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Comment by agd | Hacker News Reader

With these kind of acquisitions, other companies are going to find it very hard to compete with Game Pass.

I think we'll look back in 10 years and wonder why antitrust regulators did nothing, but it may be too late by then.

It'll depend on the perspective.

For the gaming industry, this seems to push Microsoft into 3rd place (by size) behind Sony and Tencent. So hardly a monopoly and akin to T-Mobile's acquisition of Sprint a few years ago. It makes Microsoft much more competitive against Sony and even Nintendo since it'll likely bolster their 1P offerings in the future.

But if Microsoft uses their ownership to favor their own game subscription services (aka GamePass) as well as platforms (aka Windows 11, Xbox console), then certainly that'll be monopolistic behavior. Interesting to note that they're probably #1-#2 in either of those sub-industries. It's possible to end up with an "Internet Explorer-esque" antitrust scenario if Microsoft removes or heavily discourages Activision and Bethesda from making their titles cross-platform.

> if Microsoft removes or heavily discourages Activision and Bethesda from making their titles cross-platform.

I'm pretty sure that Starfield is announced to be a Windows/Xbox exclusive already.

Timed I believe

It should be worth noting that T-mobile + Sprint succeeded on the third try after the first two were more or less blocked by regulators in the same decade (it didn't actually get all the way to them, but they signaled there was no way they would approved.)

The only reason it got approved the third time was that regulators were convinced that either way, the US would only have three mobile operators because it did not look like Sprint could be a going concern.

When they bought Bethesda last year they announced that Elder Scrolls 6 would no longer be a multi platform title, it would be a Microsoft exclusive. I wouldn't be surprised if they would try to take something like the Call of Duty franchise and make it Xbox/Windows only.

They don't even need to do that. They can keep releasing CoD on Playstation, but if they add it to Gamepass, that increases the value of Gamepass so significantly that it could tilt the console market toward Microsoft.

This is exactly the play I think will happen. I can also see them including for example a WoW subscription and maybe a monthly hearthstone pack or gems as part of Gamepass.

I, for one, welcome our new gaming overlords

Not for a couple of versions but I think it's inevitable. It's in their DNA as a company to push embrace, extend, and extinguish.

Ah, come on. That’s what any reasonably similar sized company does all the time. It’s what shareholders demand (not that i think that makes it any better). But always singling out Microsoft for a decades-old stereotype is just getting old.

I think this was unneeded. Nobody singled out Microsoft, it's just that the discussion is about Microsoft, which happens to still practice this strategy. I think nobody would argue against the strategy being practiced by other corporations too.

Nintendo and Sony are small potatoes compared to MSFT in 2022. 70B and 150B market cap against a 2.27T one. Japanese tech companies are happy to stay in their niche. But now Microsoft has an incomprehensible advantage in available capital. Apart from the Japanese government blocking the sale they could just buy them

Whoah, why is Sony group valued so low? They do a lot of things... Their P/E is half of Microsoft. But they're bleeding money, so something is amiss there.

You’re not wrong, but Microsoft has also never successfully out sold their consoles (well...except wii-u, but that’s not much of an achievement). That might change now of course, but it’s not like they are solidly number one. They’re actually last of the big three.

they can release Activision and Bethesta titles only with game pass, and let Sony and Nintendo be free to implement game pass in their platform

People also forget Microsoft’s Xbox sales are 3rd place - I.e. last - behind PlayStation and switch. The 360 is the only console they’ve sold that outsold a PlayStation, but technically that flipped at the very end of the console’s lifespan. It’s not like they dominate the market (yet).

Now if they buy Sony or Nintendo then I’ll actually be concerned. But for now they’re hardly controlled opposition or anything lol

I looked around for a while, a d I can't actually find a list of any mergers that antitrust regulations actually prevented.

I'm assuming some survivor bias is involved here and we don't hear about the ones that stopped early, but it seems that what I and most folks assume antitrust regulations do is different than what actually happens.

I remember the Sirius/XM merge and how those were the only two players in the market, and it was wild to me how that was allowed to happen.

It does happen, but it's pretty rare. One example that comes to mind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attempted_purchase_of_T-Mobile...

And another fairly recent one: https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/12/business/visa-plaid-termi...

(Visa + Plaid)

That failed merger's poison pill is the reason T-Mobile is the juggernaut it is today. The cash T-Mobile received allowed them to upgrade their network, and customers could roam free on AT&T's 1700MHz frequency.

