Microsoft is buying Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion [FTC sues to stop - CMA issues updated preliminary findings]

[UNLEADED_BRONZE]

MSFT if deal doesn't go through 

Selling Xbox 

[DaivRules]

4 minutes ago, UNLEADED_BRONZE said:

MSFT if deal doesn't go through 

Selling Xbox 

 

No, they're probably not.
 

[Property_Damage]

Multi billion dollar deal on the line

if it doesnt work out, its no biggie

I bet his board of directors loved hearing that

[DaivRules]

22 minutes ago, Property_Damage said:

Multi billion dollar deal on the line

if it doesnt work out, its no biggie

I bet his board of directors loved hearing that

 

Company with around 2 Trillion dollar valuation, had $200 billion in revenue last year... If one of their smaller divisions screws up on a couple billion, they probably won't notice it all that much.

Looking at how the rest of Microsoft has shifted how it's been run since Satya took over and especially over the last 5-6 years, the Xbox division is looking more and more like a black sheep. I do expect Satya to reign in some changes regardless of how this acquision turns out. The board of directors has had their expectations of the Xbox properly lowered for a significant portion of Xbox's lifespan so I don't expect anything of note to surface from the board.

 

 

[Property_Damage]

3 hours ago, DaivRules said:

 

Company with around 2 Trillion dollar valuation, had $200 billion in revenue last year... If one of their smaller divisions screws up on a couple billion, they probably won't notice it all that much.

Looking at how the rest of Microsoft has shifted how it's been run since Satya took over and especially over the last 5-6 years, the Xbox division is looking more and more like a black sheep. I do expect Satya to reign in some changes regardless of how this acquision turns out. The board of directors has had their expectations of the Xbox properly lowered for a significant portion of Xbox's lifespan so I don't expect anything of note to surface from the board.

 

 

70billion is no small number regardless if the company is worth 2 trillion, 70 million sure thats like 3 top paying 3salary positions at the office for them, Its not just the raw deal at stake, theres billions of potential revenue lost if the deal sours, millions tied up in legal fees and teams of lawyers on the payroll handling the case

theres more than just 67 billion on the line

and if it turns out they deal doesnt go through, i gaurantee there will be a mass lay off at M$

Personally i would startwith the dipshit thinking a 70billion$ deal is no big deal, when it kinda is, i mean this has been ongoing for several months now, its not something that was just a thought, this is a plan in motion

if one of my guys at work fucked up royally and said no biggie, his ass is canned like its no biggie

Edited March 1, 2023 by Property_Damage

[Rozalia1]

6 hours ago, MidnightDragon said:

Nobody said XBox wouldn't exist without the Activision merger. What the hell is Phil smoking? Considering their crazy behavior since the scrutiny began, what the hell is all of Microsoft smoking?  

 

Its sort of like that joke about people asking a guy questions relating to something answered by the wording on his shirt. If someone comes out and says something like this then it only promotes people thinking that Xbox must be in trouble of being cut hence him coming out with this.

 

I assume that its just the usual play both angles move from Spencer, really Microsoft as a whole it seems, like to do. Xbox is both close to ruin due to the monster Sony, but also so ahead of Sony that Microsoft doesn't even consider them competition. The classic tactic of the enemy being both overwhelmingly powerful and pitifully weak.

 

3 hours ago, DaivRules said:

Company with around 2 Trillion dollar valuation, had $200 billion in revenue last year... If one of their smaller divisions screws up on a couple billion, they probably won't notice it all that much.

Looking at how the rest of Microsoft has shifted how it's been run since Satya took over and especially over the last 5-6 years, the Xbox division is looking more and more like a black sheep. I do expect Satya to reign in some changes regardless of how this acquision turns out. The board of directors has had their expectations of the Xbox properly lowered for a significant portion of Xbox's lifespan so I don't expect anything of note to surface from the board.

