we'll certainly see, and I do expect Gamepass to make its way to Sony, Microsoft is doing more towards being a service provider than they are towards being a software company. But the Bethesda sale was almost rejected because of the standard Microsoft Monopoly outcries, Wallstreet is only giving this one a 60/40 based on those same outcries and how large and unusual this move is. It also looks like they are expecting Amazon, Apple, and Disney to follow suit and they are eyeballing EA and Take-Two, as Take-Two is currently in the process of gobbling up Zynga. The market is now preparing for a buying frenzy, stuff may be about to get weird.
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Microsoft to buy Activision Blizzard
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SeymourGore
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Yar, and it always seems like the runner up says the sweetest things and has the purest intentions until they're at the top of the pack. Then it's always on-DRM, proprietary storage options, timed exclusives, paid updates, etc.
2022 estimate of spending:
1) Disney - $33B
2) Comcast - $26B
3) Warner Bros. Discovery - $22B
4) Netflix - $19B
5) ViacomCBS - $16B
6) Amazon - $13B
7) Apple - $8B
8) Lionsgate - $2B
9) AMC Networks - $800M
Total - $140B
One could argue that on the long term horizon, customer will loose to the exclusive/platform model, but right now that content war make them possible to enjoy for 140B a year of production at not an significantly higher (if any) cost then their previous cable package, if they would have unlimited internet anyway or a good deal on it.
That's true of a number of industries, I think. I remember Google circa 2008-2010 pitching Android as the open underdog to the eeeeevil Apple (and to a degree Microsoft), as the platform that did everything for the user. Of course, flash forward more than a decade and it's pretty clear Google was mainly using openness and the counterculture angle to gain ground; Android is practically closed for most users, and Google has been using licensing and services to bludgeon OEMs into doing what it wants.
I don't know that Microsoft would forget everything it learned from the Xbox One, but that system and the misguided initial strategy behind it (Ballmer's fantasy of forcing all things Microsoft into the living room) was a textbook example of how a company abused a lead it could have held.
I'm not certain about this part in its entirety, I think this is a mixed bag for us as the consumer. I sadly think that the publishers are going to be moving away from the traditional software distribution methods we see now and they are going to start transitioning over to a content service model, similar to how the current movie/TV streaming services operate. Apple is increasing resources to their Apple Arcade platform slowly but they are gobbling up creative talent for their studios, Netflix, Amazon, and even Disney have been doing the same. As you say there is a lack of creative talent out there in that writers and directors needed to come up with good concepts are in short supply, but these studios have writers and directors on speed dial at their beck and call. As previously posted and covered in a number of places big studios push for better more realistic graphics has mostly come at the expense of gameplay and story, graphics right now are sort of hitting a wall and we are at a stage where the average is still really damned good and can be run on a wide range of hardware with relative ease at 1080p and as such, I think we can start to see a shift back towards more story and gameplay elements in many studio projects. I think Microsoft sees the writing on the wall and wants in on it sooner than later so they are making sure they have the resources to stay on the content Ass Wagon, there is no downside to them in this case, I hardly believe they could do worst at managing the content IP than A/B has been doing for the past few years. I generally expect an increase in game quality and frequency, so that's good for consumers, but at the same time, I expect the future of gaming is going to be tied to subscription services which is a side perhaps more of a sidegrade than a detriment to consumers. I do expect that pattern to put some hurt on Valve and Epic and more specifically their users who predominantly shop the sales and the free giveaways. I mean at the end of the day they are all looking for a way to nickel and dime us for everything they think we are willing to spend, then an extra buck or two more so yeah basically the same ups and downs that Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, Disney +, etc ... have made for TV/Movie content but now for games instead.
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Balmer was trying to hold onto the Microsoft glory days and refused to see the reality of the world around him, I am glad he is gone he was not the CEO Microsoft needed and was the perfect example of corporate nepotism in action.
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Zarathustra[H]
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I forget where it is documented (regulation or law) but there is a formula which is used to calculate market share used to determine if an acquisition or merger should be approved or not.
I think it might be time we revisit it and set new limits.
