Microsoft is trying to acquire Activision Blizzard (UPDATE: CMA says NO!).

[Stanley]

Yeah lesser of two evils but still leveraging the market to block your competitors, and again the whole Bethesda situation immediately invalidates any argument they might have there. 

[Rex Grossman]

8 hours ago, El Spatula said:

Basically both MS and Sony are cunts. A preference is simply silly. Nintendo are also cunts but are protected from being called so somehow.

 

Because Nintendo's games are actually good.

[Stanley]

It’s not really Nintendo’s fight this one, so I guess that’s why they are ‘protected’.

[El Spatula]

20 minutes ago, Rex Grossman said:

 

Because Nintendo's games are actually good.

 

😐

[JPL]

2 hours ago, Mr. Gerbik said:

personality preferred controller

I like this. I never knew controllers had a personality!

[JPL]

1 hour ago, Stanley said:

Yeah lesser of two evils but still leveraging the market to block your competitors, and again the whole Bethesda situation immediately invalidates any argument they might have there. 

I agree with you on this. Sony have been terrible for it over the years and MS recently have gone tit for tat, but are now trying to say Sony are bad for doing it. They can't play the nice guy when they're trying to beat Sony at their own game, and surely any regulator with an ounce of knowledge about the games industry will see that. It's a weird stance to take if you ask me.

 

Anyway, I just want everything to be multi-platform, so you just buy the console you prefer the look of. Console wars either from the gamers perspective or the companies making these things are fucking boring.

[Stanley]

PC is pretty much already there as long as you don’t mind a little wait for the PlayStation exclusives, some nice small form factors, handhelds too. 
 

I would prefer Nintendo to carry on doing what they do though, I don’t want everything the same. 

[Mr. Gerbik]

46 minutes ago, JPL said:

I like this. I never knew controllers had a personality!

Damn rassen frassen new fangled autocorrect 

[thesnwmn]

43 minutes ago, JPL said:

I agree with you on this. Sony have been terrible for it over the years and MS recently have gone tit for tat, but are now trying to say Sony are bad for doing it. They can't play the nice guy when they're trying to beat Sony at their own game, and surely any regulator with an ounce of knowledge about the games industry will see that. It's a weird stance to take if you ask me.

 

Anyway, I just want everything to be multi-platform, so you just buy the console you prefer the look of. Console wars either from the gamers perspective or the companies making these things are fucking boring.

 

It's not playing the nice guy. Its simply trying to argue why the regulator shouldn't be sticking their nose in this. Of course for us maybe it's best if that backfires and the regulator starts getting more involved. Problem is I think regulating against exclusivity deals without some new laws isnt going to work.

[Stanley]

Yeah it’s a dangerous game they’re playing there, if it backfires. 

[JPL]

Basically they're both as bad as each other for it, to the detriment of us.

[Stanley]

16 minutes ago, JPL said:

Basically they're both as bad as each other for it, to the detriment of us.

Depends how you look at it, if you get a load more stuff on Game Pass then that’s good for the customer, bad for Sony who are trying to sell it at full price. 

[thesnwmn]

4 minutes ago, Stanley said:

Depends how you look at it, if you get a load more stuff on Game Pass then that’s good for the customer, bad for Sony who are trying to sell it at full price. 

 

Good for a certain set of customers. Bad for another set of customers.

 

But the goods here are only short term at least in terms of choice and value. Theoretically more choice and competition means lower costs to consumers. An MS who buy everyone up could eventually corner the market and Game Pass pricing is only going up and it's content doesn't have to be as good.

 

It's the same pattern we've seen in basically all console generations. The previous winner doing wrong in some way because they believe they can. They piss their advantage up the wall because they build something more than a console (PS3, XBOne) thinking they're bigger than they are. They raise prices of games or hardware. They under-invest in developing new properties.

 

For us as consumers, I think independent developers who chose where to release their stuff and people like MS and Sony having to offer them cash to put their games on their subscription services (without exclusivity) seems the best. Of course these platform holders could form their own studios or contract out studios to develop properties for them but they don't. They hoover up titles or companies to attract a userbase.

[mikeyl]

Platform exclusives are great. Reference -  all the great platform exclusives that were made because the companies wanted something unique to sell their system or to match what their competitors had.

[rgraves]

7 minutes ago, thesnwmn said:

An MS who buy everyone up could eventually corner the market and Game Pass pricing is only going up and it's content doesn't have to be as good.

 

I think the, perfectly valid, MS argument here is that Sony are being totally disingenuous in saying that this deal will be some kind of monumental shift in the market that takes Xbox from 3rd place to instead being a dominant market leader they can no longer compete with.

