Microsoft’s 2018 acquisition spree is the reason megacorps realized there was a lot of money in gaming. It wasn’t GTA, COD, Minecraft, and Fortnite printing money. It was the purchase of Undead Labs folks.
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Wordle purchase was the one that finally opened their eyes.
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Do you think the US government would demand MS to make warframe or COD multiplatform on a Japanese based console?
The only thing MS has to reply with is its on Game Pass which is on PC, mobile, console, and anyone who wants to have Game Pass on their platform
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That’s true. Even TV’s soon too. Probably even your microwave.
Status quo is a lot of people’s new favorite phrase. The status quo of COD being multiplatform is fine. Why can’t Microsoft leave the status quo alone? The industry won’t be healthy if the status quo changes
Has nothing to do with the status quo being their favorite company is #1 in market share. Totally unrelated
It reminds me of the Office basketball episode where Michael realizes his team is ahead and rushes to find an excuse to stop the game early. “Oh we were winning? what a coincidence”
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The FTC will examine every possible way to slice what the relevant market is here and then once the market’s contours are nailed down they try to figure out how this potential move affects competition in that space…then they slice the ‘market’ definition in a new way and repeat the process. At every stage proponents of the deal and opponents would make their case.
If the market=‘companies making videogames’, then their argument about being #3 works only if you ignore how it affects things going forward, which is a crucial part the FTC cares about. Yes, it doesn’t mean MS will instantly become #1 or dominant and nowhere remotely close to anything like a monopoly, but that isn’t the barometer. The barometer is how it affects competition both today and in the future. This would be such a generic and nondescript way to define ‘market’ that MS has almost unlimited wiggle room to frame the move w/o it sounding problematic, but the FTC might prefer more specific meanings for what the relevant ‘market’ is.
If the market=‘game subscription services’, then their argument about being #3 is no longer true in that space and they would need to focus on things like game availability and how other players are still plenty capable of entering that market.
For instance, if Amazon was looking to radically expand Luna by including ABK games and this deal is seen as MS aiming to kill that expansion, the FTC won’t be thrilled with that at all. Reason being MS openly admits they see Amazon as among their main competitors despite Amazon not having made a big push yet, so if a move by MS is seen as being made to prevent them from really expanding into the market that would be framed as anti-competitive.
Spartacus coming into the picture helps MS here imho, since they can point to a major player entering that market after the deal was agreed to. AND if Sony is forced to actually go day 1 Spartacus releases (not just 1P but really any major games) MS could argue that their aggressive moves for Game Pass led to that increased competition and better consumer outcomes. If MS kept CoD as multiplat, especially given Sony’s ties to the series of late, the ABK deal could be framed as an effort by MS to keep Sony from bringing Spartacus out or at least lessening the competition for Game Pass by removing a huge IP from the space of competition in this version of the ‘market’.
The fact this deal started taking shape only around the same time as Sony was leaking the existence of Spartacus to the public might be relevant here, depending on the timeline. The fact that ABK/MS talked casually about such a deal for more than a year and then ABK reportedly reached out to them after considering alternatives might help MS’s case there though.
The other thing is MS can argue that keeping CoD multiplat and giving it an extra year of dev time can lead to more competition in the shooter genre, in holiday releases, and better CoD games in the end too, which would lead to better consumer outcomes for this market.
The other thing to mention is Sony’s acquisition of Bungie now presumably means Bungie’s games will offer their expansions on Spartacus instead of Game Pass. Destiny directly competes with CoD on a number of fronts, so MS could argue that their move results in Sony bringing content to Spartacus which is good for competition/consumers AND MS can argue that their aggressive moves with Game Pass have lead Sony to invest heavily in GaaS titles, which is the space where CoD primarily competes in this version of the ‘market’. If MS can tie the Bungie deal and Sony’s expansion into GaaS to a generic argument about MS being aggressive with Game Pass and tie that to the ABK deal, they could find a really compelling case to make imho.
If market=‘the metaverse’ then I dunno wtf that really means tangibly yet, so not sure how that works out. I know Jez’s position is that for MS, the metaverse has nothing to do with VR and is just about having a singular online identity across their ecosystem/userbases or something along those lines. Satya has directly cited this as a central pillar for the acquisition and I’d imagine this leaves them room to make good arguments since it seems Facebook is clearly a big competitor who would otherwise be unaffected by the ABK deal in terms of it harming them as competitors I’d imagine.
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Fridge first
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Great points. Satya should definately at the very least consult you with such important matters. Not only do I think your argument is stronger, you also give me the impression you know better.
Is ignorant passive aggression all you have to contribute to the discourse?
Of course, I think the deal will close sometime this year too.
COD will be an exclusive after 2023.
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I don’t know what you’re basing this on. If it was about the phone call to that one particular congressman, we don’t really know anything about what was said on that call. It could have been literally anything.
I’ll ask again, why would MS concede anything they might not have to? The deal has to go through the regulatory process anyway, so why pre-emptively give away exclusivity control of arguably the biggest IP in the world?
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We don’t know that MS conceded anything I wish we’d stop acting like we know key details like that
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A bit off-topic but I honestly didn’t know Phil Spencer has an account here. I felt like a fan girl and it’s not even in person. That said imagine Satya posting here out of nowhere. Won’t that be wtf moment.
Interestingly enough, today is Activision earnings. I wonder what stuff we will hear about the acquisition if any.
He does. It’s Prog
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It’s always the one you least expect.
@Proven can read this too since so many seem to have not heard about it for some reason…
The member of Congress who is the point man for rewriting the new FTC regs (the ones that will be more aggressive than existing ones and that the FTC will have to follow) tweeted about it (read his follow up tweets, not just the linked one):
https://twitter.com/RepKenBuck/status/1483564026919596032
They wouldn’t. CoD staying multiplat would be something they did to avoid any snags. I entirely agree with Grubb’s point that MS would have done the calculus here in the same way they did with Zenimax’s biggest games and presumably came to same conclusion wrt exclusivity, but CoD is big enough it could present an issue in how that is framed by the FTC potentially. So I’d see CoD staying multiplat as something they feel they have to do, not want to do.
Time to buy more
Im pretty sure Microsoft will make CoD more accessible than ever even with the removal of Playstation from the equation.
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Just putting it on Game Pass makes it more accessible than ever. So… yeah no one needs PS.
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