AT&T's threat assessment of T-Mobile was correct at the time.

> AT&T's threat assessment of T-Mobile was correct at the time.

I think that assessment was obvious to everyone at the time. The question is whether buying out competitors is good for the public.

Of course, the cash was a penalty for not being able to pull off the merger; if the cash was critical for T-Mobile to become the threat it has been, the outcome is ironic.

I don't know what the breakup cash might have amounted to, but the AT&T roaming agreement was for 7 years, and it's only recently with n41/n71 that T-Mobile has done any better.

The equivalent for this merger would be something like Minecraft and Bethesda games on the A-B launcher for 7 years. Huge giveaway by AT&T I think, as foolish as it might have been for them to think the merger would actually go through; having at-least 4 major carriers was policy at the time and still is (Dish's spectrum hoarding notwithstanding).

Nvidia/Arm comes to mind as a recent acquisition prevented.

Because of the UK's CMA. the US equivalent does not seem to care about preventing these giant mergers as much.

https://www.gov.uk/cma-cases/nvidia-slash-arm-merger-inquiry

“Mergers: Commission opens in-depth investigation into proposed acquisition of Arm by NVIDIA” 27 October 2021 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_21_...

“FTC Sues to Block $40 Billion Semiconductor Chip Merger” 2 December 2021 https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2021/12/ftc-s...

Meta’s (Facebook) acquisition of Giphy got blocked by European regulators iirc.

UK, I think. Still a weird decision. Of all the stuff Facebook bought they blocked Giphy. Not Whatsapp, Instagram, etc.

I imagine that if Facebook tried to buy Whatsapp or Instagram toady, they would be facing a different kind of a regulatory environment. It feels like the world has only recently awakened to how Facebook just tries to buy out their competition.

AT&T's acquisition of T-Mobile was aborted due to anti-trust complaints if I recall correctly.

The original purchase of Rite Aid by Walgreens was aborted due to similar concerns, although that one ended in a revised partial acquisition anyway.

The Staples acquisition of Office Depot/Office Max was stopped as well on anti-trust grounds.

They also blocked a merger of Nasdaq and NYSE.

Those are all since 2010. I'm sure I'm forgetting a few big ones too. They should definitely be blocking more, but they have stopped some.

Intuit was blocked from buying Credit Karma Tax just recently. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-requires-d...

And MS from buying Intuit

Thank goodness, they don’t need any more power over people.

They blocked Comcast from merging with Time Warner Cable. By “they” I’m referring to AT&T and Verizon (the two biggest telecom providers in the US), who were afraid of a third telecom provider establishing a national footprint and potentially challenging them across wireless and wireline. By preventing the merger through their immense political connections, they keep both Comcast and TWC as regional players who are much easier to monopolize.

So even the antitrust that goes through usually only goes through because powerful (often monopolistic) forces want to block a merger, not because it’s what’s objectively best for competition.

It's also worth noting the FTC (not just the Justice Department) can sue to block mergers on competitive grounds: see Visa <> Plaid from 2020.

In the EU, Siemens and Alstom weren't allowed to merge their train divisions without significant divestment. Same for Daewoo and Hyundai shipbuilding just last week.

Visa/Plaid very recently

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/visa-and-plaid-abandon-merger...

GE Honeywell was a huge one.

https://www.rferl.org/a/1096891.html

> I looked around for a while, a d I can't actually find a list of any mergers that antitrust regulations actually prevented.

A lot has been written about the decline of antitrust enforcement in the US since 1970.

https://hbr.org/2017/12/the-rise-fall-and-rebirth-of-the-u-s...

I think this is a huge source of a lot of the wealth inequality and just general dystopia we find ourselves living in. We need some sort of commoner lobbyist organization we can all be part of, the voting doesn't seem to be working very well. You have to literally pay the politicians.

Halliburton / Baker Hughes merger was preemptively cancelled due to regulation

> I looked around for a while, a d I can't actually find a list of any mergers that antitrust regulations actually prevented.

Just today, the DOJ and FTC announced plans to toughen up on mergers and acquisitions.

>The Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice Antitrust Division kicked off a process to rewrite merger guidelines for businesses on Tuesday, signaling a tougher stance toward large deals.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/18/ftc-doj-seek-to-rewrite-merg...

Qualcomm and Broadcom

It wasn't antitrust. It is more like "national security".