 

Microsoft has had to avoid other buyouts while doing this one. I'm forgetting what it was right now and would have to look it up in previous pages but there was at least one big tech purchase (10+ billion) outside gaming that they likely skipped due to this deal that was then picked up by someone else. Meanwhile in gaming they reportedly were offered up Bungie before it went to Sony and turned it down, likely again because it would only hurt the passing of this deal. Square Enix sold its western studios on the cheap which had historic IP which Microsoft loves to buy and yet they sat out of that which again was likely a result of this deal being active. If you want to say that this is all "guesses" and who can say for certain if Microsoft would have attempted to buy out those companies if this deal wasn't active, but that would be like when those people say Microsoft didn't take away Starfield/other coming Activision games away from PlayStation players... because Activision if not bought out randomly making all these coming games of theirs exclusive is a rational thought. Due to how buy out happy Microsoft is, more than any other Big Tech firm, its very likely they'd have gone for it.

 

You also have the fact that Microsoft is absolutely torching their good boy reputation they've built up for decades now for absolutely nothing if this deal fails. You can't put a price on that.

 

Anyway, the point here is that like how Gamepass losses them more money than whatever they pay developers as it cannibalises sales among other things such as the "training" of their gamers to wait for games to come to gamepass, there are hidden costs involved. In this here being the inability of them to buy out other companies which would have likely been much more easier and quicker, and in the non-gaming case might have been more profitable too.

 

---

 

Microsoft is done in their meeting with the CMA. Now as it is well known at this point, the CMA absolutely wrecked Microsoft with a heck of a body blow that had Microsoft dog whistling, and Activision full on race baiting on TV in anger. Certainly Microsoft must have come with something real big to convince the CMA.

 

Quote

- This includes a "guarantee of 100 percent parity" between Microsoft's Xbox and Sony's PlayStation for access to Call of Duty, as well as "legally binding commitments" to make the game available to "at least 150 million more players" on rival consoles and cloud streaming services if the deal closes (the Nintendo and Nvidia agreements).

... The exact same thing they've been saying but reworded to include the Nintendo/Nvidia thing (which is basically irrelevant to the CMA). Also instead of listing off where there would be parity they now say 100% parity which... why? They previously listed out stuff because regardless of the implication it wasn't full parity due to the existence of Gamepass, but at least you could argue that parity in price referred to the sell price of the title and not subscriptions so Microsoft wasn't lying, just leaving something out. By now saying 100% parity they've just turned it into a lie as it would be stupid for Sony to pay the silly money required for each new CoD to go on PS+ (and Microsoft knows this), so thus no there wouldn't 100% parity.

 

However, ever the showman Microsoft did not finish up with that because we also have the below:

 

Quote

- MS says that "The decision now lies with the CMA on whether it will block this deal and protect Sony, the dominant market leader, or consider solutions that make more games available to more players".

But of course. The CMA needs to wilt to their PR campaign or they'll slander the CMA as siding with the evil empire as they've already been doing. The arrogance Microsoft has had in all this is truly something special. They've been saying that regulators know nothing and Microsoft will re-educate them to know better. The CMA then comes out against them with an extremely well researched and solid paper which gets Microsoft/Activision so angry they start race baiting. Does Microsoft think that this tactic of "give us everything or we'll slander you" will work with the CMA? The CMA that unlike with the FTC cannot so easily be overcome by Microsoft getting a corrupt pro-business judge to look at the case and overturn it in their favour. If this deal fails Microsoft management, if the old boys network within the company doesn't stop it, needs to fire everyone involved in this.

