He will have to let the company go sooner or later. Unless he finds the successor.
I do curious who are gonna be the new faces of gaming in the future. There are a lot of heavy weights now, but most of them have been in the idustry for 20+ years.
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Look at netflix when you rely on third parties for content eventually the cost of the content gets to much. The sports titles and such are a huge part of gamepass.
So? Sports games is a completely different dynamic. Even Sony failed to keep MLB exclusive.
And regarding Netflix - that’s why Microsoft is going after all these big IPs → Fallout, TES, Doom, CoD, Warcraft, Starcraft etc.
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Epic would probably sue to block the sale of Valve to Microsoft unless they made concessions such as reducing store cut, maybe stop selling games in windows store or something (honestly I don’t think just pricing would be enough), because it would have a significant impact on pricing power (both for customers and for devs) and make competition more difficult with Microsoft. Given that Epic is also a strategic partner of Microsoft both as a customer using their platforms (Fortnite, Rocket League) and as a software vendor (Unreal), they likely wouldn’t go out of their way to antagonize them.
I could see them asking to buy IP like portal and half life or something from Valve in the case of a sale, but not actually going for the storefront.
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I don’t think Epic would sue
What power exactly? Microsoft owning Steam, Windows Store and Battle Net does not change much - they would continue to release their games as is, but just have the control over more stores (revenue streams).
Strong pricing power. It’s a term indicating that they would wield more price setting influence because of the weakness of competitors in the space. This most definitely could be bad both for consumers and competitors.
Epic already weren’t thrilled with Microsoft having a storefront in windows, and if they were to try to aquire the market leader in pc game stores, already having the dominant pc platform, it could very likely be considered anti competitive.
Even if Epic didn’t sue, which I disagree on, there is a very good chance that the EU would block it. Microsoft lost antitrust suits both in Europe and the USA about not giving user choice of browser installand had to change how you choose browser install, and are in danger of facing the same lawsuits again for trying to force people toward using Edge. They then were fined again for not heeding the ruling fast enough.
They’re also facing a complaint because of how they are including Teams in Office 365 subscriptions which makes it harder for Zoom and Google to compete
Microsoft faces anti-competition complaint in Europe - Technology - Business Recorder.
They’ve also lost about including windows media player without a separate fee which made it harder to compete with them.
Isn’t price, for the most part, set by the publisher? Even sales.
There are different prices. The price of a product is likely set by publisher yes, but platform fees would be set by the store. Epic already in effect has complained about the pricing power of Apple and Google in setting 30% fees arbitrarily. The judge didn’t rule that they were wrong about the storefronts being monopolistic, just that they didn’t do a good enough job proving it /proving why it was bad. And again, I believe the EU took that a step further and is forcing changes to how Apple handles payments because they did find that it was anticompetitive.
While Microsoft has actually lowered fees for their storefront (except for games I think), you could also make an argument that they might be able to price their fee structure either too high which hurts app devs, or too low, which could hurt competing store fronts from not being able to offer the same rates to applications.
Microsoft has gotten in trouble in the past (and now) both for complaints about them pricing things like communication protocol patent licenses too high and for bundling software and thus making it too cheap to compete with.
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It’s been getting more transaction lately, but considering every other platform has an effective monopoly on their market and PC would still be an open ecosystem I don’t think it’s as big of a deal as it sounds.
That said, I think there are better things MS could do than buy Steam. I’d rather the acquisitions be content focused.
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I definitely would also want content currently. And while it could be possible to argue that it isn’t anti competitive, I think they’re trying to be more careful about that already, which lead to their points about how they would change their store and allow payment processing by whoever the dev wanted, etc.
Anyway, long story short, I don’t think they would buy Valve itself, but maybe some ip or teams at most. And honestly, if they got to where they had bought so many teams that they couldn’t buy more, it’s possible they could still keep buying IPs at that point without being looked at too hard.
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I think MS are more likely to buy EA then anyone else. If they can get the ABK deal done this year, EA being acquired in 2023 may happen.
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It’s still my belief that the major US publishers are who MS want to buy
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Well we know they have already tried to buy EA (and Blizzard) multiple times before, once before Xbox was a thing and another in the early days (I believe Ed Fries confirmed this recently).
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What happened Hindle?
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Isn’t the problem with buying Steam simply that steam represents the overwhelming majority of the market on it’s own anyway, googling suggests steam represents 75% of the PC gaming market. There isn’t really an obvious platform that dominates the other 25% between GoG, Epic, Battle net, Humble Bundle and so on. ANYONE buying Valve would be obtaining a massive hold over the PC market regardless of if they already own a PC gaming platform or not.
Anyway since we’re discussing Valve, I think any acquisition of Valve would come down to Steam primarily (though the games side of thing is not to be sniffed at). Having Steam would be hugely beneficial - they can leave it pretty much as is but make it the definitive home of Xbox games and save themselves that 30% commission - and integrate game pass to a wider audience. The hardware side of things is interesting - I’d be shocked if Microsoft didn’t already have a department tinkering away on VR tech for the right time but having Valve’s department releasing and iterating on tech wouldn’t hurt if they ever want to commit to it for Xbox. And while I don’t think Microsoft is interested in releasing a proper portable Xbox they could treat Steam Deck as an unofficial Xbox if they take some time to make sure all of the PC releases are compatible. Could be good for gamepass, though I don’t see it being Microsoft’s biggest priority. Still, Valve is likely a good enough investment even if you aren’t too interested in the hardware division.
Exactly. MS aim is to be the house that has the biggest IP in the world. EA have Apex Legends so yea I think MS would be interested
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To an extent, yes that makes sense, because a lot of the biggest most notable IP out there are owned by western (including Europe) publishers. But at the same time, if they don’t find ways to diversify the stories they tell (by looking at other places for acquisition or at least partnership), they’re overlooking an opportunity to grow the market by making more games that people who aren’t currently gamers can relate to.
It’s a coin flip, do you buy something that has historically been big. Or do you take a chance on something that could grow the gaming market in India or somewhere that doesn’t have that many people currently in the ecosystem.
The idea of MS buying ABK or EA never really interested me lol. I was all about Eidos, so I’ve withdrawn all emotional value from this.
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IF and it’s a big IF Xbox could acquire Valve they definitely would.
They could entice 130+ million active users to sign up to GamePass and fix their entire store/UI issue immediately.
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MS just want IP that prints money, to sit back and make the $$$ from all ecosystems.
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