"In a ruling submitted today, Judge Corley said the following:
Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision has been described as the largest in tech history. It deserves scrutiny. That scrutiny has paid off: Microsoft has committed in writing, in public, and in court to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation for 10 years on parity with Xbox. It made an agreement with Nintendo to bring Call of Duty to Switch. And it entered several agreements to for the first time bring Activision’s content to several cloud gaming services. This Court’s responsibility in this case is narrow. It is to decide if, notwithstanding these current circumstances, the merger should be halted—perhaps even terminated—pending resolution of the FTC administrative action. For the reasons explained, 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. "
I don’t care about “monopolies” and “consolidation”
I just care about the possibility of Guitar Hero being revived god dammit
Clone hero is fun.
I gave up on guitar hero after they implemented the greedy “tokens” model on GH: Live. It was very lame. You had to play a radio station of sorts to get tokens. Tokens could be used to play a song of your choice. When you ran out you had to play the radio station or buy more with real money lol.
Does Clone Hero have the character customization thing? It’s totally pointless, but I enjoyed having my custom band on the stage.
I’m not sure, I played with a bland black background and just had the note highway. There are backgrounds you can add in but you have to tinker to do it
I love CH. Haven’t played in years though.
GH:TV was super cool though in my opinion, but yeah the token stuff was dumb. I spent a lot of time just jamming to music videos. That’s basically all I did in Love lol
I’m hoping for DJ hero lol
I still want the DLC
I just want THPS 3+4 :( CURSE YOU, ACTIVISION!!!
The only games I ever sold my soul for were eudemon online, guitar hero, for a short while destiny, and stardew valley.
I have been bored with most games that have came out throughout the timeline but guitar hero holds a special place in my heart and I would absolutely love to have a new one come out.
We tried the band one a while back and it just didn’t hit the same.
I too became addicted to destiny during beyond light and witch queen. I finally kicked the habit before lightfall. Based on the reviews, looks like we made the right choice !
Looks like we did! Good times though.
If they start banning everything Activision makes from Steam, Gog, or other stores, then probably they’ll get a nice lawsuit. But tbh, if you don’t like Microsoft, then don’t buy Microsoft products and that will henceforth include Activision products.
Sure. But then Microsoft will buy Sega so you shouldn’t buy Sega products either. And then Microsoft will buy Capcom, so you can’t buy Capcom products either. So then Microsoft will buy SquareEnix so y-
Wait guys, I think corporate consolidation might be bad.
Fucking hell. We really need to shatter all these cancerous megacorps.
I’m just hoping to get starcraft and Warcraft spinoffs out of this. Lots of potential with those IP’s. Since 3 is never getting properly fixed, Warcraft 4 would also be nice.
Your expectations should be set on low. MS with their infinite money couldn’t do shit with Battletech and Shadowrun, not to mention Rare.
I think with today’s audience those IP’s have a lot more strength than Battletech or Shadowrun. If you think Warcraft or Starcraft exclusivity to an Xbox console won’t sell units I don’t know what to say.
Rare certainly is an interesting one. They had a dark decade there at Microsoft no doubt. Things are getting better. The studio itself aside I think their IPs are getting decent utilization with the upcoming perfect dark and last gen’s killer instinct. They have a lack of banjo for sure. Little shocking at this point. Seemed like the smash inclusion was big enough a hit to see sales.
Warcraft or Starcraft exclusivity to an Xbox
🤔😐😶😨🤢🤮
Are you mistaking MicroSoft for Harebrained Schemes? Because they made amazing games with those IPs
No, MS owns the digital rights to FASA games. Harebrained Schemes did what MS couldn’t do previously. MS made fps online multiplayer Shadowrun game for Xbox which bombed. After that and a few years later Harebrained came in the picture.
Got it. That makes more sense.
Fixing the shit heap that was Warcraft 3 Reforged would be a start.
I’m very torn on this one, Microsoft becoming this big can’t be good but Activision is such a dumpster fire that there is no way this doesn’t help them get their shit together.
Break Microsoft, Meta and Google. They will kill humanity
Still better than Tencant
This is the main thing people aren’t seeing - if MS don’t buy them, Tencent or Amazon or Apple will. MS are by far the best owner.
Ten can indeed.
Oops, I’ll let it haha
Capitalism is doing its thing, consolidation.
At least in this case, I don’t think you can possibly do much worse than the current ownership aside from intentional self destruction, so Microsoft as owners can only be equally bad or better.What’s the point of all these lawsuits over mergers when every single time there is clearly a monopolistic merger it just goes through anyways.
Well the good thing here is that there was several concessions MS has made in contracts to ensure it’s mitigated. That’s why it’s necessary to go through the trial even if it isn’t likely going to be in your favor. Small victories
The issue in this instance is that’s its hard to prove that a company not even close to leading to the market is going to somehow dominate that market through a single (albeit large) acquisition.
It’s not a “single” acquisition though. Microsoft have been acquiring huge companies (Bethesda, for example), hit games (Minecraft), and key development parters from competition (remember Rare?) from the beginning of Xbox.