Nvidia/ARM doesn't look healthy anymore.

> other companies are going to find it very hard to compete with Game Pass

I haven't really ever used it. I used to buy everything Blizzard made (OK that's an exaggeration, but I was all about WarCraft/StarCraft/Diablo...). Before Steam, I bought lots of games on disk. Now I buy most things on Steam. And I haven't bought anything Blizzard since Diablo III.

Why wouldn't Steam continue to be competitive against Game Pass?

(I'm just one person, but among the people I know that play PC games, I don't hear about Game Pass much. One person mentioned he's on a 14 day $1 trial - that was the extent of it.)

> Why wouldn't Steam continue to be competitive against Game Pass?

Game pass is significantly cheaper, unless you buy very few games on steam (and/or only buy them on deep, deep sale. Which doesn't really exist anymore in any meaningful way).

Ah yes I don't buy a ton of games, and I see sales all the time for Steam, like seeing $40 games for $10.

So imagine deciding to spend $10 on that game, then realizing it's on GamePass. You now can choose wither to spend that same $10 to have access to 150+ games (including that one that's on sale), or just that game.

Sure, that $10 gets you only 1 month, but will you buy a different $10 game next month? Will you play this game for more than a month?

Pretty soon the GamePass ROI becomes difficult to ignore. (This coming from someone that doesn't have GamePass but is very impressed by the business model and value proposition around it).

I'd still rather own my games than rent it out, especially since I know that there's also a constant stream of games leaving Game Pass.

This month, Game Pass subscribers will lose access to Cyber Shadow (launched January 2021), Nowhere Prophet (launched July 2020), Prison Architect (launched January 2021) and Xeno Crisis (launched August 2020).

I'm also having trouble believing that Game Pass will remain $10 for long. At some point Microsoft will want to start recouping its investments and it's gonna start hiking prices. I personally got pretty tired of the constant Netflix price updates and I'd rather not do the same to my video game collection. I didn't actually have a gaming PC between January 2014 and March 2021, and it was actually pretty nice to install Steam and see all of the games that I bought between 2006 and 2014 still waiting for me in my library.

I think most casual consumers nowadays only care to own staples like Mario Kart and everything else is closer to a long-term movie rental.

The big difference with Game Pass is that the $10 gets me all those games just for that month, whereas my Steam library is full of games I've bought over the years, usually for <$10/each. If I were to have paid $10/mo over the same period of time, I would have paid significantly more -- and I'd have to keep paying it in order to play those games.

I subscribe to Game Pass occasionally and it sucks every time to lose access to all the games I'm playing. It becomes a balancing act of "I can buy this game for $30 or I can play it (and others) for 3 months at the same price... but what if I want to play it again in the future?" Like most rental models, most times it's easier and cheaper to just buy the game upfront if you can afford it, especially when it's on sale, which is easy to predict (and be notified of) on stores like Steam.

>> and I'd have to keep paying it in order to play those games.

But how long do you play these games for, and how often do you replay them? There are definitely games I replay a lot (Resident Evil games, for one) but there are many where I'm done after one playthrough. I'm totally okay "renting" it and moving on with Game Pass for a lot of titles.

This might be specific to my tastes, but most of the games I play don't really have an "end" to playthroughs (and for the ones that do, it's very rare that I dedicate the time to play it start to finish without taking breaks to play other games, which usually drags playthroughs on for much longer than less casual players). And sometimes I just come back to old games years later for nostalgia.

Some of my most-played on Game Pass are Crusader Kings 3, ARK, Dragon Age, My Time at Portia, and No Man's Sky, which are basically what I go back to every time I resubscribe. But after getting up near a dozen months subscribed at $10/mo, I'm now really wishing I would have just dished out the cash earlier to buy the games instead, especially if I want to keep playing them over time. I'm very much in a sunk cost mindset though: "I've already paid to play the game so much, surely this month is the month I'll 'finish' it and get to stop paying, right? Therefore, I shouldn't pay full price to own it when I can just pay the $10..."

It's very much a digital Blockbuster all over again. There, too, I spent many more hundreds of dollars on repeatedly renting games that I should have just bought. But, like Blockbuster, Game Pass is really good for discovering new games because it's such a low cost to try anything in the library once.

