Microsoft Completes $69 Billion Activision Blizzard Purchase (bloomberg.com) 51
Microsoft completed its $69 billion purchase of Activision Blizzard after a nearly two-year fight with global regulators threatened to scuttle the deal. From a report: The biggest-ever acquisition in the video game industry gives the maker of Xbox consoles a more formidable position against rivals, vaulting it from fifth to third place globally, behind Tencent Holdings and Sony Group. The acquisition is a stunning turnaround after Microsoft executives underestimated the magnitude and longevity of antitrust objections, forcing the software giant to seek a three-month extension of the deal's expiration period from Activision.
Microsoft was able to close after making alterations to its merger agreement to win over UK authorities. The US Federal Trade Commission, which lost an attempt to block the transaction in court, continues to pursue legal action in its own administrative hearing. That could still force the two companies to unwind the deal if the commission is successful. The UK's Competition and Markets Authority announced on Friday that it had approved the deal after accepting a restructuring plan involving selling some gaming rights to French publisher Ubisoft Entertainment SA. The regulator was concerned about preserving competition in the nascent market for games streamed via the cloud.
Microsoft was able to close after making alterations to its merger agreement to win over UK authorities. The US Federal Trade Commission, which lost an attempt to block the transaction in court, continues to pursue legal action in its own administrative hearing. That could still force the two companies to unwind the deal if the commission is successful. The UK's Competition and Markets Authority announced on Friday that it had approved the deal after accepting a restructuring plan involving selling some gaming rights to French publisher Ubisoft Entertainment SA. The regulator was concerned about preserving competition in the nascent market for games streamed via the cloud.
Genuine question about the USA process (Score:3)
If the FTC already made a ruling on this, already moved to court, and already lost in court, what more can they hope to achieve? When I first asked why this was in court in the first place I was told here that the FTC doesn't have the legal power without the backing of the court system to prevent the merger. Now that the courts have already ruled in MS's favour what does the FTC's "own administrative hearing" hope to achieve?
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According to the FTC themselves:
In some situations the FTC files a complaint under its administrative process instead of taking the case to a federal court. This is called an adjudicative proceeding. The party can decide to settle with us or they can contest the charges. If they contest the case it is heard before an administrative law judge in a trial-type proceeding. The Legal Library has information about cases brought by us before an administrative law judge.
https://www.ftc.gov/legal-libr... [ftc.gov]
IANAL but I
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Congress has delegated certain powers to executive departments. ALCs are associated with working within the delegated framework. When it is determined that the existing congressionally mandated framework does not encompass the issue at hand, the ALC will have to defer to a proper Federal Court for determination of the issue at hand.
Now, every time the FTC gets a bug up its ass, they can challenge whatever they feel like in Federal Court. This isn't like criminal proceedings where double jeopardy might b
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Yeah this does sound like a last ditch effort to stop this but it sure seem inevitable now.
I think if the FTC wants to stop these types of mergers it seems like there will need to be legislation passed to better define rules and the authority the FTC can use. From a legal POV it feels like to me nobody would stop this merger because why would they when so many other mega-mergers have happened, why draw the line here if the law is the same? That's not a legal argument but it sure feels that way.
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Ultimately the law is a way of normalizing expressions of government policy. These are, of their nature, arbitrary based on perceived needs at the time. If consistency is what you were looking for in this space, I don't think you're going to find very much of it. Contrast this to the arbitrary acts of monarchs back in that era, or dictators more recently.
Someone in the current administration has an animus towards corporate mergers and is trying to hinder them, whether as a political show or wanting to a
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We have gotten consistency though, is there a large scale corporate merger that has been successfully shot down in the past 20 years? I can probably count them on one hand, the most notable I can think of is NVidia trying to buy ARM and Kraft trying to buy Unilever.
Microsoft bought Bethesda, Disney bought Fox, TMobile bought Sprint, Verizon bought Vodafone, Dow bought DuPont, ATT bought Warner, Heinz and Kraft, Broadocom and VMWare, Discovery and ATT, sure seems consistent to me.
I think even if it
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I'm actually pretty sure MSFT will kill this studio, as things go to Microsoft to die, like we used to say about CA in the day. Someone internally there thinks they can extract some value from it, but once it's internal to Microsoft the usual corporate infighting for resources and power will destroy it, and Microsoft never sells anything out from inside it while it still retains value.
