Microsoft-Activision-Blizzard Discussion Thread (Part 1)

Gaming
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5439

So why is it OK for a 30+ million selling (vastly more according to Todd) game like Skyrim (not to mention Fallout and Starfield) to be straight up scorched earth, but for a CoD game that sells 20 million can’t.

Is it literally just the MTX factor? We all know Microsoft is prepared to take less money.

  • They could make more money selling games, they chose gamepass.
  • They could have got the marketing and gamepass launch for a fraction of the price, they chose a huge premium.
  • They could chose to make …um …$190m more a year on Playstation MTX…(the price of a modest AAA game if you will) or they can knock Playstation down so hard they probably won’t get back up and make Billions upon Billions in the long run by virtue of being unchallenged. In the end that $190m is going to look like pocket lint.

So what your saying is Microsofts purchase of CoD makes it a nuke in a war of sticks and stones? Why prolong the war if your enemy does not want peace?

I’m supremely confident in saying if Microsoft decided tomorrow they weren’t going to sell Minecraft on Switch and Playstation anymore…it wouldn’t have any meaningful effect on the continued popularity of Minecraft. It’s a vastly bigger game on Xbox+PC+Mobile. Cancelling Call of Duty on Playstation isn’t going to result in Call of Duty being less popular, Playstation sales would crater quite significantly and Xbox+PC+Cloud would take its place.

And I would laugh heavily at anyone who used the phrase “money on the table”.

Well lets see $150m marketing per CoD…every two years, is $1.2B for the next 8 games…so thats 16 years! Lets say $1B per game for 6 months on gamepass…for $9.2B they could have had

  • Marketing
  • XP buffs and early betas
  • Day 1 gamepass

For the next 2 generations.

Now what could they do with the other $60B?

  • Capcom
  • Sega
  • Ubisoft
  • Rockstar
  • WB Games

All exclusive, all the time. And hey Microsoft could always save up another $69B in 16 years time if they wanted to lock it down for good.

So why spend all that money when they didn’t need to?

It will, but what about Warzone 3? By 2026 when Microsoft can make CoD exclusive Warzone 2 will be at the end of its life. Will Sony have its shit together on the fps front or will they need to rely on the benevolence of Xbox again? Will Microsoft want to make F2P Call of Duty game when they could just say the cheap option is just regular CoD on gamepass.

It’s a big deal, every other year Xbox will have by far, by far the biggest game. Nintendo and Sony will quite literally have to start combining their game sales to even come close.

And thats without any form of exclusivity. Imagine the divide if there were.

And still it could be even bigger with one minor adjustment.

5440

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5441

It’s okay, we only need to wait for the acquisition to clear and most likely the Sony advertising contract to have been fulfilled and we should finally have an answer to this debate and no one need argue it again. 2025 isn’t THAT far away.

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5442

I get your overall stance and agree but I think you also need to see the big picture. In the short term making COD exclusive would help Xbox and push ppl from PS to Xbox. We agree there but it has a couple drawbacks to consider.

  1. You are going to get more scrutiny for any future large acquisitions. If I am MS and I want to acquire more pubs now isn’t the time to rock the boat. Let me get my acquisition targets first. That is more important to long term sucess wouldn’t you agree? For instance, if they keep COD multi-plat for now it makes it much easier to get Take2 or EA. Sony/whomever would have less arguments for regulators.

  2. The future of gaming is cloud gaming. PS is still going to do well this generation. Xbox will make a lot of strides and I agree will eventually surpass PS but that doesn’t mean it will happen this gen. It might but either way PS will have a large userbase and COD missing from PS creates a hole for another competitor. It just gives more of a chance for ppl to try and play a game like Destiny instead. Once you don’t need consoles or it is a new console-gen is a better time to take COD exclusive imo. Start signaling now that COD belongs to Xbox with timed content or even making some things timed exclusive or spin offs exclusive. Then next gen you can still release COD on past consoles but not the new PS6. That would be the perfect time to strike with exclusivity and limit the negative effects to Xbox. Also, they should have completed the large acquisitions they want by then.

Bottom line is I think they will be exclusive eventually. It is just a matter of timing. Doing it in the middle of trying to make big acquisitions and a console generation isn’t the best time imo.

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5443

I would say if acquisitions doesnt equal exclusivity you need not acquire, since you can negotiate marketing and launching on gamepass on a game by game basis and it’d cost much less which frees your budget up for acquisitions which result in exclusives.

If Microsoft wants GTA6 on gamepass and doesnt care about exclusivity…they can pay Take Two the equivilent of 30 million $70 copies ($2.1B) which is way less costly then buying the publisher proper.

Its possible, though i wouldnt expect another buy of that size for another 5 years. Its going to take a massive purchase to get Xbox above TenCent in revenue. There no monopoly there…and theres no limit to the number of studios one can own (Embracer has 120+) and theres no limit to the number of gaming employees you can have (Ubisoft has 20,000+) …lets face it if ABK passes and there are exclusives we are a long way away from any kind of pushback.