To think that they spent all of those billions of dollars to buy out everything but that they aren’t going to use that to benefit their platforms, is just crazy to me.
Just like they said in one of their internal emails, they are in a unique position to spend their competition out of business, and the entire industry will be worse for it.
Theoretically, the way it works is each one of those sales should go through until you hit the one that would push them over the edge to monopoly. You don’t block a purchase because of purchases you expect them to make in the future (unless stuff has already been signed)
Microsoft have been acquiring huge companies (Bethesda, for example), hit games (Minecraft), and key development parters from competition (remember Rare?) from the beginning of Xbox.
And yet, they are still in third place in the gaming market behind Sony and Nintendo. If those acquisitions didn’t turn Microsoft into a monopoly already, what will be significantly different if they acquire AVB?
They’re 3rd place this generation mainly because they release one big exclusive per year, like Redfall, which turns out to be utter dogshit. It’s not because they don’t have an actual treasure trove of IP to draw from or a lack of development resources.
While Nintendo is putting out games like Tears of the Kingdom, Microsoft produces boring, samey, minorly iterative crap year after year. Halo and Gears went from being Xbox icons to unsurprising announcements at formulaic E3 press conferences, because Microsoft only seems to know how to beat dead horses.
Let me ask you this simple question: how have gamers or the industry benefited from Microsoft’s past acquisitions?
I can’t see any way that allowing Microsoft to own (and probably squander) an ever-growing library of IP is good for me or anyone outside of the company.
Gamers benefited tremendously. GamePass is a game changer and having access to day 1 first (and often 3rd) party releases is amazing. Devs are happy too. Many publicly admitted that without GP some of their games would not launch at all.
While you are right that MS has released mostly duds this generation, it’s not fair to paint them as completely without any benefits to gamers or industry.
Yeah, gamers will definitely benefit greatly when GamePass becomes the only way to access certain new releases and they start upping the monthly price. This is every service subscription ever. Once they have the market lead they’ll be free to up price, offer shittier service etc.
when GamePass becomes the only way to access certain new releases
Microsoft has shown no indication that they want to move away from selling games. Shit, they started releasing games on Steam after they spun up gamepass. Seems to me they’ll take your money however you want to hand it to them be it a “rental” or flat out buying it.
I know people like GamePass, but I’m not sure that spending $17/mo to own nothing in the end is what I consider a win… Especially since GamePass feels like a prime example of Microsoft digging into their deep company pockets to outspend their competition with what seems to be an unsustainable loss-leader.
I also have no idea whether it benefits or hurts 3rd party developers.
Gamepass as it currently exists will be gone within a decade. This is the Netflix or Amazon model at play. Run service cheaply until it hits critical mass, then start ramping the price up to turn it profitable. You won’t be getting unlimited $70 games on launch for $15/month for forever.
Even if the above is wrong: a successful GP will fundamentally alter the way games are made. Content is aggressively and constantly tweaked or changed structurally in order to optimize profit. You know why search results on Google are garbage? Because people found a way to take advantage of that system to make the most money; doing so pushed out the good results. Same reason why all the biggest youtube channels have the content creator making a stupid face in the thumbnail with a clickbait title. Same reason why film has moved towards cinematic universes lately, or why so many IPs have moved towards the TV format (its for streaming).
Consumer oriented content changes when the revenue model changes. If GP is influential enough, games will change to optimize for whatever method makes the most money there — and that model will not be the one that exists currently. If Microsoft pays them by hours of playtime, games will become bloated with more and more empty content or arbitrary difficulty. If DLC continues to not be included, more and more core game content will shift towards DLC that becomes more expensive. Etc.
Cementing Gamepass is anything but a “tremendous” benefit for gamers.
@LetMeEatCake @diskape Everything you said sounds about right. I have a hard time believing it would work out that way in reality though. MS would for sure pull that but would people tolerate it? Most of the scummy stuff I see people tolerate comes from games and companies that they previously enjoyed before microtransactions or degrading quality. If MS just ups gamepass to 25 or something a month, I think people would just not buy it.
Game Pass is already profitable, as said by Phil Spencer.
The goal with game pass is to have enough subscribers giving guaranteed revenue to finance all their first party games for the year along with the payouts for third party games. Once a person is subscribed and in the ecosystem, Microsoft then get 30% of every third party game and DLC they buy. That’s where the real money is. Game Pass is there to get them hooked. With MS’s goals of 4 AAA first party games a year, they need say $400-$600mil in revenue from game pass a year for that. They’re already over half the number of subscriptions needed for the upper end of that revenue @$15/month. Adding COD will make that number explode.
That’s a lot of negative “what ifs”. We can only judge by current situation not by what something may or may not become in the future. This is not Minority Report video games edition.
Shift towards DLC and worst, season passes and micro transactions, already happened without GP. We live in that world. GP here is not to blame.
No matter how you slice it - right now GP is tremendous value for gamers. It finally forced competitors to introduce some form of their own subscription service. Sony/Nintendo fans like them, and without GP these services would not exist.
