worth at least $15b each

 

[Heisenberg007]

So where does Activision go from here? It's not common for a company looking to sell, suddenly change their mind.

There can't be many buyers for a price that large. Maybe spin off Blizzard? Then sell?

Activision is, I think, the most profitable independent publisher. They earn roughly $1.5 to $2 billion in profits every year. Now they will also get $3 billion as the divorce fee from Microsoft.

They will be completely fine continue operating as they have been.

 

[MasterCornholio]

Assuming they are back to square one and looking for a way to sell

Divide the COD license up into Black Ops/Modern Warfare/Warzone/Mobile etc. and sell them individually amongst Sony, MS, EA, Tencent etc. Obviously with their associated developer and maybe support developer or two

Sell them at $5-10 billies a pop and you could make close to $30-$40 billion here alone

Sell off the rest of Activision IP and devs as a whole. Probably not worth as much $2-$3 billion

Sell off Blizzard and King to the highest bidders. Will be worth at least $15b each

I have a theory that if they somehow gain an appeal. Then they can offer further concessions to the CMA. However these concessions would have to be pretty extreme and I mean divestments in this case. I'm not sure if Microsoft is willing to do that but it's the only way I can see this happening.

 

[Dick Jones]

How It Started vs. How It's Going.

I'm confident that useless fuck didn't even tweet once about any Crash game.

 

[Pelta88]

So where does Activision go from here? It's not common for a company looking to sell, suddenly change their mind.

There can't be many buyers for a price that large. Maybe spin off Blizzard? Then sell?

They'll be purchased, just not for $95 per share.

Google, Amazon, meta, or Apple will make an offer and they'll probably give Sony a 20 year marketing deal to sweeten the pie.

 

[Varteras]

I'm confident that useless fuck didn't even tweet once about any Crash game.

I'd say Microsoft should have been aware a long time ago how bad their marketing is and fired this dipshit, but they let Bonnie Ross keep her job for 10 years to fuck up Halo, so....

 

[Heisenberg007]

Cloud gaming isn't going to be as big as the CMA predict to to be. Especially with games like Cod that require almost zero input lag.

It's such an odd choice to refuse the merger on. I can understand other concerns... But not this one.

I know people are saying "yes but we are talking about future potential"..... But who here really sees cloud gaming to be the dominant way to play games in the next 10 years, 20 years ... In particular with online competitive games like Cod? I still see cloud gaming being pretty minute and low in numbers in the future compared to digital downloads etc.

Microsoft does.

They are spending $70 billion on that bet, claiming to make ABK games accessible to 150 million more gamers using their Cloud tech, and ultimately aims to reach to 3 billion gamers in the world using Cloud gaming.

I don't think any of this will ever come to fruition, but that doesn't matter. What matters more is that Cloud gaming is a separate market, and Microsoft has its potential documented. That's what the CMA will base their decision on.

They made the right call in the end.

 

[Zheph]

Man 913 pages just to save a bit of money on Diablo 4 lmao

 

[Heisenberg007]

I have a theory that if they somehow gain an appeal. Then they can offer further concessions to the CMA. However these concessions would have to be pretty extreme and I mean divestments in this case. I'm not sure if Microsoft is willing to do that but it's the only way I can see this happening.

If I remember correctly, new concessions will not be entertained and reviewed at this point. The decision has been made; it can only be reviewed now sans new additions or remedies.

 

[MasterCornholio]

I'd say Microsoft should have been aware a long time ago how bad their marketing is and fired this dipshit, but they let Bonnie Ross keep her job for 10 years to fuck up Halo, so....

I think Greenberg is the least of their problems. Your right that he's terrible but Phil allowed Xbox to get into this situation. If he can't fix it they should look at getting someone who can.

 

[Dick Jones]

Man 913 pages just to save a bit of money on Diablo 4 lmao

Activision must be raging at how Xbox pre orders are going for D4. To come out and say it's not on Gamepass I'd say isn't enough to curb that damage. Not the first game the Gamepass rumours damaged on new releases.

 

[Varteras]

I think Greenberg is the least of their problems. Your right that he's terrible but Phil allowed Xbox to get into this situation. If he can't fix it they should look at getting someone who can.

