And that the whole reason of crack down on Apple and Google worldwide by the regulators (with Microsoft, Epic supporting regulators there). Saving grace of Apple is Google so them having a legal duopoly kinda helps but they are basically Microsoft of the 90s at this point.
Apple is essentially WinTel these days in USA at least.
I wouldnât expect a $70 vs subscription fight to end up with the $70 winning. As soon as CoDs start launching on gamepass day 1 is the day fewer copies will actually sell. Xbox and PC diminished en masse and Playstation by proximity due to being the only expensive version on market. Unless Sony accepts gamepass into its ecosystem its a count down a crumbling market relevance.
Well if Microsoft doesnât want people to buy Xboxs instead of Playstations, thatâs what they should do. Why spend billions for an unnecessary uphill battle. Their choice in the end.
Microsoft would own Call of Duty, if their consoles arenât selling its because they didnât leverage its exclusivity.
Well they have no reason to. Switch wonât run it and Nintendo wonât have Xcloud and ABK realised long agoâŚtheres no market for it which is why they never bothered. I would actually say that this is a hollow echo promise to get the deal closed than any actual desire to grow Call of Duty on Nintendo platforms.
I await the day that a Nintendo platform gets Call of Duty day and date with content parity that isnât being run on an Xbox blade.
I didnt catch the quarterly update, anything said about ABK and the regulators?
Mentioned it in the community thread they still expect it to close fiscal â23. Another thing thatâs so strange is not a single person asked about ABK deal during the investor call.
Why would Microsoft stakeholders care about ABK?
Amy expects it to close in the timeframe already stated, June 2023. I still think March/April is when it will conclude and Iâve said numerous times, without any concessions other than what Phil has already stated.
Seriously?
Microsoft is acquiring ABK, so questions about the âHow is the $70 Billion Acquisition deal going?â would be expected.
Lol is all I can say, I donât know maybe itâs a 68Bn deal, and there is a lot of talk about it in the press. Just because Microsoft is huge and gaming is a tiny part of their overall company doesnât mean a 68,000,000,000 deal would go unnoticed. Thatâs my shock that it didnât get brought up, not because I think investors would be worried but more asking about how the deal is going and how they expect it to improve XYZ.
I think the investors (the ones calling in are from big business like JP Morgan and Bank of America and such) know thereâs not really anything Amy or Satya could say that would inform them of the future of the business, unlike asking about Azure and Office and such. Once Activision is in the fold, I think we may see more questions at least the first quarter it comes in. Gaming will still be peanuts in comparison to Azure, but the growth potential of mobile will likely attract investors more.
Not really. Since the announcement Microsoft earned in pure cash probably more than this deal and by the end of FY23 they will earn around 2 times of ABK since the announcement.
70b is a lot, but it is just a transaction. All is about Azure and B2B solutions.
âFor you it was your all market cap, but for me it was just tuesdayâ
Maybe. Who knows? I am not sure if they are asking about Windows business anymore even.
Still it is amazing how Microsoft pivoted to cloud. Without Azure their situation right now would not be that good (it would not be bad, but nowhere near the current market cap and revenue).
Maybe investors are being mindful and only asking questions related to how much they gained this quarter?
Because frankly speaking, the transaction has not happened yet, so it doesnât have any effect on earnings as of yet.
Also, it has not shown any negative effect on stocks yet
And offcourse, investors arenât looking for a drama in this meeting like us.
Specifically makes it seem clear future games not name CoD will be exclusive to Xbox/PC. But since Minecraft isnât on ps+ does that mean future CoD wonât either? Or will Microsoft negotiate something for both in the future?
Of course they wonât put CoD on PS+. Why would they do that?
Ironically due to marketing deal I expect the last COD games to appear inn PS+ simply because they will appear in Game Pas.
Acquiring them will lead to a big head start to mobile space.
I really think COD will always be on PS. But since MSFT will own everything eventually lol, I can see them not calling it COD or something else people will recognize. There is NO way they are going to put all in PS. There will be some kind ofâŚsingle player exp. only on Xbox ecosystem. I just canât see that much $ being thrown to literally, status quo, have COD running the same. There has to be a benefit to this. Yes, they will still get money etc. from royalties butâŚI just canât see it whimper out. Maybe Iâm the only one lol
I mean they can offer exclusive perks for their store for Candy Crush, Diablo Immortal, Warzone Mobile etc.
There wonât be status quo simple because COD will be in Game Pass, Sony will lose marketing deals and there will be feature parity. With COD stop being fragmented (thanks to Sony) the game will organically grow across all the platforms.
Basically, Sony fans will be feeding money to Xbox like with Minecraft.
âSpecificallyâ uhmmmâŚmaybe they do want to be more agressive regarding ABK games and franchises exclusivity to MS platformsâŚinteresting. Imagine rhe meltdowns if/when future crash games or spyro are announced 
Better announce the games now or forever be exclusive.