Microsoft should keep spending until that pushback comes.

Agreed.

I think Xbox can roll that dice now. I see no Playstations 5s in the cloud. Sony by their own admission doesnt have an answer to CoD.

I would honestly like to see them try to pitch Destiny 2s next DLC (or even Destiny 3) against CoD on gamepass. Since the earliest CoD could be exclusive is 2026 they arent pulling out the rug. Sony has 4 years to prepare…that is more then enough and more then enough for Xbox to manage that playerbase into their platforms.

5444

Minecraft and Call of Duty are huge franchises. Minecraft spinoffs will sell millions. I think that’s a perfectly reasonable thing to describe as “tons of software”. Those two franchises will sell more copies of games on Playstation than a lot of Xbox software combined will sell in total.

Do you have a quote suggesting that they told EU regulators that it would be unprofitable to not put games on Playstation and that’s therefore why they will still put them there beyond the terms of existing agreements and then also expand them to new platforms?

We got vague statements early on with Zenimax about the acquisition not being about “taking away from playstation” and that people wouldn’t lose the games they owned. I am not aware of statements as strong as the ones I posted above being made to regulators regarding Zenimax.

I didn’t say they would charge 70 dollars for a f2p game. I’m describing what expanding these series to Nintendo platforms might take the form of. It may take the form of F2p games, it may take the form of premium games, it may take the form of both.

And yes anything Switch gets I’d expect PS5 to get too. A situation where PS5 gets the premium games but Switch just gets the F2p games is plausible since there may be too many technical challenges to get CoD on Switch as a full premium game. But Switch 2 may open the door to that also.

There are many cloud games on Switch, they do not have to be in the form of a microsoft subscription. You can go right now and buy Control cloud edition, Kingdom Hearts cloud edition, etc. If any game was big enough from ABK to justify a stand alone cloud edition, it would be Call of Duty, but again, don’t get hung up on specifics, I’m just trying to scope out the vast range of possible options, I don’t specifically know the exact form anything will take.

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Anyone have a current timeline on when to expect some of these approvals?

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5446

Tomorrow hopefully

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5447

This is a recent post from Idas (user on ResetEra):

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image750×963 144 KB

5448

Saw this over on resetera, might be Saudi, are they getting these games on GamePass already now the mergers been approved there ?!

And it’s the gold edition with all dlc, nicee

5449

I can’t imagine that is the case, especially as it’s Ghosts (9 years old now). Probably some form of glitch, while they are preparing the backend for completion.

5450

Someone is getting too thirsty for ABK acquisition. It could be a bug for future update or massive coincidental glitch. The time is running out.

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5451
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5452

Does anyone have a timetable on when things for Bethesda got approved? Im thinking on using that as a template to determine how much longer abk would take.

5453

I don’t remember anything super specific, but the acquisition was announced in September 2020 and finalized by March the following year.

5454

I don’t remember it being followed in quite as much detail as Activision has been (obviously different scales of acquisition) so I don’t think quite as much information is floating around out there but from what I did find: Bethesda got announced September 21st. By Jan 29th Microsoft filed for approval from the EU (having met the requirements to provide information to the EU, I believe), they responded by Feb 1st saying that they’d have made a decision by the 5th of March. On the 8th of March the deal was “approved” by the EU and the next day Microsoft announced the deal had closed. I don’t see as much information about the US side of things other than they followed a similar schedule. So in total 5 months and 2 weeks.

Right now it’s been 7 months and 1 week since the Activision acquisition was announced, but the important detail from the Bethesda acquisition is that once Microsoft meets the needs of the regulatory bodies there will typically be a one month period where they deliberate on whether to allow it to continue uninterrupted. We haven’t heard anything from the EU on this matter yet - but in the US Microsoft has indicated that they have met these requirements as of July 18th and that they believe the 30 day window for deliberation by the regulators should begin. This COULD mean an announcement from the US is imminent - but as pointed out by Hoeg law just because Microsoft believes they have met the requirements doesn’t mean that the FTC agrees and is ready to move on. In the UK they’ve set a deadline for the 1st of September. There’s a picture of a post up above that has more information on all this.

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5455

I would say a deeper look from regulators is going to be pretty standard with any deal this size and the deadlines quoted previously were a best case scenario. I’m still thinking if the deal goes through it will be sometime from March to May next year

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5456

I think regulators are going to have lots of talk with MS. One thing to keep in mind is that most regulators keep these sort of things highly confidential and only few people from both organizations would have the knowledge as to what’s happening. Either way I would consider this as you said “standard”.

5457

I can imagine Microsoft deep inside wished they got ABK already with price increase announcement.

5458

Apart of me thinks those delaying it (NZ and potentially the UK) are waiting to see what the USA/FTC does.

Of course they are looking into it themselves from their perspective but if the US gives the go ahead I think they will.

As era host says “but I dunno could be wrong…baby.

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