You may have missed my overall point there, my love. I was implying that Microsoft is completely inept at managing who should be in charge of shit at Xbox.

 

[MasterCornholio]

You may have missed my overall point there, my love. I was implying that Microsoft is completely inept at managing who should be in charge of shit at Xbox.

Oh that I agree with. Xbox should have never arrived at this state. They certainly seemed to have a solid plan at thr beginning of the gen but they messed things up quite a bit.

 

[Zheph]

Activision must be raging at how Xbox pre orders are going for D4. To come out and say it's not on Gamepass I'd say isn't enough to curb that damage. Not the first game the Gamepass rumours damaged on new releases.

wow dude... don't forget it's not stopping people to buy the games on the contrary

 

[Yoboman]

It is a bit funny how nearly a year and a half after announcing the acquisition there aren't ABK games on Gamepass

Almost like it's not that viable

Or maybe it's the only wsy they can sell the acquisition as having any value

 

[Mozza]

I wouldn't even say "very strong." The UK console market currently is 56% PlayStation and 44% Xbox. With one acquisition, Xbox would have become the leading console company in the UK -- based on CMA's analysis of how many people would shift to Xbox due to ABK's potential exclusivity.

But the CMA disagreed with that later.

But there obviously could not have been any doubt regarding the cloud gaming market as Microsoft is the clear leader there with 70% market share.

Difficult to know how strong the worldwide position is, when Microsoft do not release official sales figures for their console, but I can assume with some confidence Sony is ahead by a decent margin, not a surprise as they were ahead in the previous generation too.

 

[feynoob]

I think Greenberg is the least of their problems. Your right that he's terrible but Phil allowed Xbox to get into this situation. If he can't fix it they should look at getting someone who can.

The issue is MS vision, not the management. While management is shit, it's MS vision that ruined Xbox one with their entertainment vision.

You can have the best management in the world manage Xbox, and MS would find a way to ruin them.

Isn't that right adamsapple ?

 

[Varteras]

If I remember correctly, new concessions will not be entertained and reviewed at this point. The decision has been made; it can only be reviewed now sans new additions or remedies.

I believe that in the event the CAT agrees with the appeal and sends it back to the CMA, new concessions could be offered up.

However, the CMA has kinda made it clear that the only real option outside of the deal being blocked is heavy divestment. Because they do not want to have to police behavioral remedies. Their stance on that did not change even after they dropped console concerns.

So, unless Microsoft is willing to part with a huge chunk of ABK, to which Call of Duty and all associated studios (pretty much all of Activision) is a minimum requirement since the provisional findings, then there will be no other choice to the CMA but total prohibition.

I could be wrong about new concessions being possible after a successful appeal to CAT. Thing is, it probably won't matter. Microsoft might not even get to a decision from the CAT before Activision pulls the plug and demands their $3 billion. Which is why Microsoft would be wise to just walk away, pay up, and get the ball rolling on something else.

 

[Flutta]

Maybe MS needs to hire Jimbo. Imagine that

 

[feynoob]

However, the CMA has kinda made it clear that the only real option outside of the deal being blocked is heavy divestment. Because they do not want to have to police behavioral remedies. Their stance on that did not change even after they dropped console concerns.

MS fucked itself over by making these insane demand for the cloud revenue.

Had MS honored the 30% cut, cma would have given them some face.

As they say, greed is the downfall of a man.

 

[MasterCornholio]

The issue is MS vision, not the management. While management is shit, it's MS vision that ruined Xbox one with their entertainment vision.

You can have the best management in the world manage Xbox, and MS would find a way to ruin them.

Isn't that right adamsapple ?

Microsofts vision is influenced by the management. Saying anything else is just fingering yourself.

 

[Dick Jones]

Maybe MS needs to hire Jimbo. Imagine that

Or maybe

 

[Banjo64]

It is mental gymnastics.
The same kind of mental gymnastics the blue ones exhibit in this forum on a daily basis. MS should simply start buying Activision shares on public exchanges.

It’s going to be ok.

 

[MasterCornholio]

It is mental gymnastics.
The same kind of mental gymnastics the blue ones exhibit in this forum on a daily basis. MS should simply start buying Activision shares on public exchanges.