The nice thing about Game Pass is that after a game has been on the service for a number of months, you get a 20% discount if you choose to buy it. It's useful for instances where a game you want to keep playing is about to leave the service, or you want to get off the subscription plan.

look at this way: a business makes a change (in this case buying vs subscription). do they do it in their own interest or yours?

super simple stuff.

steam presented a bit of an issue about owning what you pay for. because, if their service is down, you can't access your "assets". some people called it a type of subscription model.

with this shift in the industry, outright paying a subscription for temporary access, we move even further away from owning what we pay for.

imagine never buying a house but always renting. why be against it? who is that business model good for? what kind of world are we voting for when we buy into these types of businesses?

in the long term, a subscription model puts us, the customers, at a loss. and a successful business plans for long term.

There's a very long tail of interesting games, 150 games at a time just doesn't cut it. When the urge to replay an old favorite comes along, I'm incredibly uninterested in doing the equivalent of checking Netflix to see if it's still in the library. They'd have to have coverage at Spotify levels to make that start to seem interesting.

But maybe they'll get there.

I don't have GamePass but do find it intriguing. The value prop is completely on the other end. It's not wondering if you can play (or replay) some older game that you want in particular. It's when a new game comes out or you are in the mood for something you haven't played before, you can go to the page and find something to at least try for zero marginal cost. If you play or are interested in a broad swath of games, eliminating that initial hump of whether you want to invest money into it is a different ball game.

It's really is literally just Netflix of games. Not great at all when you want to watch Movie X, better if you want to just watch some movie, and the only way when you want their in house productions which in theory are striving to be high quality. GamePass isn't to that final level of exclusivity yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if some game goes "Only on GamePass" in the nearish future.

It's also similar to Netflix in that if your usecase was the old "Just streaming The Office only" you could probably just purchase it. A mono game player would definitely be better served just buying the title they want for $60 rather than a monthly fee, but it starts to get more attractive at just a few games per year.

Just FYI Game Pass has ~500 games right now. Full list: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1kspw-4paT-eE5-mrCrc4...

I paid $20 for Valheim and played that for about 6 months.

Got Conan Exiles for $12 and played it for 3 months.

If you really like playing a wide variety of games, and like to rent them, then a $10/mo deal is excellent. I like to buy inexpensive games and play them for a long time. Should I even mention the 15 years I got out of StarCraft?

I'll go in waves, playing one game like crazy for a couple months, and then maybe not playing anything for a few. I like going back to the games I already know I enjoy and playing them some more, so I don't want to rent them.

I think a very reliable method here would be to use Gamepass for trying games out and see what the landscape looks like without having to scout around much and also not paying just to try things. We used to do this with demos but they became very impopular and really, if you can play a full game instead of a demo, isn't that better?

So you get access to these games to try them, and if you really, really like them, you can buy them when they go on sale for cheap on Steam.

I don't use Gamepass because it somehow has eluded me, but it seems like a good deal even if I tend to buy games for cheap on Steam.

the cheapskate consumer really doesn't have much power here, though. Not many people will develop primarily for xbox if all they can hope is to have gamepass level money. Thats why despite it, Xbox is still very much a 3rd in the console wars, and microsoft has to resort to buying popular IPs to have a chance.

The annual steam sales still feel pretty deep.

> Game pass is significantly cheaper, unless you buy very few games on steam

or if you want to play games that aren't on Game Pass. Though then it's not exactly a fair Game Pass vs Steam comparison, more Microsoft vs Steam.

I would look at consoles first. Why would someone buy a Playstation, when you can now buy an Xbox + GamePass and get access to a large chunk of the biggest games?

You know that ever growing library of unplayed games that all steam users have? Game Pass is that, but instead of paying for games individually you pay a low fixed rate, and it includes many hot new releases that are still full price elsewhere.

Many of them on launch day too, instead of waiting 6-18 months for a sale

But if you wait 6-18 months for a sale it might actually work...

> Why wouldn't Steam continue to be competitive against Game Pass?

I paid like $5/mo for 1 year of the Ultimate version, I can play games on both Xbox and PC and carry over progress for most of them. It's great. Steam doesn't have anything like that, so not sure there's any comparison to do.

As a GamePass subscriber, I mildly disagree.

Saw an indie game last night and felt like buying it.

Steam Deck is Valve opening up an alternative to Microsoft land.

Although I will admit I'm tempted to cancel my pre order since I'm worried it won't run well.

I don't quite understand what you're trying to say here?