Maybe prevent any acquisition or merger which would result in any one entity controlling more than 20% of any giving market, and then require a breakup if any entity controls more than 60% of an organically grown market share.
That should shake things up a little and make the markets favor consumers again.
We know from th eresearch that markets function best if they have at least 3-5 large players or more. Maybe it is time we require this by regulation and not just sit around wishing and hoping for it to be so.
I think it might be time we revisit it and set new limits.
Maybe prevent any acquisition or merger which would result in any one entity controlling more than 20% of any giving market, and then require a breakup if any entity controls more than 60% of an organically grown market share.
That should shake things up a little and make the markets favor consumers again.
We know from th eresearch that markets function best if they have at least 3-5 large players or more. Maybe it is time we require this by regulation and not just sit around wishing and hoping for it to be so.
My pet theory: Ballmer believed all humans were preprogrammed to love Windows as much as he did, and that guided his thinking. The mere whiff of Windows on a phone or tablet would have Apple users smashing their devices against the wall to buy a Windows Phone or Surface; you'd forget all about PlayStations if you could have Windows Media Center-like features in an Xbox. He didn't stop to think that many (if not most) people merely tolerated Windows, certainly during his tenure, and that rivals like Apple, Google and Sony succeeded in part because they didn't ape Windows.
He was also too early and excited with the stuff he pushed, almost everything he wanted to do is now the norm, but they launched it in the clunkiest most halm-handed way possible it was cool sure but the implementation was trash. If they had hired a competent UI design team who had spent any amount of time working with the average person outside of their Microsoft test labs they could have given their shit the polish that Apple and Google managed to release for what was arguably inferior implementation but was far superior packaging.
chameleoneel
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The Bethesda purchase is still quite recent. MS isn't winning until they have good, exclusive games related to these aquisitions---actually available to purchase.
Sony has a deep well to pull from. And I expect them to do that, now that they cannot count on third parties to provide certain genres. And it would be great if they did that. I already mention multi-player shooters. I would love to see a new Champions of Norrath, to fill the Diablo void, etc.
Diablo 4 is one of the titles they have an existing contract for I believe so it would be potentially 5 onward that may not get a PS launch but given the release cadence of Diablo titles to date that would be some time in 2036...
Zarathustra[H]
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You know it's funny.
I didn't even know Microsoft were in a position to make such bold moves.
Last I remember, Microsoft was in trouble. They had missed the mobile bandwagon, and gotten in to it way to late, result in the eventual canceling of the Windows Phone program. Apple and Google were surging but everyone was talking about Microsoft as if they were has beens.
I just looked up their financial statements. $178.2B in revenues last year on and a gross profit of about $121B.
Huh? Did I wake up in a mirror universe or something?
What happened to the failing Microsoft I kept hearing about?
Looking at their stock history, it took a bit of a dive in 2000, and then remained mostly flat for ~13 years (and in business if you aren't growing, you're dying) and then in 2013 they started inching up again.
I wonder what changed?
I didn't even know Microsoft were in a position to make such bold moves.
Last I remember, Microsoft was in trouble. They had missed the mobile bandwagon, and gotten in to it way to late, result in the eventual canceling of the Windows Phone program. Apple and Google were surging but everyone was talking about Microsoft as if they were has beens.
I just looked up their financial statements. $178.2B in revenues last year on and a gross profit of about $121B.
Huh? Did I wake up in a mirror universe or something?
What happened to the failing Microsoft I kept hearing about?
Looking at their stock history, it took a bit of a dive in 2000, and then remained mostly flat for ~13 years (and in business if you aren't growing, you're dying) and then in 2013 they started inching up again.
I wonder what changed?
Being a leader in cloud computing maybe the main reason ?
For some reason they achieved to go a bit under the radar of the mainstream fear (arguably panic) about the GAFA, despite being often the highest valued company on the planet on the stock market and more profitable than ever. Maybe because their giant enterprise/among developer popularity was on more boring stuff or more behind the camera.
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They became a service provider. They don’t provide software and canned solutions, they sell individual tailored services, no longer in expensive bundles but a la carte from as little as $3.99 a month to <insert arbitrarily large number here>.