Re:Genuine question about the USA process (Score:4, Interesting)
From something posted today Jason Schreier is getting reports the employees and developers are actually looking forward to the takeover as the C-suite will be getting replaced and Kotick is out in 2024. That to me speaks volumes about the current culture and leadership and frankly I agree.
You can say a lot about Microsoft and its usually true but Phil Spencer and the XBox division have done quite a few consumer friendly moves (XBox Gamepass is a great bargain, games from their studios are always dual released on console and PC, they have put considerable effort into more accessible control options for disabled people) and the studios they have bought seem to be decently managed, I haven't read many horror crunch stories from what they have owned so they seem somewhat developer friendly, at least better than Ubi and EA.
https://twitter.com/jasonschre... [twitter.com]
Call it restrained optimism. I would prefer Blizzard be independent again but that's also nostalgia coming from almost 30 years of enjoying their games, it's just a name now.
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Point of order here. Dow didn't buy DuPont, nor did DuPont buy Dow, they merged their ag businesses, and to save taxes merged the two businesses to split out into 3 different businesses. Some parts of old Dow wound up in new DuPont and vice versa and the Ag businesses are now Corteva. But t
I think you have something backwards (Score:1)
That's not how it works. The last time the FTC tried to use anti-trust law against the Big Scary Government said Big Scary Government gave up because they didn't have the resources to fight Microsoft.
The government of the United States, representing 341 million citizens, was outmatched by a single mega corporation. And folks take umbrage when we suggest that maybe, just maybe, they h
Re: I think you have something backwards (Score:1)
Last time the government had them dead to rights but John Ashcroft let them off the hook because they are a defense contractor and part of PRISM. Immediately thereafter Microsoft made their next OS the worst spyware of all time. Coincidence? Hahahahah
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They can still appeal the result and get another trial.
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They can still appeal the result and get another trial.
No they can't, they already did and lost in the appeal stage. https://www.forbes.com/sites/a... [forbes.com]
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So weird seeing this through the eyes of GenX (Score:3)
Other GenX's are welcome to chime in here, but seeing this sort of dredges up a whole other era. Activision has come a looong way from its roots with David Crane, and I still remember being barely tall enough to see over the counter, watching a bunch of kids crowded around an atari 2600 playing PitFall! From a time when games and computers were REALLY considered to be the domain of guys with black rimmed glasses, pocket protectors and slide rules to an everyman form of media, as the Dead say; what a long strange trip it's been.
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The name is just a name at this point. The nostalgia is gone. It's an empty corporate shell. Another of the evils of M&A...these names are as irrelevant as names on Amazon are of vendors.
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Well, by your logic Microsoft can change, too.
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Microsoft has instructions on how to download and install Linux [microsoft.com] ... has hell froze over? =P
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Maybe. But their shenanigans with Bethesda and Starfield make it quite crystal clear that they haven't.
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This. Totally this.
I still buy Hanes socks, but they contract out to Bangladesh or Sri Lanka, etc. Every time I buy the same variety of socks (X-Temp), I get a different kind of sock. At one point, there was virtually no padding and they had the durability of cray paper. People complained.
They went with a different contractor. Now the socks are high quality: Actual padding, durability. Both have X-Temp stitched on the toe.
I have also seen different brands of microwave that are clearly the same microwave wit
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brands of microwave that are clearly the same microwave with different stuff printed on it.
This one is pretty well known now that Midea [midea.com] manufactures nearly every microwave for every brand:
Why Almost Every Microwave is Made by the Same Company [youtube.com]
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Yeah probably explains the UI
Technology Connections on Youtube did a video sort-of about this:
The Antique Microwave Oven that's Better than Yours [youtube.com]
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It's a brand (TM) probably (R), not a company. Those days are gone. But I feel you, man.
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I remember when EA was a great game publisher, all those things are long gone, stories to tell our kids who won't believe us.
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Why would they exit the market when they have been the leader for the past, what, 4 generations? The PS5 is ahead in sales by 15 million units over XBox. I have to imagine that is part of the reason Microsoft has been so willing to effectively merge the XBox division with their PC gaming division because they just can't catch up to Sony in the console market alone.