If Microsoft starts subsidizing Game Pass games from their other businesses (like Amazon, Google and Apple do for their other services), it'll make the business model of actually selling games unviable by pure race to the bottom. As a result, you'll lose independent development and market diversity because everyone will need to beg Microsoft (and maybe Sony and Apple as other megacorps) for money scraps.

This is very similar what actually happened in mobile games market - a race to the bottom that only left a few winners filled with exploitative anti-patterns that feed on peoples addiction to recoup their costs instead of selling the product.

It'll of course be amazing for users - games will be cheap! And free! Just like views on YouTube are, where creators are getting more and more burned out fighting against the algorithm which decides how much they deserve to be paid.

I don't think it'll be amazing for users. The mobile market is just awful. It's almost impossible to find any good games that don't use these exploitative methods.

Yeah, I should really add "At least in the beginning" part - those systems are very great at the start as they try to siphon as much use as possible and trap them into the walled garden.

Agreed. It's a very deceptive business practice.

There's a large crowd of people who'd rather buy to own games even if they're on Game Pass, even after the entire Bethesda catalog was added. I'm personally one of them, if I like/want a game a lot, I prefer buying it on Steam so I'll always be able to replay it. (I've even bought some games I discovered on Game Pass)

Also -- EA (EA Play), Ubisoft (Uplay Plus), and Sony (PS Now) already went the way of subscription gaming. EA Play is included in Xbox/PC Game Pass, and PS Now isn't just Sony's catalog, either.

>There's a large crowd of people who'd rather buy to own games even if they're on Game Pass

Judging by the reactions I've seen to this acquisition around the internet, this crowd is really not that large.

The average consumer of today does not care in the slightest about owning things, they only care about being able to enjoy whatever the current flavor of the week AAA tripe is for now before the next flavor of the week comes along to replace it. When they're done with a game, they don't care about having it anymore.

You get a discount (20%, I think) if you want to buy a game which is available on Gamepass and you have a subscription.

This way you can fully play the game and if you really want to "permanently" add it to your library, you can do so for less.

Most DLCs are not part of Game Pass, so if you really enjoy a particular game you can still purchase the DLC (at a discount), even without owning the base game. Of course this only makes sense for as long you are a Game Pass Subscriber. You would unfortunately need to purchase the base game from the Xbox / Microsoft Store before you can play your previously purchased DLC.

Even this is changing. A growing number of titles includes the DLC. I suspect that not all of them do due to licensing agreements.

It's already a race to the bottom. It has been for a while.

Don't blame mobile games - they got those exploitative ideas from PC market.

The upside of a PC market, is the lack of a centralized authority to tell you what games are good - a.k.a the app stores. (App stores are horrible for games or any creative content discovery, as they use purely utilitarian categorization) That doesn't mean that PC, or web, games are any less exploitative than mobile counterparts. (remember mafia wars or farmville?)

> It's already a race to the bottom. It has been for a while.

Is it? Undoubtedly there's exploitative crap on PC, but there are countless great titles -- indie and otherwise -- released every year that you can pay money to own. On my iPhone I can hardly even find games to pay a fair price once to own anymore; it's almost entirely exploitative crap.

I used to buy games all the time on my iPhone; were it not for Apple Arcade I'd've hardly played anything in years.

Yes, commercial games have been a race to the bottom for a long time.

In spaces where casual gaming dominates - exploitative games are top of the "charts".

I'm not an enthusiast gamer - I don't have time to search for indie games. What I see is primarily exploitative games, which turned me off gaming.

If you even read about gaming industry or new games - you're not the majority , that drives casual games to the top of the charts in primary app stores.

Still not sure I buy it. Where are these spaces where exploitative games are top of the charts? It's not in the major PC game storefronts, for example (at least not in my experience). Steam is very good at recommending decent non-exploitative games to me right on its landing page. Same with Epic; even its prominent free games are generally non-exploitative. Game Pass is popular and also recommends a mix of very good games without having to search.

Regardless, my point isn't that there aren't spaces where exploitative games predominate. My point is that so many actual good games exist that aren't the slightest bit difficult to find, whereas my experience on the iPhone has been almost uniformly negative the past few years. On average, people just aren't willing to lay out ten, fifteen bucks for a game on mobile, so the race to the bottom is real.

Do you have to be an enthusiast gamer to find good PC games? Just google "best PC games", the first hit is a decent list from PC gamer. Takes all of 60 seconds to search and skim the list. If you don't have time for that, then you don't have time to be gaming at all. If I google "best iOS games" I see a mix of exploitative crap and games that are years and years old by now. (A list of "best iOS games 2021" that includes Bastion -- a game I was playing on my phone ten years ago -- is criminal.)