They do everything, they are the largest contributor to open source and Linux there is, they do servers of all sizes, they rent super computer by the hour, and RDP sessions by the gigabyte uploaded per day. Financial software, reporting software, they are basically a one stop enterprise administration shop. Hell they have real time voice to voice language translation between all the major languages, they even do real time sign language translation between some absurdly large amount of sign languages and said spoken languages. They are a leader in AI research and development and currently have a patent portfolio that makes IBM jealous. They got to work is what they did.
Zarathustra[H]
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Huh. Last time I checked Azure was a distant also-ran somewhere way behind AWS.
When did this happen?
They are third behind Amazon and Tencent. Microsoft is basically a T1 provider now, while they haven’t abandoned the consumer market they they have decreased their outward presence there but business and enterprise if they aren’t directly providing you a service they are the ones providing service to the people providing you service.
But in terms of clients, theirs have money. Just like android makes up 90% of the mobile market but 30% of noble spending. Microsoft makes up like 25% of the cloud presence but like half of the cloud spending.
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Around 2018 maybe ? With mid 2019 being where they separated themselves like the Big 2 versus all the rest after Amazon.
Zarathustra[H]
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Interesting.
I guess I haven't paid much attention since then.
I mean, time flies so quickly these days, it really doesn't feel like any time at all has passed since 2018, so how could anything of note possibly have changed since then?
I feel it was still yesterday to have newspaper opinion article about, will Apple become the first trillion dollar company this next decade or something of the sort, now there is 6 of them (with AAPL and MSFT above 2T) and we could start to talk about who will get to 3 trillion first.
Apple hit 3 trillion this month. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/03/apple-becomes-first-us-company-to-reach-3-trillion-market-cap.html
Getting ridiculous.
Zarathustra[H]
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Lol. I didn't even realize Microsoft had acquired LinkedIn. Apparently I missed that one 8 years ago...
And GitHub if you missed that one too.
It’s like they are just making up numbers at this point. The might as well be kids in the schoolyard yelling out the biggest number they can think of.
chameleoneel
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MS is Windows. They have dozens of billions built over years from that, alone. When the Xbox 360 had the RROD issues, they set aside 2 billion to make sure the replacement process was as smooth as possible for customers. Xbox should have sank from that shit. But MS has money to throw at it. Sure, they would rather not. But they can. And now they are the Azure cloud system. MS has some serious money power.
DukenukemX
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How? Why would Sony allow Microsoft of all companies to sell their service to Sony's consoles? That's like Steam comes in and sells their games on Playstations. Sony basically has a similar service except on the cloud, which is why it's so forgettable.
They saw what Netflix is doing and wanted to mimic that success. I have my issues with GamePass.
This is because everyone wants that delicious monthly subscription. This is why cloud gaming was being pushed even though it could realistically never work.
How many people have cut the cord with cable TV? It's a content service model but it got very expensive. Streaming is cheaper so long as you have one or two choices but after that...
I don't know about that. Zenimax games were already in a good spot with the exception of Fallout 76. Blizzard games are doing horrible and I do expect Microsoft to enact a lot of firing and hiring in that company. Despite how many people hate Activision, they do make some good games. I also don't expect Microsoft to remove all the micro-transaction systems these companies implement into their games. Activision's main problem was Bobby Kotick and he's not going to be running Activision anymore.
Valve needs to start counting to three and start making new games. I'm surprised that Valve got away with as much market share without releasing a good game other than Half Life Alyx for the past decade, and that game is only available for VR headset owners.
Microsoft could just push for new IP's as well and screw Sony that way. They clearly bought the talent to do this.
Creating new games that are actually good is harder than you think. Sony has had great success with it so far but I think Sony can't keep this up forever.
Yeah, I'm not a console player, PC only for me.
My only hope is that maybe Microsoft will re-release some of the older games.
The sad reality is that every modern (aaa) game tries to appeal to the broadest audience possible, but most of the time appeals to no one. I mean, I get it. If you are going to invest 100million in a game, that thing has to sell a lot of copies to break even.
Re-skinning older games is a lot cheaper. Therefore they don't have to sell as many to make it worthwhile.