[DaivRules]

59 minutes ago, Property_Damage said:

70billion is no small number regardless if the company is worth 2 trillion, 70 million sure thats like 3 top paying 3salary positions at the office for them, Its not just the raw deal at stake, theres billions of potential revenue lost if the deal sours, millions tied up in legal fees and teams of lawyers on the payroll handling the case

theres more than just 67 billion on the line

and if it turns out they deal doesnt go through, i gaurantee there will be a mass lay off at M$

Personally i would startwith the dipshit thinking a 70billion$ deal is no big deal, when it kinda is, i mean this has been ongoing for several months now, its not something that was just a thought, this is a plan in motion

if one of my guys at work fucked up royally and said no biggie, his ass is canned like its no biggie

70 billion would have been the purchase price, which was clearly already approved by MS leadership before the acquisition was proposed. Their penalty would be $3 billion if it fails and all the legal costs were already accounted for as is customary of all large acquisitions for all large companies. 
 

MS already had mass layoffs recently and there were going to be layoffs if the deal goes through “eliminating redundancy” as they always say, or if it doesn’t, there is still going to be more layoffs as potentially paused restructuring in anticipation of the deal will have finalized and the typical streamlining will take place. 
 

Lost potential revenue is never accounted for internally really, it’s a talking point only used to peg against external entities to cater to the crowd who overly personifies these corporations and emotionally thrives off the drama, often defining themselves by what they see in these massive companies. 
 

[SnowxSakura]

With how much of a bully microsoft has been over the decades and the large tech monopolies they hold, it's nice to see someone making them sweat for a change

[Z1MZUM]

I'll buy Activision for $20 and shut it down immediately 

[Rozalia1]

The results of Microsoft's attempts to find out every word spoken at Sony in the last 10 years is out and largely has been shut down. Sony will have to share some documents from 2019 onward (3 year period) but silly stuff like the performance reviews that they wanted to see was rejected. Some Microsoft supporters are trumpeting this as a victory but... no. The court was never going to state that Sony didn't need to share anything so this result is basically Microsoft getting nothing beyond what they were going to get.

 

The EU has also... pushed back their decision date by another two weeks. Microsoft supporters again see this as a victory for them as to them the EU is pushing it back because Microsoft's recent stunt in the EU was oh so convincing and so they need to push it back so they can side with Microsoft more. That doesn't seem right to me however. To begin with Microsoft has for months now wanted to get a quick resolution with the EU and then use that verdict to attempt to pressure the CMA, who they know is the final boss in all of this. This pushback puts the EU decision 1 day before the CMA's one which means that the CMA's decision will already be decided by the time the EU publishes theirs. Additionally, and I've noted this previously and this one looks very suspicious, this puts the EU's decision past the deadline that adds a further 500 million to the fee that Microsoft will have to pay on deal failure. As it was if the EU decision wasn't favourable enough Microsoft could have quit this and saved themselves 500 million, but now they'll likely go past the deadline in hope that the EU sides strongly with them.

 

Thankfully, or sadly depending on how you look at it (the more time Microsoft is tied up in all of this the better as they can't try other buyouts) these should be the last delays so we're in the endgame of all of this now. One thing that I'm left wondering is if the FTC can somehow maintain a case that paralyzes Microsoft from trying other buyouts for years to come, or if Microsoft desisting from this deal makes the FTC unable to keep them tied up.

[Aodir]

3 hours ago, Rozalia1 said:

….Sony will have to share some documents from 2019 onward (3 year period)…

 

Well, it looks like we're about to find out if the whole "Sony has been holding out major announcements due to this deal"  conspiracy theory holds any value or not. Almost a year later and all this drama finally gets interesting.

Edited March 2, 2023 by Aodir

[UNLEADED_BRONZE]

Deal further more delayed till 25th April

Until MSFT/Microsoft &/and Act/BLIZZ deal extended

 

https://www.eurogamer.net/us-judge-grants-microsoft-access-to-internal-sony-documents-on-activision-blizzard-deal

Edited March 2, 2023 by UNLEADED_BRONZE

[MidnightDragon]

18 hours ago, Rozalia1 said:

Thankfully, or sadly depending on how you look at it (the more time Microsoft is tied up in all of this the better as they can't try other buyouts) these should be the last delays so we're in the endgame of all of this now. One thing that I'm left wondering is if the FTC can somehow maintain a case that paralyzes Microsoft from trying other buyouts for years to come, or if Microsoft desisting from this deal makes the FTC unable to keep them tied up.