I used to hold the same opinion as you, and for the most part I still do. But I think the subscription model is a solution to the race to the bottom, because it creates an artificial level of quality assurance.

Take PlayPass, for instance: the play store is a landfill of endless trash, but PlayPass adds both a level of curation and it unlocks all the microtransactions.

So for a low yearly fee you get access to the best Play Store games, never pay for microtransactions, and don't need to go digging to find gems in the garbage heap.

I dunno, I tried Apple Arcade, and the games on there are decent, but I really didn't feel like I was getting my $5/month's worth

Any random $20 Switch title from the Shovelware Shelf at your local retailer is so much more polished and fun than even the best phone games, it's insane

I have no idea what's on Apple Arcade, but on Play Pass I've been playing the Kingdom Rush games, the Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition, and a tonne of critically-acclaimed indie titles.

> Steam Deck is Valve opening up an alternative to Microsoft land.

This seems to put the writing on the wall for the Steam Deck though, right? How many people are really going to care about a Valve system that can't run any of the popular games from the MS catalog?

I preordered the Steam Deck and plan to follow through with the purchase, but things look pretty dismal for Valve at this juncture. It seems like they're five years too late to the party with the Deck, and they now have no leverage to push MS to interoperate.

Why wouldn't it be able to? With the Proton compatibility layer almost all Windows-only games should run on it. And worst case scenario, one can dual boit Windows if Microsoft decide to be really aggressive vis à vis regulators and block their games from running on Proton.

Better yet.

You can run Game Pass directly in a browser. So you could use GamePass on really any modern web connected device.

I would be shocked if Microsoft supported the actual GamePass app on Linux

That's just cloud streaming, though. "Normal" Game Pass means downloading full games to run locally.

Can is a bit abstract. I've found it works really poorly in the browser ( just getting to the correct page that actually shows you the list of games available is a pain and requires multiple hops).

For what it's worth, I used xcloud for the first time on iOS this morning, where it runs entirely in the browser. It actually wasn't bad! I had to close out the browser entirely and reopen it to fix issues with the streaming, but once I did that it was much smoother than I anticipated, and jumping into a game was quick.

It was absolutely unplayable without a controller, mind you, but it worked.

> Why wouldn't it be able to? With the Proton compatibility layer almost all Windows-only games should run on it. And worst case scenario, one can dual boit Windows if Microsoft decide to be really aggressive vis à vis regulators and block their games from running on Proton.

MS now has a truly huge library, and Valve extracting a portion of every sale on Steam isn't something that's likely to make them happy. They now have so many games that they can use DRM to force users into their own ecosystem (i.e. Windows 11/XBox) to play them.

You could say, correctly, that MS's previous storefronts have not been a great success, but with such a huge catalogue they can just pull the users wherever they want them. There's no incentive for them to allow a competitor to run their games.

Proton is only a solution for as long as MS allows it, and I don't see any incentive for them to do so at this point.

Maybe things move slowly and the Steam Deck itself can still deliver these titles before this happens, but the Valve "ecosystem" as such seems to have really poor prospects.

> How many people are really going to care about a Valve system that can't run any of the popular games from the MS catalog?

So far, it seems MS is quite happy to put its games on Steam as an additional revenue source. Looking now, Xbox Game Studios has 49 games on steam, including its latest and biggest offerings, such as Halo Infinite and Forza Horizon 5[0].

[0]https://store.steampowered.com/curator/3090835-Xbox-Game-Stu...

But doesn't this acquisition put MS in a much stronger position, and isn't the Deck a direct competitor to MS hardware? MS now has a massive game catalog and I can't see any reason they would want to allow Valve to access it on their own console. Maybe MS will tolerate Steam near term, but you can't tell me that MS enjoys letting Valve take a cut of every sale, and with so many huge titles they can absolutely force users into whatever store they want (and limit them to whatever platform they want).

I don't know why anybody would give Microsoft of all companies the benefit of the doubt on this front.

I don't know. If they were so bent out of shape that Valve takes a cut of every sale, they could have stopped at any point before now. If anything would force people to use Microsoft's storefront it would have been a new well-reviewed Halo game, but nope, there it is for sale on Steam. And that makes sense to me -- withdrawing from the predominant PC storefront would be a gamble that might not pay off, as anyone who doesn't wish to buy direct from Microsoft is a loss of $60*0.7 = $42 that they could've won buy selling on Steam.