I’m lucky to have 3 main consoles and PC. In order of money spend per game its highest PS5 > Switch > PC > XSX lowest. Exact reverse order is # of games played on given platform. I spend less for GP than for Netflix and get way more entertainment out of it. The other consoles are just for very expensive exclusives.
GP model allows me to find and try games that I normally wouldn’t buy. Forza Horizon 5, Immortality or Pentiment are just 3 examples.
Studios don’t need to be owned by Microsoft for games to be on GamePass.
In one specific hardware ranking. Consoles sales don’t quantify market dominance. Game sales do. And with these recent acquisitions msft will be dominating game sales.
As much as I hate Activision Blizzard as a publisher and Bobby Kotick as a person, I feel this level of corporate consolidation is a terrible thing for the games industry and gamers.
There is so much more to this than CoD being on Playstation or not…
So that you think rich people have rules. Justice theater
This is really a tough one. I hate consolidation, but I also really hate Bobby Kottick.
Is there any news what will happen to him? Usually on buy out like this, the previous CEO will be appointed as VP or other executive in parent company
At least Kotick is capable of making good game franchises before killing them with endless sequels. Microsoft is completely incompetent at making games unless it’s a driving sim. This is the final nail in Bliizard’s coffin. Bye bye Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo.
Microsoft is completely incompetent at making games
I mean, AoE was pretty awesome
I remember once upon a time browsing the Microsoft game studios site and getting excited for the upcoming RTS releases
I think that’s the point of the Xbox Game Studios. They purchase a bunch of existing games studios with good talent and let them mostly manage themselves and their own games direction.
MS doesn’t want full control anyway because yeah, they aren’t great at it. They just want to buy enough companies that they get the money from the good games. Then they’ll pull the good talent out of the shitty studios and shut them down.
I don’t think Kotick was really in the picture when all their game franchises were being created. The only thing he’s good at is acquiring already successful games and companies and then squeezing everything he can out of them before they turn to shit.
He made Call of Duty from the ashes of Medal of Honor Allied Assault by helping form the studio Infinity Ward. He wisely bought Guitar Hero from a small device manufacturer. Under his watch Tony Hawk and Spyro made several hundred millions before he ran them into the ground. I hate his guts, but I’m not going to deny his business acumen. There’s a chance MS doesn’t even replace him and he can go further into MS executive suite.
He’s a POS in the industry. He’s great at finding good products, or even diamonds in the rough, and absolutely destroying them in some way. Usually in the form of MTX or some other abhorrent method that us gamers tend to hate.
I don’t think anyone denies his ability to find great software, it’s what he does after it that everyone hates.
It potentially could have opposite effect. Spencer said that one of the IPs he wanted to revive was StarCraft
World of Starcraft MMO inc
Well, you’re really gonna hate the fat pay out he gets.
I don’t care how much he gets as long as he isn’t in charge anymore.
He was always going to get it though
Yeah, in no version of how this played out was he going to not receive hundreds of millions of dollars. That was never an option.
Kotick gets rewarded by the deal going through. Billions of dollars from the sale. Worst case for him after that is a few hundred million from a golden parachute if he’s fired. We have no real reason to think he will (or won’t, to be clear) be fired though, so there’s a very real chance this is full reward for him: giant piles of money and continues to get to run Activision-Blizzard, just with Microsoft bosses above him.
The deal going through isn’t something you want if you hate him.
He was filthy rich anyway, a few hundred million more doesn’t make any difference. If the deal gets him out, then that’s still a small win, despite Microsoft owning even more developers
The only reason I’m for the merger is that I know how much Microsoft can affect a corporations executive structure. I would hope they are already planning to replace him already, but either way he won’t last when he gets tossed into MS’ culture.
At least, that is what I’m hopping.
Companies should not be allowed to buy other companies
How come?
Because it leads to 6 companies making 95% of the food we eat
Reminder that 343 is the only AAA studio that has never made a good game.
I don’t have much faith in MS managing ActBlizz, and that’s coming from someone who generally likes Microsoft stuff. From what they did to Ensemble, Bungie, Lionhead, and Rare (where is my Viva Pinata 2, Phil?), they are way too content to just buy their way into stuff and stumble through everything by tossing money everywhere. I don’t think Phil Spencer is the right person to lead Xbox even if he is a “gamer”, because Xbox had just been ran poorly for years on the studio side, and adding Activision Blizzard isn’t going to improve things.
Halo 4 was dope as hell
It wasn’t great for a halo game though.
I thought it was better than 3, personally.
It’s amazing to me how short-sighted this decision is. Yeah sure keep wide access to CoD for 10 years to get the FTC off their back and then watch all that fall away immediately after. For us this is potentially decent gains in the short term but certainly contributes to this industry turning to crap long term.
What’s really nice is that the big studio games are shit anyways, they’ve made it easy to enjoy life without feeling like you’re missing out on some dumb crappy games that rip you off.
potentially decent gains in the short term but certainly contributes to this industry turning to crap long term.
Hmm where have I seen that before
They’ll go nuts on mobile gaming, I saw it on youtube
IMO, that seems to be their bigger play. Gaining market share in those non-console avenues. The console stuff is just cherry on top for them.
Wow, feels like a really big moment.
RIP UK gamers
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