Not super long ago, MS said in court filings they thought the US deal at least wouldn't complete until 2024 due to the court hearings. So we shall see. 

Edited March 2, 2023 by MidnightDragon

[EdinhoN]

It really bugs my mind how this MS/Activision deal is being jammed by external forces. One company wants to sell, the other wants to buy. Seems like a no brainer to me, but for some reason weird 3rd parties are trying to mess up. Personally I just want the old Call of Duty on GamePass mainly, also MS owning Activision, chances are even COD1 will be brought to the backwards compatibility program, as it happened before with games from other companies MS bought.

PlayStation fans are crying because they are afraid MS could remove their "yearly $70 shooting FIFA" from them?

[DaivRules]

4 minutes ago, EdinhoN said:

Seems like a no brainer to me, but for some reason weird 3rd parties are trying to mess up.

The “weird third parties” are called regulators have an obligation to review these types of deals because it has an impact on their respective citizens and/or economies. 
 

 

[UNLEADED_BRONZE]

6 minutes ago, EdinhoN said:

It really bugs my mind how this MS/Activision deal is being jammed by external forces. One company wants to sell, the other wants to buy. Seems like a no brainer to me, but for some reason weird 3rd parties are trying to mess up. Personally I just want the old Call of Duty on GamePass mainly, also MS owning Activision, chances are even COD1 will be brought to the backwards compatibility program, as it happened before with games from other companies MS bought.

PlayStation fans are crying because they are afraid MS could remove their "yearly $70 shooting FIFA" from them?

Jokes on them for years PS got Exclusive content hahahaha 

Edited March 2, 2023 by UNLEADED_BRONZE

[Sendai-Horatio]

5 minutes ago, EdinhoN said:

It really bugs my mind how this MS/Activision deal is being jammed by external forces. One company wants to sell, the other wants to buy. Seems like a no brainer to me, but for some reason weird 3rd parties are trying to mess up. Personally I just want the old Call of Duty on GamePass mainly, also MS owning Activision, chances are even COD1 will be brought to the backwards compatibility program, as it happened before with games from other companies MS bought.

PlayStation fans are crying because they are afraid MS could remove their "yearly $70 shooting FIFA" from them?

You seem to be only thinking of best case scenarios. Look at the Bethesda buyout, it has not been good for people who were already established fans of those games.

[EdinhoN]

6 minutes ago, DaivRules said:

The “weird third parties” are called regulators have an obligation to review these types of deals because it has an impact on their respective citizens and/or economies. 
 

 

Weird af

[DrunkenEngineer]

5 minutes ago, Sendai-Horatio said:

You seem to be only thinking of best case scenarios. Look at the Bethesda buyout, it has not been good for people who were already established fans of those games.

 

Have we seen a Bethesda game release on PS since this buyout?  I'm aware that Deathloop and Ghostwire: Tokyo had pre-existing agreements to release here, but since then...what Hi-Fi Rush (looks astounding) and Redfall (coming soon) are PC/Xbox only.  I highly doubt we'll see another DOOM or Wolfenstein on PS.

[MidnightDragon]

12 minutes ago, DrunkenEngineer said:

 

Have we seen a Bethesda game release on PS since this buyout?  I'm aware that Deathloop and Ghostwire: Tokyo had pre-existing agreements to release here, but since then...what Hi-Fi Rush (looks astounding) and Redfall (coming soon) are PC/Xbox only.  I highly doubt we'll see another DOOM or Wolfenstein on PS.

We’ve seen ports and stuff for their MMOs, but Ghostwire was likely the final original.

[DaivRules]

11 minutes ago, EdinhoN said:

Weird af

 

If you don't understand what the regulators role is, it might seem weird, or sometimes actually be weird. The regulators in your country for example, have singled out and are banning Apple from selling phones for not having a charging adapter included with their phones. 

