EU antitrust regulators clear $69B Microsoft, Activision deal
reuters.com
reuters.com
1. Cloud gaming currently represents a neglectable portion of the market. Clearly it needs a very large player to even attempt to make it work.
2. Gaming as a Netflix/HBO/Disney+ style subscription is not a crazy idea. It requires at least one party to get some critical mass and prove the market actually exists, and then competition will appear who were initially more risk averse. The streaming wars of video content definitely improved the market for consumers compared to risk-free hollywood blockbusters and cheap reality TV that came before it.
3. All-you-can-eat gaming as a subscription might actually increase the diversity and quality of games. Games are currently so expensive to produce that very few risks are taken. This allows much more space for niche games that have a small loyal following.
4. The assumption that Microsoft would use XBox live as a lock-in to sell you a subsidized console seems absolutely silly. This is more about them finding an exit to just discontinue the XBox console all together. You can already play XBox live games on a Steamdeck or an Android TV.
5. The gaming world is much more volatile than people seem to understand. Activision's dominance is only sustainable if they keep making games that are more compelling and just like is the case for Ubisoft or EA who are having a really bad decade, that seems to require more than just money and banking on the past. It's a fiercely competitive industry and the actual lead actors (i.e. the hero developers) jump ship or start a new developer company every other day. So all they end up buying is IP and managers. The rest would cost just as much to keep as they would to steal.
I understand people might not like Microsoft to be the one taking the initiative here, but is the initiative itself really that bad for consumers or the developers?
Because i'm one of those people who would appreciate the change in the market. I spend more money on streaming services where i also give more things a try, than i ever would if i would be buying or renting music/tv-shows/movies. I spent more _and_ get more value.
Why is the same notion for gaming somehow worse for everyone?
I'm curious how that could work. Because if it's a subscription then how do they pay back the creators? Is some portion based on play time? If so I can see that actually funneling more money up to the well known games and less to indies.
Reward producers: - that produces the first thing that makes an inactive customer active again - that produce something that is consumed by those who don't consume much else on the platform - that complements existing content rather than being more of the same
However it's less about producers being rewarded for their success. Especially if the content is developed in-house and the decision is driven by market research.
It's easy to be saturated within a genre. Most games take quite a while to finish. If people stop playing on your service it's not because they finished all the games there. It's because they are bored with the offering, i.e. the diversity of the offering.
On top of that, I play World of Warcraft on macOS where it runs flawlessly. I understand that new games are likely only going to support Windows in the PC market, and indeed that’s been the case for Blizzard games for many years. But my biggest fear with a Microsoft merger is that macOS support for WoW will be dropped at some point.
Effective for 10 years, to be precise. What then?
There's been exactly zero ZeniMax games announced for rivalling consoles after the Microsoft buyout in 2021 despite Microsoft telling the European regulators that it wasn't in their interest to withold games from other platforms. Hi-Fi Rush is exclusive, Redfall is exclusive and the PS5 version was scrapped, and Starfield is exclusive.
One would think that regulators have protocols (like, say, a medical doctor) and while of-course there can be "light-touch" or "strict" regulation and differences of opinion, that would be the exception. In any case usually it is the EU that is accused of "regulatory overreach".
The EU has done may silly decisions like their recent AI act legislation, but this one is their biggest error yet which they have failed to stop the further consolidation of large existing multi-billion dollar games companies.
The EU is know to give in to bribes so easily and €5M in bribes is just beyond pathetic to approve this.
2. Console gaming is small slice of the gaming market. Most money is made on mobile games.
3. Bundling/unbundling of publishers is completely normal everyday economic behavior in the media market.
4. Microsoft is buying IP and managers. To keep the designers and engineers that actually win in the competitive war that is the gaming industry they would have to pay the same amount of money to keep them as they would to just outright steal them. They did this to be polite and quick within the market, but the alternative is to just steal all the talent by offering higher pay. Would be cheaper.
5. If EU would block this, then what the _f_ were they doing when Disney bought up geek IP's like there was no tomorrow? It wouldn't be very consistent.
6. The transition to subscription gaming might be in the interest of consumers and developers. It sure was a good thing when it happened to video and music. And it did lead to multiple players. The business model of subscription all-you-can-eat-gaming itself extracts more money from consumers -and- delivers more value to those same consumers. Streaming services tend to focus on 'genre' completeness (have something for every type of viewer), whereas a business model where you rent or pay tends to favor low-risk high-budget more-of-the-same, with a low-effort low-budget offering with ads/microtransactions.
7. It's hard to imagine any professional believing Microsoft would try to use the vendor lock-in on content to sell you a subsidized console you would only use to access their subscription service. Consoles themselves are already a publishing play, i.e. taking 30% of the sales of somebody else's content. That have that same power with a popular subscription service, if you are streaming from Android TV (possible today), a Steamdeck (possible today). Their play here is to compete with the subsidized console market with a subscription business model.
> The approval is a rare occasion where European regulators appear to be more accommodating to the tech industry than the United States.
This is very surprising to me. In any case, unless FTC loses their lawsuit, which I believe is unlikely, the merger is still most assuredly not going to happen.
Plus if it somehow goes through they'll have a big US target to fine if they step out of line. I'm sure they'll like that.
- Nothing that affected gameplay was DLC
- DLC was restricted to additional solo/co-op campaigns and cosmetic skins.
- The only thing I would change is there was a button to override player-chosen "colors" and set yourself/friendlies to bright green and enemies to bright red for consistency game-to-game. I'd like that button to also set skins to default.
and given they knew who they'd be going up against, I suspect they were fastidious
CMA ruled that Facebook had to divest Giphy, it was appealed, sent back to CMA and CMA still ruled that Facebook had to divest.