MinervaX76

@Arkantos2990

No, it does not stop Microsoft from buying Activision, but, what it does, is that Microsoft will have to make Activision leave the UK market since they can't sell these games anymore there or have their inclusion on Xcloud blocked in the UK

That’s not how it would play either. They would have to divest themselves of all UK assets, that’s mostly publishing offices and studios. They could continue selling games in the region but only via publishing deals with a third party (potentially the now independent branch.)

That new independent entity could, potentially, cut a regional deal with anyone, be it Microsoft or Sony, for streaming games in the region, or include them in multi-game subscription services. The entity could be set up in a way that it can later be acquired should Microsoft succeed their appeal, or simply allow it to continue perpetually working independently on that region if MS loses their appeal and the UK parlament does not override the CMA (another thing that can actually happen.)

@rjejr if the EU blocks there is little point in what the FTC or the US will end up looking like, but as far as I know, the FTC has not actually shown any laws being broken by the deal. The closest thing they can try to bring up is monopoly laws, those are industry specific, not related to the size of the company.

I have a hard time seeing the US federal courts siding with the FTC, at least not at the Supreme Court level.

As for the federal government not liking MS, that’s not true at all. The federal government is one of Microsoft’s largest customers, if not the largest.

@get2sammyb

Did Sony assume its market position by making a good product or by spending close to $100 billion on publishers?

How about C, decades of third party exclusivity deals?

I’m only being half serious, that is one of the biggest reason they are leaders. PS2 being a cheap DVD helped them plenty, they didn’t have exactly an easy time securing third party exclusivity deals during the PS3 days.

I think the question is a bit disingenuous. Yes, Sony didn’t PS to where it is via spending so many billions, but the real question is: is it actually so extremely unfair? I ask this seriously, is it unfair for the market and Sony that MS is trying to acquire ABK, someone whom wants to sell?

This is not a hostile takeover, and even if CoD stopped shipping on PS5, they would not lose their console market dominance.

@rjejr it’s a bureaucratic difference. The CMA (and the EU, as far as I understand) have the power to block, and you would have to sue/appeal to overrule that.

The FTC on the other hand is structured in such a way that they can only block by suing.

Reason is because the FTC at the end of the day is meant to simply enforce laws, not to make simple philosophical calls. If they can’t point at laws that are being violated, and prove it, they can’t do anything.

CMA and EU do get to make more nuanced calls, and they can make judgements based on opinions and what they feel is harmful to the economy even if there is no written law specifically pointing out the concern. They still need to operate within certain legal parameters, they can’t lie or hide information from a party (they hid information from Meta during the whole Giphy acquisition thing and got slapped in the wrist over it.)

I might not agree with the CMA resolution, but given ABK has offices and studios in the UK, they have the right to make calls. At the same time, ABK can get rid of those via any means other than selling them to Microsoft.

@Intr1n5ic really want first party games, not paid-for-exclusives.

Edit: also I did mention 2 games that offer service components on “single player games”, but those CoD campaigns are 8 hours tops, maybe 5 hours. They are not exactly large single player campaigns, and GTA is a single game, even the Rockstar felt compelled to split the online into a stand-alone product.

@LiamCroft I have a hard time seeing any GAAS succeeding as “a feature” inside a Single player game. CoD and GTA get away with it, but those are gigantic IPs (and in the case of CoD one might argue campaign is only a minor mode in a primarily MP title).

For any GAAS to make it, it needs to be F2P. If they try to sell their GAAS, they won’t make it.

The only “service game” that has ever caught my attention (and thousands of hours) has been FFXIV.

I can see a few IPs like Twisted Metal turning into somewhat original service games, but I don’t have any interest in any personally, and doubt they will end up making anything that will change that. I’m a weird one, though. I just hope this does not mean a reduction in ST output. This year is already looking barren for PS fans of Sony’s single player first party catalog, with only Spider-Man 2 potentially shipping this year.

@SamMR main reason the CMA has power over the deal is the UK can regulate asset transfers within the country, and ABK owns at least 2 publishing offices and 3 studio offices (one primary game studio, Sledgehammer, not sure if all offices are Sledgehammer’s or if there are additional support studios in the region.)

Big question is, how critical these assets are to ABK. Sledgehammer is one of the studios working on CoD, their last entry was Vanguard.