Some regulations really are weird, some actually make sense.
 

[AJ_-_808]

57 minutes ago, EdinhoN said:

It really bugs my mind how this MS/Activision deal is being jammed by external forces. One company wants to sell, the other wants to buy. Seems like a no brainer to me, but for some reason weird 3rd parties are trying to mess up.

It's not that simple. They're attempting to prevent MS from building a monopoly and destroying other businesses' fair chance of competing.  MS shouldn't be allowed to use outside money (Xbox money on its own would've failed long ago) to buy up the major market assets because they're too incompetent to build their own IP portfolio.

 

Bethesda was a wake up call as to MS' intentions imo.

[Rozalia1]

37 minutes ago, EdinhoN said:

It really bugs my mind how this MS/Activision deal is being jammed by external forces. One company wants to sell, the other wants to buy. Seems like a no brainer to me, but for some reason weird 3rd parties are trying to mess up. Personally I just want the old Call of Duty on GamePass mainly, also MS owning Activision, chances are even COD1 will be brought to the backwards compatibility program, as it happened before with games from other companies MS bought.

PlayStation fans are crying because they are afraid MS could remove their "yearly $70 shooting FIFA" from them?

 

If one party wanting to sell and the other wanting to buy was all it took then you'd have monopolies in everything. Microsoft would have simply bought everyone they needed to 20 years ago and gaming would have been far worse as a result. Its how you get those dystopia stories set in the future where megacorporations have massive control over all manners of things. These buy outs add nothing to gaming unlike actually competing by cultivating studios.

 

Ultimately though you should be thankful for anything that sets Microsoft back. As long as Microsoft doesn't succeed in their goal with Gamepass they have to keep dumping money down the money pit to keep it going. If Microsoft achieves their goals they no longer need to and can degrade the service while making you pay more money. Now granted, eventually Microsoft might simply close the money pit if it keeps failing (likely requires a new CEO as the current one is a money mark), but hey, at least you'll have had a good run.

 

Also no, the issue isn't Microsoft taking CoD away. Its why their constant appeals of "We'll keep it on other platforms, we'll put it on a contract" don't make the issue people have go away. What actually matters is Microsoft buying out massive amounts of the gaming industry to force through their plan to destroy the traditional gaming market. If things naturally go that way than that is one thing, but its not good if forced through like Microsoft is trying to do.

[DrunkenEngineer]

1 hour ago, MidnightDragon said:

We’ve seen ports and stuff for their MMOs, but Ghostwire was likely the final original.

I suspect the same.  That's a big bummer.  I have a gaming PC so I do have access to any further Bethesda titles, and so I'm starting to just move my playing for those dead-ended franchises over that way.  I recognize not everyone has that option so it's pretty disappointing to see what MS is doing here.

[TheRetroManiac]

https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/eu-unlikely-demand-asset-sales-microsoft-activision-deal-sources-say-2023-03-02/

 

People seem to think this is only about Call of Duty, and those same people seem to forget it's not the only game that comes from Activision that has been multi-platform for as long as we can all remember, so some of your favourite game series possibly no longer being on your primary gaming console is a real kick in the teeth. It's not right at all that one company, who are incompetent at making their own first party games somewhat decent, can just buy up the market and some people will just say I don't care about this deal.

 

It is a massive deal because if Microsoft succeeds here that can be very bad for the industry as the main talking point would be just throw money at it, and you will succeed not to mention like I have said already you might not care about these games that could get taken away but just you wait till they gobble up another deal and take the games you're interested in and make those exclusive then you will remember this deal and maybe give your head a wobble and realize Bethesda was the starting point and this is the next big deal if it passes dark times ahead.

 

I don't see us getting another Doom or Wolfenstein etc and those are 2 franchises that for me are very good, and it's disappointing that they were multi-platform but now most likely we won't see another on PlayStation.

Edited March 2, 2023 by TheRetroManiac