Although I would prefer to purchase a new original game, they are graphically brilliant and dumbed down in every other way.
So remake interstate 76 already!
The sad reality is that every modern (aaa) game tries to appeal to the broadest audience possible, but most of the time appeals to no one. I mean, I get it. If you are going to invest 100million in a game, that thing has to sell a lot of copies to break even.
Re-skinning older games is a lot cheaper. Therefore they don't have to sell as many to make it worthwhile.
Although I would prefer to purchase a new original game, they are graphically brilliant and dumbed down in every other way.
So remake interstate 76 already!
Darunion
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Earthsiege was my favorite mech game
DukenukemX
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A King's Quest or Quest of Glory reboot/remake in the style of the Uncharted games perhaps?
I completely forgot that Activision were sitting on Sierra's IP.
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it wouldn't be a remake if it was in the style of something else, that would just make it uncharted reskined as King's Quest.
I wasn't meaning clone, just as a basis of the design, and then have more problem solving as well as other design changes.
I absolutely love me some HERCs , ES2 is probably my favorite mech game. Tribes would be fun if someone could do it well, Tribes: Ascent was done really well I thought, but got abandoned by HI-Rez way to quickly. Unfortunate really.
They released all the games as freeware when Tribes: Ascend was coming out, which you can still download from The Internet Archive, though if looking for Tribes Vengeance I would grab Tribes Revengeance instead. There's also still active Starsiege Tribes and Tribes 2 ways to play/playerbases out there, and Tribes RPG servers still exist too.
QFG is one of my favorite series out there. I think it could be re-imagined really well. I'm not really sure it would work in the uncharted style, but I could see some aspects of a reimagining in that sense. I think if it would happen those classic sierra adventure things would be redone like Telltale games remake, Tales of Monkey Island , but it would be really cool to see a complete re-imagining of it.
If you are looking for QFG style stuff out now, there's Hero U from Corey and Lori Cole, designers of the QFG series. There is also Heroine's Quest: The Herald of Ragnarok (Free!) a clear tribute to the original, definitely worth your time.
Side Note on Quest For Glory 5 , I'm pretty sure it's well known that there intended to be multiplayer patch for that but it got canned. Well it's actually playable in the demo released for the game, and I *think* you can still direct connect to people to play it today. I just remember everyone standing around and throwing rocks at each other and not accomplishing anything.
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UnknownSouljer
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If Microsoft is able to build excellent teams - then a lot of really great titles could get resurrected in a few years.
I think Tribes was probably the first multiplayer only game that I got really into, and that was back in the late 90s.
There could be a new Quake game. Heretic could come back. Another Wolfenstein Update.
Fallout could actually be made by Tim Cain and Brian Fargo (though at this point they seem more than happy to be doing their own thing in Obsidian and inXile respectively - but technically they could work on Interplay IP again) and then maybe we could see a good FO game for the first time in 20 years.
Diablo 4 could be made by ARPG people that actually care about game design. The QOL of Diablo 3, but with better mechanics than what is coming out of rivals.
A new Sam & Max game. A new Tex Murphy game. Heck new point and click games for everyone.
Orrr it will just continue to be a mismanagement cluster.
I think Tribes was probably the first multiplayer only game that I got really into, and that was back in the late 90s.
There could be a new Quake game. Heretic could come back. Another Wolfenstein Update.
Fallout could actually be made by Tim Cain and Brian Fargo (though at this point they seem more than happy to be doing their own thing in Obsidian and inXile respectively - but technically they could work on Interplay IP again) and then maybe we could see a good FO game for the first time in 20 years.
Diablo 4 could be made by ARPG people that actually care about game design. The QOL of Diablo 3, but with better mechanics than what is coming out of rivals.
A new Sam & Max game. A new Tex Murphy game. Heck new point and click games for everyone.
Orrr it will just continue to be a mismanagement cluster.
So did Activision.
I doubt you'll see games that are Game Pass-exclusive; why do that when you can also extract $60-plus from someone who won't subscribe? I just expect Microsoft to make sure Activision Blizzard titles are available through Game Pass on launch day.