@Shadcai this is only for ABK, and as the line quoted in the article notes: it’s void if there are significant market changes. Hell, given the reasoning, Microsoft could simply kill their streaming service and that alone would change the market enough for the ban to be void.

(There is zero chance MS will kill their streaming service, this was just an example.)

@Stormageddon why people keep not actually reading what I wrote?

I didn’t say Microsoft would leave the UK. I said that Activision would divest of it’s UK assets, one studio and a couple publishing offices. This might mean:

A) Spinning them off into independent entities
B) Relocating them to Europe
C) Shutting them down if the previous don’t work

The only reason CMA can block the deal is because the UK can dictate and regulate the transfer of assets that exist within the UK. If ABK owns no assets in the region, they have no power over the deal, MS gets to finalize the deal, and simply (potentially) would have to rely on a third party to publish ABK games in the region.

Again: this is only if EU approves. It EU moves to block, there is no enough room for ABK to restructure in any way to get out of that one. They have way too many offices and studios on the EU to ever make that work.

@NEStalgia funny enough, it was thad Amazon 20% discount that got me started preordering almost anything, but I stuck to it even after it was removed.

I think I still have a pending order for Metroid Prime 4 that honors that 20% discount 😅

I have realized most Sony games hit $30 physically within a year and a half, some much much quicker.

Nintendo first party games, I might bite at $45 because it’s rare for them to go under that.

As for Xbox, i just use game pass, and constantly buy games digitally off their deals section to fill an ever growing backlog that sustains me until other games go on sale. I got to thank Sony for curing me of my excessive spending.

I used to be someone that would preorder every single Sony first party game, and almost every game I had any slight interest in buying.

$70 price hike changed that. Now I only buy games when they hit a sale and just don’t bother paying more than $30 for any game.

@IOI nitpick correction: it’s not that the courts can override the FTC, it’s that the FTC does not actually have the power to block at all. For the FTC to block, they need to sue, and they need to convince the courts there are legal grounds to consider the acquisition “illegal”, an extremely tall order.

The deal will be dead if EU also blocks.

If EU approves, Activision will do whatever it can to divest itself from any UK assets so it can proceed without UK approval.

@nomither6 adding to my last reply: a gaming laptop is very likely going to be much more expensive than an equivalent desktop, for quite a bit less power.

For me, main reason to get a laptop over a desktop is space (if you dont have much room in or under your desk) and some extra flexibility.

You can take it on trips, you might even be able to play some non-demanding games in a flight, or demanding ones in a short flight.

Taking a laptop on a vacation and use it while in a hotel room is viable, and it is also possible to just hook them to a TV via HDMI in a hotel room.

It is a bit too cumbersome to be regularly moving it around the house (IMO) especially if the game you are going to play also plays ideally with a controller, or mouse (for me, playing Age of Empires with a trackpad is torture.) Your millage might vary on that one though.

But I cant stress it enough: gaming laptops are not lap friendly. They get HOT.

@nomither6 I honestly would never play portably with a laptop. Every gaming laptop i ever owned has been bulky, hot and loud. This specific one is the smallest I ever owned but has the huge downside of it ventilating via the keyboard, meaning I cant play games AND close the lid.

Main reason I went for the laptop is because I also do work on it, and for programming work, its useful to grab the laptop and take it anywhere.

Also of note is that mobile versions of GPUs are never as powerful as the desktop type, this thing does not hold a candle to an actual 3080 desktop card, but I never expected it to.

The SteamDeck's power does not match this at all, but it mops the floor with the Switch. It does not need to match it anyways, though, since any game on the small screen will be running at 800p.

Edit: If I decided to play portably on this thing, I would only do so in a table, and I would expect to be connected to some power outlet because the battery wont last long. I would not want this on my lap when its running a demanding game.

@nomither6 My current gaming pc is a laptop. It has a mobile RTX 3080 GPU, quite beefy.

The few games I play on PC, are far superior experiences on my laptop than on my PS5 or XBox for reasons beyond pixel density. Stuff like ultra-wide monitor support (I got my laptop docked) and mods make the PC versions of games simply non-brainer the definitive edition of these games, I just don't enjoy the desk experience too much and end up only playing MMOs like FFXIV or survival games like Valheim on the PC.

Honestly I don't think PC games are held back by console as much as they are held back by other low spec PCs. The devs always have the freedom to make games that wont run on those older devices, but they just cut their own market short. Even CoD runs on a potato of a PC.