They would have done that if possible.

 

[Topher]

Before CMA decision:



After:



Oh my.....

 

[MasterCornholio]

Before CMA decision:



After:

Hope I won't be proven wrong

The CMA is out of touch

You kissed their ass earlier.

 

[IlGialloMondadori]

I'd say Microsoft should have been aware a long time ago how bad their marketing is and fired this dipshit, but they let Bonnie Ross keep her job for 10 years to fuck up Halo, so....

Xbox marketing is crazy bad. I don’t know how some of these people still have jobs.

 

[Topher]

You kissed their ass earlier.

Amazing to me that someone can be so unphased about a complete reversal of rhetoric. This guy is no more an "analyst" than I am. He is an evangelist.

 

[Varteras]

MS fucked itself over by making these insane demand for the cloud revenue.

Had MS honored the 30% cut, cma would have given them some face.

As they say, greed is the downfall of a man.

I'm sure that was part of it. It kinda gave them the feel for where Microsoft's eyes were. But even without that, I still don't think the CMA would have been cool with it. They pretty thoroughly spelled out that they did not want Microsoft owning ABK's content when they already control up to 70% of an emerging gaming market. They didn't want to have to police Microsoft to make sure they were being good about it and they didn't approve of Microsoft not being willing to go beyond 10 years of allowing that content on other platforms.

Honestly, Microsoft was fucked from the start. Their incredibly dominant position in that market made buying ABK a no-go to the CMA. Only divestment would have appeased them and Microsoft flatly refused.

 

[MasterCornholio]

Amazing to me that someone can be so unphased about a complete reversal of rhetoric. This guy is no more an "analyst" than I am. He is an evangelist.

He needs a PP slap.

 

[IlGialloMondadori]

So you are saying Sony doesn’t have a dominant position in the console market right?

At the moment, yep. And? That’s not a monopoly. Being successful in a competitive market is not a monopoly. Why is this so hard to understand?

When MS was owning Sony with the 360 by innovating, providing killer titles and easier development, better marketing against major mistakes by Sony, that wasn’t a monopoly either.

CMA is saying MS buying major publishers with the most successful games and locking them to their platform while transitioning to cloud services, with MS making 100% of the money from those titles on other platforms (where they’ll be for, at most, 10 years) while MS owns the vast majority of the cloud infrastructure in the world will create a monopoly. It will be impossible for anyone to compete or change the established order at that point.

 

[POKEYCLYDE]

I wouldn't even say "very strong." The UK console market currently is 56% PlayStation and 44% Xbox. With one acquisition, Xbox would have become the leading console company in the UK -- based on CMA's analysis of how many people would shift to Xbox due to ABK's potential exclusivity.

But the CMA disagreed with that later.

But there obviously could not have been any doubt regarding the cloud gaming market as Microsoft is the clear leader there with 70% market share.

Where do you think Microsoft would be if they decoupled cloud from ultimate? Made cloud streaming a separate subscription. Would they maintain their 70% marketshare or do you think most ultimate subscribers don't care about cloud streaming?

 

[ToadMan]

Brad Smith is looking at getting forcibly retired for this shitshow.

 

[Topher]

UK tech sector unfazed by regulator blocking Microsoft’s takeover of Activision​

Microsoft president Brad Smith attacked the UK’s decision to block the tech giant’s takeover of video game developer Activision Blizzard on Thursday. The move would “stifle investment, competition and job creation” in the UK gaming sector, he said.

But the mood among the country’s VCs and startups immediately after the decision isn't one of panic. “It’s not bad for UK tech. Activision is such an outlier and already a massive company, so the acquisition dynamics here are non-typical for a startup,” says Carl Fritjofsson, general partner at Creandum.

The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority blocked the $69bn deal — which would have been the gaming industry’s biggest ever takeover — on Wednesday, to a massive outcry from Microsoft and California-based Activision.

The stance of UK regulators and policymakers towards tech faces close scrutiny at the moment, as the country deals with a global slowdown in the tech sector and it tries to maintain its startup funding dominance over European peers like France and Germany despite leaving the EU and its single market.