 

MS are trying to move up from 3rd place, Sony are trying to keep them there - when you look at it like that, it's a little weird to understand why the competition authorities should be siding with the dominant leader.

 

Let's be honest here - the deal going through will strengthen MS, but it's not going to bring about the downfall of Sony or anything even close to that. CoD on GP and still also on other systems (even additional ones like Switch) seems like a positive move for the consumer. if you want to play on PS5 absolutely no change apaprently (apart from no more timed exclusive content I'd wager). If you want to play on Xbox, good news! If you want to play on Switch, good news!

 

Starfield and Redfall are new IPs with no existing fanbase on any platform, you might as well argue Ratchet and Clank must come to Xbox - we need to be looking more at Minecraft than anything else really IMO.

[Uncle Mike]

I think the "these games are new IPs" is a bit of a fudge, isn't it? Like, Starfield (in particular) isn't some new unproven unknown. It's Space Skyrim from those people. I know it's just rehashing stuff that has already been driven to death, but MS spent a time pre-Zenimax acquisition (and still do) pretending that it's not going to be exclusive-city from acquisition onwards, when it was always clear that was the plan. Other than contractual commitments or the odd next-gen update that they can knock out for free/wouldn't attract new customers anyway, there's nothing they're bringing to other platforms there again. And why should they? They bought it, they own it, it's up to them.

[layten]

10 hours ago, Uncle Mike said:

It's not even a very accurate meme. One of our most PC-centric users is also one of the most invested in MS/Sony warz.

I see this has now been given a upvote by a bunch of people who didn't give any fucks about tech industry job losses until it was an opportunity to to "score points" against Microsoft.

 

lol

[thesnwmn]

5 minutes ago, rgraves said:

 

I think the, perfectly valid, MS argument here is that Sony are being totally disingenuous in saying that this deal will be some kind of monumental shift in the market that takes Xbox from 3rd place to instead being a dominant market leader they can no longer compete with.

 

MS are trying to move up from 3rd place, Sony are trying to keep them there - when you look at it like that, it's a little weird to understand why the competition authorities should be siding with the dominant leader.

 

Let's be honest here - the deal going through will strengthen MS, but it's not going to bring about the downfall of Sony or anything even close to that. CoD on GP and still also on other systems (even additional ones like Switch) seems like a positive move for the consumer. if you want to play on PS5 absolutely no change apaprently (apart from no more timed exclusive content I'd wager). If you want to play on Xbox, good news! If you want to play on Switch, good news!

 

Starfield and Redfall are new IPs with no existing fanbase on any platform, you might as well argue Ratchet and Clank must come to Xbox - we need to be looking more at Minecraft than anything else really IMO.

 

Of course. I stated that earlier.

 

I'm simply saying that "this is good for consumers" is crazy. It's might end up being the "least bad" or not. No idea.

 

The insanity of this for me is that I don't think it's smart of MS. It's drawing the ire of a set of people be they regulators or gamers who aren't massive MS fans. It's costing a bunch of money to just push through. So what do you actually get here? A publisher who is already covered in PR shit. If this was a guaranteed big punch to Sony then maybe. But it's not. That takes actually competing with Sony in the genres they own.

 

This ignores the King aspect which is clearly interesting and be interesting to see what they're willing to give up and continue the purchases. Do we think they still buy this is CoD has to be spun off?

[rgraves]

We're also all forgetting that, had MS not purchased them, it was looking all ends up that Sony was going to pick up Starfield as a PS exclusive and include a 'must not come to Xbox and especially not GP' clause in the contract. It's not a game that was ever likely to end up on both systems I don't think really.

 

I have *far* more of a problem with a contract that says "your game must come to us and also never go to them" than I do with a contract that says "your game must come to us first". Waiting 6 months as a gamer is something that comes with the territory in this stuff - handcuffing a third-party developer to never release something on a rival platform just feels much less friendly or defendable.

[rgraves]

5 minutes ago, thesnwmn said:

I'm simply saying that "this is good for consumers" is crazy. It's might end up being the "least bad" or not. No idea.

 

The insanity of this for me is that I don't think it's smart of MS.

 

I don't think anyone comes out of this well in any scenario really - let's say Sony do manage to get it blocked. How happy is Kotick and the Acti board going to be? How willing are they going to be to sit down at the table with Sony and do more deals when the time comes - how likely would they instead be to ask MS if they fancy throwing a tiny slice of that saved $69bn over to them in return for a CoD contract that moves to MS instead of Sony?