Another plus of PC gaming is that you are not usually at the mercy of the dev for graphical settings. Due to the expected simplicity of console games, at best we get 2 or 3 performance modes on consoles, and that's a new thing. On PC, you can determine yourself what bells and whistles you don't care about to get the best framerate or fidelity possible.

Edit: I also have a steam deck, have not played much with it yet but my plan is to replace the Switch with it as my go-to for RPGs like Atelier. I like being able to take my RPGs on handheld mode, and Steam does a great job at syncing save data so I can always resume the game on the desk if I so desired.

@rjejr I would say its mostly multi-plat owners that want to see first party exclusives. I have every platform, and play third parties preferably on XBox, or Switch if its an RPG. But also got a PS5 and would like more things to give me reasons to play it more often, because first party games and permanent third party exclusives are the only things I paly on it.

My PS5 backlog is still large enough that I am in no fear of running out of games this year, because I play most PS games on a year delay due to their high price, but this being a slow year might mean next year I might not end up playing my PS5. Well, there is likely going to be Final Fantasy XVI, I guess, that should be cheap enough next year.

@rjejr I feel the same way about XBox, plenty of third party games to keep me busy. It still is odd to have a year without any big first party Sony games, I wont notice it this year (because I always wait about a year for the game to go down in price) but I'll surely notice it next year.

@ChrisDeku A gaming PC is not cheap, I'll give you that much, but no, you don't have to update it that much, most games are perfectly playable at very good visual quality even on 6 year old GTX1060 cards (the most used card among Steam users.)

I have a laptop that was not cheap, but still runs most games perfectly fine. Literally the only reason I still play console is the couch experience, not the optimization.

@OrtadragoonX I guess it depends on what aspects of a game make you play it.

For me, I enjoy the story in an Assassins Creed game, but 90% of the time I am engaging with the open world activities that don't demand much attention.

At the end of the day, for me, a game is that, a game. By that I mean that I'm not there for the story (although again, I do enjoy the stories) but for the gameplay. I guess that's why I enjoy the "ubisoft formula" open world games with a huge map and tons of icons for things to do. Go to dot one, climb a tower, go to the next dot, clear a camp of enemies, go to the next one, explore a cave, etc.

@get2sammyb

l listen to music and podcasts while I’m at the gym, and I’ll sometimes watch television shows while I’m doom scrolling on my phone. Neither of these things are possible with games, where the vast majority of releases demand your entire attention — usually for tens if not hundreds of hours.

Depends on the game, I multitask a lot while playing video games. Yes, some games are practically movies that demand your ears be paying attention to everything going on, but thats not even the majority of games.

The games I sink my time on the most are ones with plenty of side activities that I can do just for fun and entertainment, without need to focus on dialog. I very often will lose myself on a game like Skyrim, Assassins Creed Valhalla, Fallout, or Ghost of Tsushima while listening to podcasts, audio books, even sometimes watching the news on my phone or some other TV show.

I guess the point is: yea, the video game is not something most people do in the treadmill as they do with music, but that is because the video game IS the treadmill equivalent in such scenario.

BTW, this is heavily relative, I know some people that do indeed play their Switch on the treadmill, or keep a TV and a controller in front of their treadmill to play games while they walk.

Edit:
All this said, if I play 3 day one triple A games on a subscription service, I saved money. I don't need to play a lot of games to make that deal worth my time. At the same time, I have cancelled all my video streaming services because I find myself rarely having the time to watch more than one show a year, though...

@naruball Its not like consoles get better optimization than PC games in average. Yes a few PC game ports are terrible, but more often than not, the PC version is the definitive version, so @GamingFan4Lyf will likely get a better average experience in that front.

I still stick to consoles because even with Steam Big Picture, I find it a pain to navigate my game library on a PC without mouse and keyboard, and mouse and keyboard are a pain to deal with on a couch.

Edit: additional advantage of PC is that your backlog rarely is threatened to become unplayable because of a generational jump.

@rjejr

“this fiscal year” caught my eye as well, but it would be 2024 Q1, not Q4, when Sony’s financial year ends March 31, 2024.

I was about to post this, glad I decided to catch up with the comments first. Yea, their statement being very careful to just say "this fiscal year" made me more worried than confident. We might not get any big original single player games from Sony this calendar year.