The CMA’s decision also follows the UK government proposing to give the agency powers to fine global companies 10% of their global turnover for breaking local consumer protection laws.

Unfazed
While overall VC funding for British startups fell year-on-year in 2022, funding for games development in the nation hit a record $611m, according to the CMA. The regulator estimates the sector will be worth £1bn in the UK by 2026.

Funding for UK games companies isn’t about to be shaken by the fallout from Microsoft’s blocked acquisition of Activision, says Gordon Midwood, founder and CEO of game development startup Anything World. “It’s a different world from a startup raising a couple of million. The ruling is at a level far higher than most startups are at, so it’s not a concern,” he tells Sifted.

“The broader M&A landscape for gaming startups will not be affected in the least, meaning investor appetites will stay the same,” adds Jere Partanen, investor at Sisu Game Ventures. “The proposed acquisition was the largest in the industry's history, and it’s hard to see any other acquisition of a gaming company receiving such scrutiny.”

The criticism of the UK tech ecosystem from Microsoft and Activision is also inaccurate, Midwood tells Sifted. “They’re presenting the UK as a close-minded space, but it’s a good market for startups — probably the best in Europe. Given the [economic downturn] and Brexit, it’s important that we portray ourselves well.” Midwood doesn’t think that US investors will be put off backing UK startups because of the criticism.

The decision to block the takeover could also be good for UK game development startups looking to get their products on gaming platforms, he says. “Vying for attention on digital stores is hard enough [for game development startups] and if only a few companies control revenue it makes it harder for startups to get attention.”

The CMA argued in its decision that Microsoft already controls 60-70% of the cloud gaming market and an acquisition of one of the largest games developers in the world would give it an unfair level of dominance in the industry.

A “net positive”
Ed Lascelles, partner at AlbionVC, tells Sifted that a strong regulator, which is able to limit the number of companies that big tech gobbles up, is a good thing for UK startups.

“If a regulator acts effectively in stopping big tech from buying category-leading businesses that are winning in their emerging industries, this could help the UK develop more global leaders,” says Lascelles.

“Regulators have been trying for ages to prevent big tech from buying up promising startups,” he tells Sifted, which can be a positive for investors. “The types of companies that [big tech will try to acquire] have huge opportunities ahead. Startups that big tech would like to buy are exactly the sort of companies that we as venture capitalists would like to be supporting.”

Lascelles points to fintech Plaid’s continued success following the US regulator blocking its takeover by Visa in 2021. The payments scaleup went on to raise a $425m Series D just a few months on from the deal collapsing.

UK tech sector unfazed by regulator blocking Microsoft’s takeover of Activision

Founders and investors think the move could be a “net positive” for UK startups — as the country tries to hold onto its reputation as a good place to start a business

sifted.eu

 

[Dick Jones]

So you are saying Sony doesn’t have a dominant position in the console market right?

Xbox had 120m MAU at the end of 2022
Source: https://www.videogameschronicle.com...onthly-active-users-hit-a-record-120-million/

Playstation has 108m MAUs as of 31 March 2023

Business Data & Sales

Sony Interactive Entertainment offers its business and sales information for those seeking to understand our sales wins.

sonyinteractive.com

How is Playstation dominant?

 

[POKEYCLYDE]

Assuming they are back to square one and looking for a way to sell

Divide the COD license up into Black Ops/Modern Warfare/Warzone/Mobile etc. and sell them individually amongst Sony, MS, EA, Tencent etc. Obviously with their associated developer and maybe support developer or two

Sell them at $5-10 billies a pop and you could make close to $30-$40 billion here alone

Sell off the rest of Activision IP and devs as a whole. Probably not worth as much $2-$3 billion

Sell off Blizzard and King to the highest bidders. Will be worth at least $15b each

They're not looking to sell. Despite popular belief, Activision wasn't looking for a buyer. Microsoft wanted to buy them, ABK is publicly traded so it's the CEO's job, their fiduciary duty to try and see if they can get a better price. They shopped themselves around (namely to Meta), no one bit for more than $95/share, so ABK took Microsoft's offer to their shareholders who agreed at that price. (At the time it was a nearly 40% premium.