 

If I was MS and this got blocked, I'd have $69bn sitting there that I'd use to actually try and do the damage Sony are currently assuring everyone it would do. I'd buy up exclusive games and lock them off of PS all over the shop. I'd point at the FTC and say "look what you made us do" all day long. But then, I'm childish like that.

[Uncle Mike]

Probably needs a citation-needed on that. The deals with Ghostwire and Deathloop were timed exclusives, and don't seem to have had commitments beyond that? Where's the claim that anything in the works with Starfield was more than that?

 

I do think the "timed-exclusive" deal is always a bit lame. Hey, you can have this a year before everyone else, and then by the time it comes out for everyone else, no-one cares is a real limp announcement and perfect way to ensure the eventual relaxation is also limp.

[Gabe]

2 minutes ago, Uncle Mike said:

Probably needs a citation-needed on that. The deals with Ghostwire and Deathloop were timed exclusives, and don't seem to have had commitments beyond that? Where's the claim that anything in the works with Starfield was more than that?

 

I do think the "timed-exclusive" deal is always a bit lame. Hey, you can have this a year before everyone else, and then by the time it comes out for everyone else, no-one cares is a real limp announcement and perfect way to ensure the eventual relaxation is also limp.

I had forgotten if Starfield had ever been announced for PlayStation before the acquisition and saw some chatter that suggested Sony were in talks about timed exclusivity for it, but from my brief glance I didn't see anything suggesting they wanted it to be a permanent exclusive. 

[rgraves]

3 minutes ago, Uncle Mike said:

Probably needs a citation-needed on that. The deals with Ghostwire and Deathloop were timed exclusives, and don't seem to have had commitments beyond that? Where's the claim that anything in the works with Starfield was more than that?

 

I do think the "timed-exclusive" deal is always a bit lame. Hey, you can have this a year before everyone else, and then by the time it comes out for everyone else, no-one cares is a real limp announcement and perfect way to ensure the eventual relaxation is also limp.

 

I'm thinking generally of stuff like this:

 

 

 

 

[layten]

3 minutes ago, Uncle Mike said:

Probably needs a citation-needed on that. The deals with Ghostwire and Deathloop were timed exclusives, and don't seem to have had commitments beyond that? Where's the claim that anything in the works with Starfield was more than that?

There is quite a bit of reporting on it, but it seems none of it knows for sure if it was for timed or in perpetuity.

[thesnwmn]

5 minutes ago, rgraves said:

How happy is Kotick and the Acti board going to be? How willing are they going to be to sit down at the table with Sony and do more deals when the time comes - how likely would they instead be to ask MS if they fancy throwing a tiny slice of that saved $69bn over to them in return for a CoD contract that moves to MS instead of Sony?

 

I'm not sure I think Kotick of Acti give a fuck. Yes there's money to be made for some individuals and shareholders but I've been very surprised that through all this they continue to make business moves that seem very against what I think MS would do in terms of monetisation.

 

I know they have to. The two business will not be allowed to communicate or align. But I'd have expected some very subtle softening of Acti's position on thigs just to stay a bit more low key. Avoid bucking market. Avoid highlighting their evil internals.

[Gabe]

1 minute ago, rgraves said:

 

I'm thinking generally of stuff like this:

 

 

 

 

Okay, that is clearly trash and reflects badly on both Sony and Capcom. If Capcom is prepared to even discuss hobbling their game on another platform just for some marketing dollars that is really scummy of them. 

[mikeyl]

That’s exactly what they must have done for the Megadrive version of Streetfighter 2

[rgraves]

2 minutes ago, thesnwmn said:

 

I'm not sure I think Kotick of Acti give a fuck.

 

...

 

2 minutes ago, thesnwmn said:

Yes there's money to be made for some individuals and shareholders

 

There you go....

[Uncle Mike]

3 minutes ago, Gabe said:

Okay, that is clearly trash and reflects badly on both Sony and Capcom. If Capcom is prepared to even discuss hobbling their game on another platform just for some marketing dollars that is really scummy of them. 

 

What does hobbling mean in this context? Is it worse on Series X? I just went and did a really quick skim of the Digital Foundry review, which suggests that PS5 and Series X are both 4K and the XSX has a better framerate.

[thesnwmn]

1 minute ago, rgraves said:

 

...

 

 

There you go....

 

True, and clearly they've judged MS well here.

 

But I've wondered at a few choices Activision and Blizzard have made around PR and monetisation where I've almost waited to hear that MS have walked away because they don't want to be rolling in the same cow shit these idiots keep covering themselves in.

 

Of course we know gamers don't actually care about this stuff. It doesn't matter that games have loot boxes or real money auction houses or whatever. We buy them. MS know this. They know the bad PR doesn't generally matter.