this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2023
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Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard (www.theverge.com)
submitted 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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"In a ruling submitted today, Judge Corley said the following:

Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision has been described as the largest in tech history. It deserves scrutiny. That scrutiny has paid off: Microsoft has committed in writing, in public, and in court to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation for 10 years on parity with Xbox. It made an agreement with Nintendo to bring Call of Duty to Switch. And it entered several agreements to for the first time bring Activision’s content to several cloud gaming services. This Court’s responsibility in this case is narrow. It is to decide if, notwithstanding these current circumstances, the merger should be halted—perhaps even terminated—pending resolution of the FTC administrative action. For the reasons explained, the Court finds the FTC has not shown a likelihood it will prevail on its claim this particular vertical merger in this specific industry may substantially lessen competition. To the contrary, the record evidence points to more consumer access to Call of Duty and other Activision content. The motion for a preliminary injunction is therefore DENIED. "

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 2 years ago (9 children)

They're 3rd place this generation mainly because they release one big exclusive per year, like Redfall, which turns out to be utter dogshit. It's not because they don't have an actual treasure trove of IP to draw from or a lack of development resources.

While Nintendo is putting out games like Tears of the Kingdom, Microsoft produces boring, samey, minorly iterative crap year after year. Halo and Gears went from being Xbox icons to unsurprising announcements at formulaic E3 press conferences, because Microsoft only seems to know how to beat dead horses.

Let me ask you this simple question: how have gamers or the industry benefited from Microsoft's past acquisitions?

I can't see any way that allowing Microsoft to own (and probably squander) an ever-growing library of IP is good for me or anyone outside of the company.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 years ago (8 children)

Gamers benefited tremendously. GamePass is a game changer and having access to day 1 first (and often 3rd) party releases is amazing. Devs are happy too. Many publicly admitted that without GP some of their games would not launch at all.

While you are right that MS has released mostly duds this generation, it’s not fair to paint them as completely without any benefits to gamers or industry.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Gamepass as it currently exists will be gone within a decade. This is the Netflix or Amazon model at play. Run service cheaply until it hits critical mass, then start ramping the price up to turn it profitable. You won't be getting unlimited $70 games on launch for $15/month for forever.

Even if the above is wrong: a successful GP will fundamentally alter the way games are made. Content is aggressively and constantly tweaked or changed structurally in order to optimize profit. You know why search results on Google are garbage? Because people found a way to take advantage of that system to make the most money; doing so pushed out the good results. Same reason why all the biggest youtube channels have the content creator making a stupid face in the thumbnail with a clickbait title. Same reason why film has moved towards cinematic universes lately, or why so many IPs have moved towards the TV format (its for streaming).

Consumer oriented content changes when the revenue model changes. If GP is influential enough, games will change to optimize for whatever method makes the most money there — and that model will not be the one that exists currently. If Microsoft pays them by hours of playtime, games will become bloated with more and more empty content or arbitrary difficulty. If DLC continues to not be included, more and more core game content will shift towards DLC that becomes more expensive. Etc.

Cementing Gamepass is anything but a "tremendous" benefit for gamers.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

@LetMeEatCake @diskape Everything you said sounds about right. I have a hard time believing it would work out that way in reality though. MS would for sure pull that but would people tolerate it? Most of the scummy stuff I see people tolerate comes from games and companies that they previously enjoyed before microtransactions or degrading quality. If MS just ups gamepass to 25 or something a month, I think people would just not buy it.

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