I am still expecting them to announce some remasters/"remakes" to pad this year, though.

Mentioned this in Pure Xbox but this is not a threat that they will exit the UK, although hyperbolic, they are claiming/warning that this kind of thing discourages investors and other companies from investing and expanding into the region.

Edit: heck, if EU approves the deal, and ABK sees that is the only path forward to sell (that is all they want to do) they might go to the extreme of either entirely spinning off all UK operations (Sledgehammer, and local marketing/publishing arms) or even go scorch earth and entirely shut them down.

@Kevw2006 Steam and Nintendo deals aside, all the other 10 year deals they made and offered were for all content they owned, and all future content they buy. Yes it was to appease regulators, but they still offered and granted effectively now content they do own to all those streaming services.

The ABK specific deal and bits were simply promises and legally binding proof they would keep their word (at least for 10 years.)

@GeeEssEff you missing plenty of context here. Sony is the one complaining that they will be entirely ruined if CoD is not 100% available on PS, with absolutely all content and parity. I’m just pointing that hypocrisy, but Sony fans don’t seem to get it.

@Jaz007 glad we agreed Sony should stop using their market position to secure exclusive content deals that further increase their maker dominance.

@Intr1n5ic it’s not really such a lesson since they still get to stream all existing and future Microsoft and Bethesda games for 10 years. My point is simply that these small companies would greatest benefit from having access to CoD, helping them grow and cement themselves just like Netflix did.

Netflix had a similar affair with Starz, and the only reason they exist today is thanks to that initial deal to stream other people’s content.

@TheLotteryMan1 they lost a case just last year against Meta, and another case in 2020 against Pfizer, and that was just a quick google search.

@Intr1n5ic who cares if they care? The point is the deals are signed and already in effect. These companies are already streaming PC Microsoft games, but they won’t get to stream ABK games that have a way higher demand.

I have zero illusions MS is doing anything out of their love for these upstarts.

@Jaz007 so…. If a company can’t survive without these ABK games, they should just get better or out of the businesses?

This is going to take soooo loooong.... we might be hearing about this acquisition all the way into 2024.

Interesting repercussions from this roadblock, some of the parties that were offered 10 year deals to stream microsoft and ABK deals are not huge entities, and being able to offer ABK game streaming would had brought them a significant influx of users.

Due to how volatile the market is still, being so young, without this deal they might simply go out of business, all because of a blockage supposedly done to protect them. Think some of them have already expressed their frustration with this blockage.

@get2sammyb

Besides, this decision surprisingly has nothing to do with Sony.

Doesn't it? One of their biggest claim was not just streaming, but the fact that the deals Microsoft signed with other streaming services did not cover streaming from multi-game subscription plans. How many plans exist in the market right now?

Game Pass Ultimate, PlayStation Now Premium and? We could mention Amazon Luna, but that is not on the UK, and Google Stadia is dead of its own demerits.

@NEStalgia

[...]the argument presented by CMA is based on the idea of what-ifs in a cloud model presented as a totally new market, which is inaccurate, it's a competitive sales and distribution channel in the existing mass market model Sony and XB already occupy, and their rejection of offered remedies revolves around not inadequacy of the remedy but around not wanting to have to monitor it.

This is something Microsoft could get ahead of by creating an independent entity in the UK, and hand them, in perpetuity, all rights for streaming licensing, with the power to sub-license to other third parties.

This would remove any arguments of monitoring behavior, since this entity would be entirely on its own.

Creating such an entity and spinning off streaming in the region is entirely different from the high demands of spinning off all Call of Duty development that was originally proposed, and it's something Microsoft could very easily do and afford.

@NEStalgia I don't agree with the "Nintendo does not compete with PS" mindset, and I dont think Sony or Microsoft agree.

Nintendo simply knows innovation helps them sell, so they keep innovating (we will see if the next console innovates or finally decides to simply iterate)

If these companies didnt see Nintendo as a competitor, we would not have seen this behavior in the past:

Wii gets "countered" (after years of R&D) by Sony with Move motion controllers, and by Microsoft with Kinect .

Wii U gets "countered" (in a rush) by Sony with Second Screen mobile aps, and by Microsoft with Project Glass.

Now the Wii mobile hybrid device is king, and we been hearing the rumors of an inevitable PlayStation handheld intended to stream your PS games, again, to compete with Nintendo's mobility.