At the time there was a lot of headlines about lawsuits, the quality of their games was being questioned, their stock had been taking a nosedive.

Over the length of this acquisition the lawsuits aren't front and center news, latest CoD sold bananas, Diablo 4 is coming out. Activision had an amazing quarter. Once the deal is actually dead and abandoned my guess is Activision's share price will be around $80-ish, maybe more depending on what they do with that $3B. So maybe even $85/share.

So any company that would want to buy them would have to pay probably between $75-80B and that's at a 30% premium (as opposed to $68.7B at 40% premium). I don't think any company would want to pay that much, especially with the regulatory headaches that trying to buy ABK brings.

 

[POKEYCLYDE]

Microsoft does.

They are spending $70 billion on that bet, claiming to make ABK games accessible to 150 million more gamers using their Cloud tech, and ultimately aims to reach to 3 billion gamers in the world using Cloud gaming.

I don't think any of this will ever come to fruition, but that doesn't matter. What matters more is that Cloud gaming is a separate market, and Microsoft has its potential documented. That's what the CMA will base their decision on.

They made the right call in the end.

They never said that. The 150M players is Switch userbase combined with Nvidia's userbase. You can jump to conclusions on how they'd get CoD running on Switch, be it through cloud or not... but they never said they'd reach that 150M new players through their cloud tech. That's misinformation.

 

[Thirty7ven]

Xbox marketing is crazy bad. I don’t know how some of these people still have jobs.

It's a shame. When the division was spearheaded by Ed Fries and then Peter Moore, sure it could get cheesy at times but they had the finger on the pulse of gaming. Right or wrong, it was about the games and people who play them. As soon as Xbox 360 hit the big time, it became typical Microsoft of putting the fakes in charge.

Look at who Nintendo has in charge, who PlayStation has in charge and then compare to MS? Phil Spencer, Matt Booty, Sarah Bond?!!?!

 

[Zheph]

It's a shame. When the division was spearheaded by Ed Fries and then Peter Moore, sure it could get cheesy at times but they had the finger on the pulse of gaming. Right or wrong, it was about the games and people who play them. As soon as Xbox 360 hit the big time, it became typical Microsoft of putting the fakes in charge.

Look at who Nintendo has in charge, who PlayStation has in charge and then compare to MS? Phil Spencer, Matt Booty, Sarah Bond?!!?!

Peter Moore was well cringe but the Halo tattoo was pretty funny tbh and worked wonder

 

[Flutta]

So you are saying Sony doesn’t have a dominant position in the console market right?

Having a dominant position and being a monopoly are two different things. Nintendo Switch dominated the market for years same with the Wii, would you say they had a monoply?

Nvidia is dominating the GPU market is this also a monopoly?

360 dominated the console market in the US/UK… same thing here.

Nothing wrong with having a dominant position while at the sametime not making it impossible for others to enter and compete.

 

[Bernoulli]

are we allowed to create new threads about something about this deal or not ?

 

[Dick Jones]

are we allowed to create new threads about something about this deal or not ?

It depends. If you are unsure dm a mod

 

[Topher]

According to this forum cloud gaming does neither exist nor work and will never take off.

Also according to this forum, cloud gaming is the future.

 

[IlGialloMondadori]

It's a shame. When the division was spearheaded by Ed Fries and then Peter Moore, sure it could get cheesy at times but they had the finger on the pulse of gaming. Right or wrong, it was about the games and people who play them. As soon as Xbox 360 hit the big time, it became typical Microsoft of putting the fakes in charge.

Look at who Nintendo has in charge, who PlayStation has in charge and then compare to MS? Phil Spencer, Matt Booty, Sarah Bond?!!?!

Completely. I fully believe Xbox One would see a significant boost from having marketing people that actually weren’t either total suits or the wrong kind of complete dorks. Or a better balance, anyway. They're all just really unlikable. Moore and Fries were awesome. The halo tattoo was dope.

 

[Bernoulli]

It depends. If you are unsure dm a mod

thanks

 

[Topher]

do you know how can i do that?
it's about actvision they started a campaign against the CMA

Most threads that are not big news (like CMA block) are getting merged into this thread.