So your basing your prediction on how round the number is???
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That is a really good boost for the acquisition. It crystallises what we all always knew, namely that being part of Xbox would be transformative for the lives and well-being of all employees. Hell, even Bobby will be better off!
Seriously though, it’s another nail in the coffin for objectors.
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Since Brad Smith talks about a lot of things. I will only share the tidbits regarding the ABK acquisition.
About CWA:
Brad Smith: They initially expressed concerns about our acquisition of Activision-Blizzard, they express concerns at the FTC, which is the regulatory agency in Washington D.C., responsible for making a decision about it. And the FTC sometimes does consider the impact of an acquisition on, say, a labor market, labor relations in that market. And so it was important to us and for us and for this acquisition to have the CWA now come forward and say they support this, that this is an acquisition that will advance the state of labor relations in the tech sector, and in gaming in particular.
And this agreement with the Communication Workers of America, which I really do think breaks new ground for how a company and a labor union can work together as we approach the second quarter of the 21st century.
If I’m not mistaken the FTC said something along changing or reviewing non-compete agreements/clauses (You can look more of it here). This is what Brad Smith said about the matter :
We have not brought a lawsuit to enforce a non compete clause since Satya became CEO. And that goes back to 2014 now, and yeah, I do think we reached a point of recognizing two things. The first is looking at where regulation and the law are going. The Washington state law is one example. You’re right, we went well beyond it both in terms of exceeding the standard in the state and applying this across the country and not in this state alone.
But Washington state isn’t alone. Other states have been moving in this direction, the Federal Trade Commission, the FTC has indicated that the current world of non-competes bothers the commissioners, or at least a majority of them.
We still need employees to appreciate the importance of protecting secrets, we still have non-disclosure clauses and obligations. And I think we live now in location here in Washington state where people move around. We don’t necessarily cheer in the morning when somebody leaves Microsoft to go work at AWS or Google. But we often cheer in the afternoon when people who left decide that actually, they like working at Microsoft better, and they come back. We’ve got something now that is right for the times. For this time, for this decade, I think this is the right approach.
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Yeah, a major hurdle for the acquisition was put to rest with this Microsoft’s Movement
EDIT: new numbers for diablo inmortal:
"I’m not making any announcements about exclusivity or something like that. But that model will change.”
Quote from Tim Stuart used in the article, they were staying ambiguous and only said they wouldn’t pull games of PS and Nintendo consoles which they haven’t
they did, no bethesda games were pulled from PS or Nintendo consoles, new games just won’t come to those platforms
“First, some commentators have asked whether we will continue to make popular content like Activision’s Call of Duty available on competing platforms like Sony’s PlayStation. The obvious concern is that Microsoft could make this title available exclusively on the Xbox console, undermining opportunities for Sony PlayStation users.”
they mentioned this just before, why would they talk about older games when talking about the concern of MS making them console exclusive
no it isn’t, they never said all. They just said “other popular Activision Blizzard titles” which is ambiguous since they didn’t specify anything
they never once said all, they just said “other popular Activision Blizzard titles” which is ambiguous since they aren’t specifying jack shit so it could mean any game
they were literally talking about the concerns about them making CoD exclusive, its easy to know what they are refering too otherwise they are purposely trying to miss lead shareholders
With Warzone 2 and other F2P COD titles staying on Playstation, it literally fits to a T what they said.
Anyway, in 2024-2025 we will see 
Also maybe on the roundtable.
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Because they will be and they cant say that yet, so all they can say right now is"we don’t have intentions of just pulling all of AB content out of Sony or Nintendo" which is the same stance they had on Zenimax. Which is exclusivity.
Bear in Mind it is absolutely within Microsoft perview to pull any IP they’ve acquired off S/N stores…its just not worth the hassle of negative press.
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As far as I remember they even wanted to extend the COD offer to Switch. I wonder if cloud F2P Warzone is gonna be that option.
None of the above
Theres a few possibilities
- They weren’t serious
- They weren’t referring to Call of Duty
- Its connected to Xcloud/Gamepass which MS knows Nintendo will never go for…so the offer is hollow
- Its a shitty knock off mobile version of CoD that can run on Switch…so not really CoD.
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Considering that Microsoft went with F2P cloud Fortnite, I expect similar things for all their future games in the future.
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It has to happen
I also believe that’s what Stadia should have started doing from the beginning
There are a lot of thing that Stadia could do, but it was again one of the typical Google’s approaches - “great technology, no human input”
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Then they will see that PS has a bigger market share in UK and the case is closed
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I’m not worried, I saw that as a new step and a timeline for potentially other regulatory organizations to give thieir decisions.
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Considering that the deadline is for September, I think this merger will have high chances to close before the end of the year. Even in Autumn like how I expect.
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Yeah, I’m guetting optimistic for that.
Agreed. Zenimax EU approval was March 8th and the deal had closed within a few days after. Should finalise in September or October…just in time for Overwatch 2 and Call of Duty.
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The deal will close next year, hopefully towards the end of Q1.
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