Nintendo also keeps signing timed exclusivity deals like they did with Monster Hunter Rise, why would they do such a thing if they didn't see the other consoles as competitors?

Nintendo is not seen as a competitor because they are not competing in power, but they are competing for your gaming time and money.

Games having characters tell me how to solve puzzles has drastically pulled me off so many games recently. I understand wanting accessibility, but it should be an option.

I dread touching god of war Ragnarok. Saw some steams and I felt the urge to mute all audio.

Wild hearts was published by EA and maybe their publishing deal does not let them talk about numbers without EAs consent.

Wo long launches day one on game pass, and that makes sales number a harder thing to discuss, because MS might had paid more than enough to make it very successful, but talking numbers suddenly makes it look not-successful, so they might not be revealing numbers on that one because of that. Would not be shocked if at some point they instead mentioned how many players have enjoyed/played the game.

I refuse to pay $70 for games, so this Gen I have simply started to wait for the eventual sales.

Right now I am playing Fallout 3, and having a blast. I detest that games now take 3 times the amount of time because all devs want to put-do each other with whom has the biggest map or the longest hours to beat.

I wish for a day that games start downsizing instead of up-sizing.

Can you imagine a world were movies became longer every year, and they actually started to have 8 hour lengths but then demanded to increase price tickets because now people have time to watch longer movies (and making such longer movies cost more?)

Why must bigots be the biggest tantrum tossing snowflakes in the face of this planet….???

@Flaming_Kaiser If they do them the proven way, a F2P console game only gives the player skins and cosmetics rewards for their money, absolutely zero in game progression.

I don't play multiplayer games, but those cosmetics are just that, and you can simply relax and have a fun game without them.

Edit:
then again, they might go the EA sports way and not actually let you play a position, but instead play a team, and lock team players via card packs and gross stuff like that.

@Impossibilium

But the conspiracy theory is mostly concerning the fact that it was noticeably missing from Hogwarts Legacy. It actually may have been left out because of the existence of the other game, being released by the same publisher.

Or simply because the game was already huge, and not everyone in Hogwarts is a Quidditch athlete. A Harry potter game does not need to force every single player to go through Quidditch minigames. Not to mention, to make Quidditch any justice in todays day an age, would require a whole game.

I dont care to defend anything that makes Joanne money, but this is ridiculous. Even the art style here is different, a lot more cartoony. These are separe projects, and as far as we know this won’t even be sold, but be a F2P title with season passes and what not.

This game very likely will try to mimic the Rocket League monetization, only not with licensed vehicles, though, just a constant influx of robes, brooms and customization options.

Interesting bit, I just went to check Sega Sammy Holdings current cash on hand, as of 3/31/22 they had exactly $1.24 billion, and it seems their cash in hand has been going down every year (likely a good thing unless you saving to make a big move, no investor likes too much cash on hand.)

Hard to guess how much that pool had fluctuated in the last year, but very curious to see their update for the 2023 calendar.

Oh and their market cap is $4.54 Billion right now, this acquisition represents 22% of their market cap. Does not imply they will grow by 22%, but it’s not out of the question either.

@Deoxyr1bose I would not say that. If anything, they are looking a lot more appealing to Xbox after this, since they really want to get into mobile gaming.

Hell, ABK was doing acquisitions even after they signed the deal to be acquired themselves.

@BusyOlf for what it’s worth, Zynga, another large mobile game maker, was acquired by Take Two within early last year for $12.7 billion.

@Uncharted2007 I just checked, and Rovios “Red’s First Flight” (basically Angry Birds 1 classic no adds paid version) is #9 top selling game on iOS.

The current F2P Angry Birds 2 is ranking #66 on the free charts. Those two are significant rankings.

@zupertramp Its mostly due to the original rumor, that it was going to just be pushed back by a few months (and further into the year, important bit) and that same source said no mayor changes were planned.

The fact the delay is now for next year obviously mean things have changed internally from whatever that source said.

Thats a way longer delay than we were expecting, no? Maybe they are considering to do a big overhawl.

@NEStalgia I'll check it out, although always wary of anything that might get credentials access, if that is needed for it to work.

Even if its trustworthy now, scummy companies are in a habit of offering a lot of money to smaller companies to acquire them and get their hands on user private info and passwords.