I think the process is way too long. (Knowing that after US commision, the European commision will analyse the case too…).
In reality, imagine all that can change between the agreement and June 2023… 1 year and a half… The company literally can buy/create new studios between that, could spend money, make new deals with other company and so…
Imagine how hard it is too organise Xbox between now and then? Should you do your plan without including the Acti part?
Your 70B are stuck in the process. And what if, between the share of Acti are getting higher than the 70B? What will happen then (serious question)?
I lived a merger between 2 company that has been slow one. But even if this was slow, and not always confortable for everyone cause sometime some division didn’t know what will hapen to them, it’s was a mooving process. For Actibli, you have a 1.5 years, before the merge, it could be very unpleasant for the people inside (I think about the ressources, accounting, HR, financial and co, not dev).
And in the same time, its a big block for Xbox in term of acquisition, so the market could go crazy and they would miss some opportunities. (Remind me when Bill Gates said that MS miss the all mobile market because they was always focus on the US and European commission for the monopoly situation of Windows and IE)
I think it’s too soon for an Ubisoft acquisition, that one would be certainly looked badly by the industry at large, not even regulators only, while they still haven’t even closed the ABK deal. I think now it’s the time to expand in Asia, because over there Xbox negligible presence wouldn’t draw any unwarranted attention, nor any regulators pushback, their market-share is borderline non-existant. We need a 2018/19-like barrage of independent studios acquisitions, which would show, this time for real and not through pr fluff, Xbox commitment over the region.
True. While not good at third party deals, business wise Microsoft usually does interesting and good choices (especially since Ballmer left as he got Nokia, tried with Yahoo and so on). In gaming it was crazy - Minecraft, Zenimax and ATVI now. It was like crazy opportunities.
I wonder if Ubisoft declines but not sold to a third party (that is not Amazon or Sony), it will allow Microsoft get better deals for Game Pass (like get whole Ubisoft+ in Game Pass Ultimate) and so on.
Japan, Japan.
Arguably with ATVI, Microsoft gets a nice presence in Korea and maybe even China (though acquisition of Pearl Abyss or Nexon would be fancy).
@Knottian Does Microsoft need to notify all the regulators across about each purchase? Or if for example the company has offices only in one region, should Microsoft only notify the host country?
Yeah, starting from 2024 maybe and depending on what they are going to do with the IPs, otherwise nobody over there would bother with Xbox and/or MS platforms as usual, like what happens in EU, but much worse.
Man, some people are really grasping at straws. Sony is Japanese company. It would only be natural that someone who could speak Japanese would be a plus. Not saying they couldn’t acquire a Japanese company. But the ability to speak Japanese in a job posting for a company that is Japanese doesn’t scream smoking gun to me.
That’s not true at all. Activision is a massively diverse company with successes in a huge range of areas and has major success on mobile in addition to pc and console. Ubisofts success is almost exclusively tied to console and are not as genre diverse as Activision/Blizzard.
It’s not going to be complete this year, far too much stuff to get through in the US, Europe and other territories. Personally I see it being around the May-June 2023 point but possible earlier, not 2022 though.
Activision also puts out tons of mobile content like Candy Crush, has one of the largest mmos in the world, is makes a massively popular dungeon crawling rpg, one of the most popular hero shooters in existence and has some of the most popular family friendly games in the biz. Ubisoft doesn’t have near that level of diversity let alone successful diverse content.
Yeah, I guess I focused on Activision not the company as a whole. Blizzard looks to be getting closer to releasing games which will add a ton of diversity to the lineup.
Even if it closes in 2022, it wouldn’t change anything outside back catalogue on GP, deals are in place until 2023 and beyond anyway, concerning the real added value for Xbox, so day one releases on GP and exclusives, 2024 at the earliest. Obviously hearing a honest take about AB, like Phil comment about Bethesda on the roundtable in march 2021, sooner than later would be cool, corporate fluff is always annoying.
Of course until at least 2023 it won’t change anything. Even 2024 potentially depends if COD is annual franchise or not because litearlly COD2022 is coming, Warzone 2 and there is a third title that Sony will receive so if it moves year later for example it means the studio resources will be still limited to do anything else (especially Raven software that is busy with Warzone, possible Infinity Ward with Warzone 2)
There are too many multiplatform games still remaining from Blizzard too - I mean we still have Overwatch team busy with Overwatch 2 for foreseable future, we have World of Warcraft (that might be multiplatform), potentially Diablo 4 (might be also multiplatform). Granted Blizzard is really huge studio.
Yeah, 2024-2025 is when Xbox will start benefit from this acquisition. With Bethesda it also basically took 2 years - as the first Bethesda exclusive will come only in November - basically 2 years after the announcement. Also Deathloop should arrive to Game Pass too.
Yeah, I know, 2 years at the earliest and with publishers is even faster than independent studios, it’s almost four years and we are still waiting for 2018-19 acquisitions to shine under the new era. It only shows how barren Xbox line-up was.
Under the same reasoning, now it’s the time for moves in Asia, so the organisation will be ready for the next console launch (it’s no joke, it’s the reality of corporate timings).
Any acquisition will have the same issue, but publishers have more projects than independent devs and also 9/10 times own their games, so it’s faster to make some as exclusive, it’s for this reason they should move now in Asia, if they really want Xbox to become global.