All in all, I hope Microsoft acquires another publisher this year.
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That’s the only one that will bother me. To be honest with the studios ms will own after the ab deal closes, I couldn’t care less if I didn’t play a game outside those studios for the rest of my life, I don’t have time to play what’s on game pass as it is right now. But it really seems like a dystopic future if sony starts locking down publishers like that, just because you know it means 70$ games (80 in Greece where I live), and questionable moves to say the least like gt7 being a full priced gaas game monetized to oblivion. Sony acquiring a studio or publisher (unless the go the bungie route) basically means I probably won’t play any of their future games in my life.
How I see it is, both Microsoft and Sony are business’s and will act accordingly, I am not going to blame them for being what they are, and I would prefer sony buy this than someone like tencent or amazon or google or facebook. Sony has issues but so does Microsoft and Nintendo, all 3 are trying to squeeze as much money as they can out of you
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That’s a given, but I very much prefer to pay 15$ a month to play whatever I want, than 70$ for a game that I need to grind on like I’m 13 again playing lineage 2. Anyway I’m not blaming anyone, I’m just saying sony acquiring is bad news for me personally, obviously your opinion may differ. Message me if you want to continue because I think this thread if for xbox acuisitions.
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And that’s fair. Because when Microsoft acquires something, what we get
- Day 1 in Game Pass
- Day 1 on PC & Steam
- Day 1 cloud (not always though)
- Cross play
- Smart delivery and play anywhere (unless it is mojang)
- Cloud saves & seamless transition between platforms
- Future backwards compatibility
- 15$
With Sony?
- 70$
- potentially on PC Day 1
It is a pretty obvious pick there.
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Ah fair enough. I miss understood what you were saying lol. Either way…xbox acquisitions. Hoeg spoke about the senator stuff https://youtu.be/Nq2ogQc1K24
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What does this mean to xbox?
they were trying to get the FTC to block the activision deal or something like that. Ultimately they are focusing on something that don’t matter (the employees) rather than the consumer which is dumb in my opinion
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Nothing. It’s political grandstanding. They are asking the FTC to consider the deal based on the merits of a law that doesn’t exist.
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Haven’t listened to it entirely yet, but the thumbnail title is: “Microsoft x Activision - Silly Senators Seek Silly Strategy to KILL THE DEAL (Will they Succeed?)”
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Basically it is an attempt to drum up support for their new bill that has a 0% chance of passing.
I will be honest, I think the idea we should priorities employees over the consumers in anti competitive discussions is incredibly stupid. Like I get their can be issues and I get the accusation behind activision were awful but they can quit their jobs…costumers don’t have an equivilent. Obviously this stuff shouldn’t be an issue in the 1st place for employees but bring up the convosation during mergers or acquisitions won’t help improve these cultures
Oh my god they have that many?!!
My god. I knew that they apparently had a good few studios, but definitely not that many studios 
I disagree for a bevy of reasons; namely that employees deserve protections, and if a company with a horrible track record of employee rights and treatment were in Microsoft’s shoes, I would hope there would be protections. The difference in this instance is that we know that’s not the case with Microsoft, and even more bluntly, by even attempting to block this specific acquisition they’re suggest a status quo should remain, which would be infinitely more harmful to ABK employees (as we’ve seen over the last year+).
For example, if Activision had been in Microsoft’s shoes trying to acquire EA or Take 2, I would hope there would be some form of oversight to prevent it from closing because of Activision’s documented abuse of their employees.
The problem in this particular instance, aside from the aforementioned grandstanding accusations, is that these senators are actually doing the opposite of their proposed justifications were the deal to fail.
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it was more than 50 studios if I remember correctly
that is the thing though, that bad culture shouldn’t exist in the 1st place. Bad cultures should be prevented but when it comes to acquisitions the customer should be the priority as it could lead to larger negative consequences for the costumer thought the entire industry.
Hypothetically lets say instead of Microsoft buying Activision, EA and Activision were having a merger, they wanted to increase the price of some of the best selling games every year (CoD, battlefield, the sports games ect.) to $80, what should be the concern. The culture of the work place or the fact the price for games would of grown by $20 for most of the best selling games every year within a few years because as a result other games prices could raise since that may set a new standard within a few years. Sure this is a bit of an extreme hypothetical but I feel like it gets my point across.
I’m now done with the HoegLaw video, and there’s so much going against the Senators from the legal standing aspect. There won’t be any fundamental changes to the US Laws within the next few years, and absolutely none of them are legally allowed to happen from the FTC Agency. If the FTC were to oppose the acquisition for the reasons pushed by the Senators then the Courts would overrule their decision.
So as everyone has already stated, this is political peacocking / political grandstanding with no impact on this acquisition.
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Rivals of Aether 2 just got announced, and it looks very good. Aether Studios wouldnt be a bad pickup for a fighting studio at all
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agreed… especially since the team is formed from some of the team that made the latest version of KI.
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The irony is that senators should kinda encourage the purchase to proceed faster so Microsoft could intervene in ATVI as soon as possible so that Kotick & co. will hit the road faster. But they probably saw the name “Microsoft” in the title and decided to write a letter.
Another fascinating thing is that how all the bad news are gaining tranction faster when Microsoft is mentioned. We literally had SIE (located in California BTW) having basically the same issues as ATVI yet nobody bats an eye. And Sony is also involved in the acquisition so it should also be investigated. Yet…Not to mention all those anti-consumer practices.
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To your first paragraph, that’s exactly my argument, and on that I think an actual cursory glance at the situation would confirm for these senators.
As for the hypocrisy for when similar reports hit Sony and we see the media essentially shove it under the rug instead of keeping the conversation consistent, is beyond disappointing. I could go on in much further detail but it’s off-topic, I will say those that like to pretend there isn’t a bias… well we wouldn’t exist if that were actually true.
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