Maybe the calculus changes as they eat up publishers and grow their catalog, but traditionally Microsoft's storefronts haven't done particularly well.

Right, but big developers have also been getting away with producing crappy AAA titles. They always have tried to push unfinished games to the market, but it has become more widespread in the last years. Now, with less competition, things might actually get worse.

Indeed the Steam Deck is very exciting because what we've seen is that the mobile space is where Linux has been able to defeat Microsoft in end user adoption.

As some other folks have pointed out, the existence of WINE and other compat layers is actually hindering gaming on Linux, by disincentivizing game devs to make games directly for linux. A huge hit with the Steam Deck could actually start bringing more games directly to Linux.

> Indeed the Steam Deck is very exciting because what we've seen is that the mobile space is where Linux has been able to defeat Microsoft in end user adoption.

That's a very generous definition of "Linux".

Android won, not Linux.

What's the GUI toolkit? Android's one. Audio? Same. Notifications? Android. Etc, etc.

There's a reason many people are scared of Fuchsia, it's not inconceivable that Google at some point just pulls the plug on Linux and replaces it wholesale with Fuchsia as the base for Android.

Linux on mobile failed utterly, from Maemo to Meego to Ubuntu Mobile to all other attempts.

I'm already wondering why these trillion dollar companies are allowed to make pretty much any acquisitions at all, let alone ones pretty clearly aimed at vertical integration.

Game Pass has major issues still. No integrated backup mechanism; only 3 changes to your home PC per year... Imagine reinstalling more than 3 times to find out that you can no longer play offline; absolutely horrible download speeds... Compared to Steam which maxes out bandwidth; and the interface for Xbox Game Pass on PC is terrible.

> absolutely horrible download speeds... Compared to Steam which maxes out bandwidth

Yeah, I've noticed that. I don't know why they do that, it's annoying. If I can download a game in a half hour I'd like it in a half hour, not next Tuesday, please.

I wonder if this is due to MS hosting their content at fewer datacenters and thus needing to balance the data flow to each user better.

Valve has boxes hosted at many ISPs around the world and so each location could have lower usage numbers, thus less need to throttle.

Pure speculation though.

Valve's CDN (In my recent case, Akamai or Limelight) achieves fastest download speed I've ever used. I wonder why they do aggressively, and other don't.

At this rate it's going to be Tencent vs Microsoft and if I have to choose I pick Microsoft.

On gaming side the Microsoft from big players actually producing games seem the least bad option. Lot less bullshit in general than likes of Ubisoft and EA or Activision.

There's a difference though. Tencent doesn't dictate its studios how to conduct business. Microsoft on the other hand made Bethesda leave PlayStation, which negatively impacts their revenue, but plays into the hand of Microsoft.

> Tencent doesn't dictate its studios how to conduct business.

Isn't that exactly what Tencent are well known for doing?[1]

> According to the designer, Riot managers had provided a PowerPoint presentation that she assumed Tencent had made for them, although she didn’t know for sure.

1. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/jul/15/china-video-gam...

This quote doesn't fit the context here. In the article, it states this was about entering the chinese market, not about how to design their game.

Quite the contrary:

> The deal still leaves Riot with a largely independent remit, however, with CEO Brandon Beck telling press that Tencent see Riot more as investment partners than as a fully-owned subsidiary.

> "Riot is going to remain completely independent. There are no redundancies, no layoffs, no synergy fishing, no leadership change," Beck told Gamasutra. "Nothing is going to change other than they're dramatically increasing their holding in the company. They see this more as an investment in a partner.

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2011-02-07-tencent-ac...

I remember reading somewhere that Tencent has the reputation of not interfering with the game studios it had acquired.

Though that article is more than 10 years old, so I'd take anything written in it with a grain of salt

Tencent and Sony are still much larger than Microsoft's gaming division, even after this.

And if you compare Tencent and Sony's gaming division to Microsoft's gaming division?

Still much larger.

So, you're saying that between the giant douche and the turd sandwich you pick the sandwich?

Somehow I'm not impressed.

Sometime people prefer the turd they know compared to the unknow one

Honestly, why should any regulator bother with this? It's video games, it is clearly not any kind of essential infrastructure/software.