Speaking of nationalism Sony beats the pants of XBox in Japan every generation, Microsoft has never really been able to make inroads in that ma
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It won't be overnight. It wasn't for Sega. But I can easily see them g
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It definitely could happen but the console hardware market is pretty much set nowadays, it's really all about software still, consoles really are just custom PC hardware, hell both consoles are AMD based. The risk from hardware from generation to generation is far less than Genesis to Saturn or Saturn to Dreamcast. Sega also had a lot of famous problems unique to them and the wild times they were in, namely the flopping of the Sega CD and 32X and dilution of the brand and a terrible Saturn launch, price a
Re: How long until Sony (Score:2)
Sega screwed themselves with those systems.
The Saturn cost 33% more than the PlayStation but didn't have hardware transparency so games looked better on the less powerful PlayStation until late in the development cycle. But Sega also kept the price of the Saturn high until then and the combination killed it .
Then Sega followed that up by involving Microsoft with the Dreamcast. This both helped doom the DC and also helped Microsoft become a console maker.
Sega was horribly mismanaged in that era and anyone ca
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exists the Console market? It's high cost / high risk. Their core business is still insurance.
Nearly 1/3 of Sony's total revenue comes from the Game & Network Services division [statista.com] as of 2022. About 1/6 of their game sales revenue from the same period [statista.com] came from first-party exclusives.
They've never been able to compete on FPS'. [...] Sony doesn't have anything nearly that memorable (Sorry Ratchet & Clank fans, I love it too but the movie was the blandest and dullest thing I've ever seen...). Sony's gonna get boxed in and shut down.
Right, it's not like they have a critically acclaimed, hit prestige TV show based on one of their first-party properties [rottentomatoes.com], or an exclusive super hero franchise that's moved over 33 million units [statista.com] with a highly anticipated sequel on the way this fall [forbes.com], or an instantly recognizable character [si.com] who's been burning up the sales
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exists the Console market? It's high cost / high risk. Their core business is still insurance. They've never been able to compete on FPS'. It's just not a genre the Japanese "get". They've tried a half dozen times. Killzone & Haze come to mind.
Er what? The last two console generations have belonged to Sony when it comes to hardware sales. As for "never been able to compete on FPS", I am not sure what you mean as the PS4 beat out the Xbox One on pure performance numbers. It was not until the Xbox One X four years later that MS would be able to claim their hardware was as good as Sony's Playstation. For this generation, the Xbox Series X has a slight performance advantage over the PS5 but the Series S does not as the S hardware is cheaper and less
Sony doesn't even make its own hardware anymore (Score:2)
Microsoft titles are struggling because they just haven't been very good and has been very very few of them. That happens sometimes. Go look at the output of Sega of America and it's ext
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Or it's own software. It's all x86 hardware and DirectX. Yes even the PS4 and PS5 are basically direct X boxes.
Not factually true [techpowerup.com]. The PS5 GPU does not even support DirectX. I am not sure where you are getting your information but it has been very, very wrong.
They have to be because modern graphics are so insanely complicated you can't maintain two separate hardware and software stacks.
No Sony does not. Sony uses GNM and GNMX [wikipedia.org] since the PS4.
I bet (Score:2)
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Blizzard has been dead, it's just a name now, the key players like Morhaime, Metzen, Pardo and Brevik are long gone. The only thing we can hope is that a better executive staff and culture combined with new developers who have reverence for the brand can bring its level of quality back up. Kinda like how "The Simpsons" is now written by a lot of people who watched and were obsessed with the show as adolescents.
Well, there's nothing left to do here... (Score:1)
Well, folks, just bend over and grab the lube. Microsoft may or may not use it, but it's worth a try.
Go America.
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Like lots of people here I've been playing Blizzard games for a very long time. "WarCraft: Orcs and Humans" was my introduction. I've watched the rise and fall.
You can't lay the crappification at Microsoft's feet. It's been in progress for a long time.
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Oh sure. But the last step in getting completely crappified is getting bought by a really crappy company. As has happened here.
market share (Score:2)
Say the line! (Score:3)
"There is no evidence that this is a monopoly or that it will stifle competition!"
Okay there's the microsoft party line, can those people please not post now. thanks
This was a good day (Score:2)
This was a good day for gamers, Activision employees, Activision stockholders, gaming unions, and of course Microsoft as well.
(I had purchased a small amount of the stock when this was announced, believing it would be good for everyone. Yesterday it paid off).
How is it good for Activision employees? They will have much better management, and better employee benefits. You can say anything about Microsoft and their behavior against competitors. But I have rarely seen any employee complaints. So good for them.