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. "

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (11 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 year ago (9 children)

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.

[–] diskape 12 points 1 year ago (8 children)

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.

[–] LetMeEatCake 5 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

@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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] diskape -1 points 1 year ago

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.

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