Not that regulators might care but game software shapes how young people conceive of software and IP issues. A company notorious for manipulating IP buying out a massive game company means entire generations of children and families will be exposed to this software as a service model of IP consumption.

At this point both Google and Apple have more end users than Microsoft.

Their "software as a service model of IP consumption" didn't seem to bother many regulators so far.

Sure but I'm really pointing out that children play games and that's a prime age to manipulate people's political expectations of the world. Like what toys and cartoons do. In contrast to the workplace software of Google or whatever subscription young people today might be willing to pay to use Apple's hardware.

So, only food, water, electricity and housing should be overseen by regulators?

Besides, with so many games out right seeking to get kids addicted, let's at least have some trade regulations. It's not like parents can ignore them.

It's still a market that affects a lot of people's lives. I think it's good for them to stop these huge mergers. Let the small to midsize companies fight it out, but we've had enough of these huge and getting huger tech companies strangling out competition and innovation.

Not really.

It's only an issue if this negatively. affects the competitive market. And since games are a creative market - there's hardly any reason to fear that Microsoft can restrict access to new players.

This is not like a utility, that could technically force something on you. One company can buy all of game developers/publishers and still not make a dent in competitiveness of the games market.

Wrong. Here's a hypothetical scenario:

Kids' PCs are windows. Microsoft has Game Store installed by default. Pop ups about the latest Fortnite NextGen, installed by default. More addictive than gambling but hella legal.

Easy scenario, no regulations. Market is heavily skewed and MS has a big win in the gambling for kids industry.

my question is whether Microsoft was fanning the flames of all the controversy surrounding Activision recently and how much that dropped the acquisition price.

You could say the same thing about Disney, Netflix, HBO, Apple TV, Amazon prime, etc.

The thing about subscriptions is that consumers tend to buy multiple.

Very true, just like when Google bought DoubleClick. I couldn't believe that went through.

Gamepass will be the netflix of game... rental? Sharing? Streaming? Whatever you want to call Gamepass. I'm surprised it didnt happen sooner.

Blizzard is dead weight compared to the incredible profitability of Skylanders + CoD. I'd be willing to bet Blizzard gets spun off within a year.

Blizzard had a very big and dedicated fan base, the launch of a Blizzard game used to be one of the biggest gaming events of a year, their IPs are (were) loved by huge numbers. Current management did squander most of that good will in the last few years (mainly optimizing their new games for addictiveness instead of designing for fun), but I don't think it is too late, if under new management Blizzard pulls a 180 and goes back to make good games with the old IPs, fans will come back in droves.

> if under new management Blizzard pulls a 180 and goes back to make good games with the old IPs, fans will come back in droves.

With who? Most names known for the titles of good old Blizzard are long gone. Possibly even retired.

Nobody's irreplaceable if the will to do it is really there.

Right but if nothing about what made it good from the start is left what advantage would they have compared to any other assembled team? Games get replaced by the next new great thing at a rapid pace, there's no moat. So really don't get the idea of paying premium for a studio that Used to make great games.

skylanders hasnt been thing for years lol

We're way past the point where government is meant to be a check on unchecked capitalism. Mega monolith corps are the now and future.

It makes sense they’d acquire Activision now, especially after Intel and AMD are bootlicking them and implementing Pluton. Essentially any new or even existing titles will not be able to be pirated with Pluton enabled.

So, more proprietary hardware which now only MS controls, only they can update and audit. According to security researchers, is not physical tamper proof. Tackles niche security issue while the number one vector of attack, comprising 80% of them, is social engineering and not kernel modifications. And, according to you, eliminate piracy which not only doesn't hurt the gaming industry but has also become redundant with multiplayer only titles dominating said industry.

Nah, it's just a play to gain more monopoly into PCs and what runs on them. Today, it's a nightmare to get something signed for MS. God forbid you need to sign drivers. With them moving the goal post every now and then, broken APIs, broken SDKs and support SLA of infinity, pluton is a forced dependency.

Pluton is a pure business move with zero customer value. The greatest threat, last year, in security was supply chain attacks. And this tries to "solve" kernel modifications? End users have nothing to gain.

Yep you’re correct, it reminds me of old Microsoft doing sneaky things to attain monopoly status and kill competition. Hopefully ARM will not implement Pluton but I have a suspicion they will too if nvidia acquisition fails

the government will look the other way if there is a competitor to tencent.

There are so many gaming companies and platforms... An Anti trust case would be very hard to make.

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