Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard
https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/11/23779039/microsoft-activision-blizzard-ftc-trial-win
From the article, quoting Judge Corley:
… the Court finds the FTC has not shown a likelihood it will prevail on its claim this particular vertical merger in this specific industry may substantially lessen competition. To the contrary, the record evidence points to more consumer access to Call of Duty and other Activision content. The motion for a preliminary injunction is therefore DENIED.
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“Execs behind Starfield”
The same execs that bought the company already half way through development of Starfield, and rather than delivering anything new or of value, only wanted to make sure it was extinguished on other systems?
As for “execs behind Halo,” the less said the better. I’ve never seen a series driven so hard into the ground.
Okay there… And before thay Sony was trying to lock Starfield away on their side so what’s your point? The current market is driven by exclusives thanks very much to Sony and Nintendo.
And Sony and Nintendo aggressively want to push towards proprietary hardware exclusives. Sony has improved in that area, but every exclusive is still a big question on if it’ll even be available on the PC and if so when. Just the long release schedule is an attempt to draw more people who can’t wait to a proprietary closed ecosystem.
I would argue there’s a huge difference between, say, one year of timed exclusivity for one game, versus buying an entire publisher and making every single one of their future games exclusive.
On the flip side those who really dislike hardware locks requiring specific devices to run games would see a console only exclusive a bigger concern.
Since viewed from PCs it isn’t just a Microsoft game, but one that can be played on Linux with Proton and possibly MacOS with their game porting toolkit with various different hardware configurations as opposed to a locked down proprietary one.
Once Sony shows a much bigger effort to embrace open hardware options as opposed to trying to funnel people to their proprietary one with unknown status of future ports I will be less wary of their attempts at acquisitions. And well Nintendo never will.
That’s only because Microsoft has no taste and can’t figure out how to actually create an IP.
It’s almost certainly a positive to see Bobby Kotick (boy do I struggle to maintain this site’s cardinal rule as far as he goes ) losing influence in the “AAA” games industry; but it’s not good to see MS buying every studio they can get hold of. Both these things can be true simultaneously.
My biggest concern with MS’s rampant acquisition spree is what happens when there’a an economic downturn (as already seems to be the near future); will those newly acquired studio be subject to the corporate euphemism that is dOWnSiZiNg? How many working on moderately niche titles will be out of a job and their work indefinitely shelved?
They will be anyway, Microsoft doesn’t know how to run studios. They have little to show for in the last 23 years.
Forza. That’s it. They weren’t behind Fable, they weren’t behind gears of war, they weren’t behind halo. Microsoft has nothing to show here. Every developer they’ve bought in the past has turned out nothing special afterward, just sequels of diminishing quality.
I hope you’re similarly malicious about Sony’s exclusives too.
Well, ask me when Sony buys an entire publisher and makes all their future games exclusive.
I like the use of the ‘publisher’ qualifier so that there can’t be talk of the numerous studios Sony has acquired over the years that only produce games for Playstation.
When did Xbox last make a game Xbox exclusive?
Redfall although that may have been a blessing more than a curse.
Sony were reportedly in talks to purchase full exclusivity of Starfield, so can’t blame MS.
They don’t get credit for it. It wouldn’t have been a Sony game either.
It’s likely it would if been marketed as one, just like I’m sure it’ll have Microsoft plastered all over it when the time comes.
The lesson here is all large corporations can’t be trusted.
I don’t think that’s true. Microsoft was afraid of this happening but there was zero evidence it was going to.
It was one of the reasons why they bought zenimax, so there was clearly enough evidence for Microsoft to spend $8bil.
Please show me the evidence, I would love to see it.
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lemmy needs an op indicator
What do you mean? There is an OP indicator (I mean, at least Liftoff shows one).
It does (on the website – if you’re using an app, that’s on your app creator). OP simply hasn’t replied to any comments in the thread yet. Last I saw, kbin was missing the OP indicator, but that shouldn’t affect you on beehaw.
I’m seeing it from the browser, I’m from the beehaw instance, I didn’t see the op indicator, I saw it was by the username
Jerboa has an indicator.
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Yeah, this is like watching two bad parents fight for custody of a child. Microsoft is ab-so-lutely going to limit the reach and quality of this game off their own system. They might fulfill the letter, but their intentions are clear.
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My main argument against the acquisition is that the morons behind Activision/Blizzard will get a ridiculous payout
These people should get a lifetime ban from executive positions, not a payout
Your comment made me step back a minute, thanks for sharing your thoughts. I tend to agree with your assessment after looking at this scenario more closely. I’m no fan of Microsoft but Activision isn’t exactly a great studio. Only time will tell!
I play only one game from Acti-Blizz regularly which is CoD, since most of my friends play in religiously (time for new friends?). And it is treated so badly by Activision, I hope MS fixes this. I know all the highbrow arguments against consolidation. But I don’t care for Diablo or WoW (sorry) and the one game I play can only win from MS acquisition (impossible to treat it any worse). So I personally want this to go through already.