Gaming @lemmy.ml narwhal @lemmy.ml 1y ago

Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard

www.theverge.com Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard

Microsoft can now go ahead and close its giant deal.

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I'm all for this merger. Maybe Microsoft can use it as leverage against Sony to avoid needless exclusivity
- This is a bad take. Any and all large corporate mergers are bad.
  
  My other stance is that Activision is so shitty to its workers and customers, let's give someone else a try
  
  I just want to see Bobby Fucking Kotick gone.
  
  Yeah he's a real piece of shit. That alone is a good reason
  
  See, I agree with this angle, but at the same time it kind of feels like a Pyrrhic victory.
  
  Microsoft doesnt have a bad track record in gaming and doesn't have greedy approaches. They like to dump money without forcing profits. It is a win for gamers
  
  Eh, depending on where you're at, not so much is lost
  
  Further consolidation is a major loss
  
  Correct.
  
  This, I'm not quite understanding. What do you mean?
  
  So far there's nothing that says this is a loss for anyone other than Sony not able to do exclusive COD things or keep COD off Game pass
  
  Microsoft gaming strategy does benefit gamers. Which counteracts the problem of losing a competitor.
  
  Microsoft doesnt care about profits on single products much compared to the grand strategy they follow. For example AoE4 and all the aoe franchise doesnt really give a lot of profit Microsoft would care about, yet they keep investing and updating it bc they like it and like the strategic benefit.
  
  Not caring as strictly about profit means you dont get as many greedy microtransactions and more balanced approaches. The game pass is also a really cheap deal if you play variety
  
  No subscription deal is ever a good financial decision long term and companies know that. Most people keep their subscriptions running and will end up paying more long term.
  
  That's not even getting into the "ownership" vs renting aspect.
  
  Netflix used to be cheap and look where we are now. Give it a few years and Game pass will suffer the same fate.
  
  They already have cut benefits and raised prices. I expect more price raises in the coming years
  
  They went up from $15 to $17 or so; the small single digit shift does kind of make me think they've eyed the big "2-0" as the price point where a lot of people might reconsider.
  
  I'm certainly considering the benefit of it each month, and so far I've consciously decided to keep it. If it's ever poor value like Netflix, it's going (that said, Netflix has introduced enough shows that I have weighed whether to resubscribe)
  
  They used to under 10, and sharable, now for me and 3 family members its 51 dollars...
  
  Oh, I guess I was referring to Ultimate. I don’t think regular one-system pricing has gone up yet, it’s still $10. I’m just going for Ultimate for other perks.
  
  Grandmas tend not to have gamepass
  
  Grandmas, young people. Most people are notoriously far from financially savvy. Many overpay or fail to track their subscriptions.. If you didn't know at least one person paying for a subscription they didn't actually use in the last month I would be surprised.
  
  You have to keep up with your gaming habits long term to keep up with the subscription costs, basically never replay anything (especially not long RPGs that can take you months to finish), not waste subscription time playing non-GamePass games, or remember to cancel. And Microsoft, like most subscription services, are banking on people maintaining subscriptions they aren't fully using.
- I expect this to make exclusivity even worse
  
  Why? Microsoft hasnt been pushing for it like Sony has. Sony has been crazy anti competitive.
  
  One company buying another is always anti-competitive. The literal definition of removing competition.
  
  Future Bethesda games are exclusive. They weren’t going to be, but they are now.
  
  Well yeah, that's the point. Maybe Sony will stop forcing exclusivity and sign a deal with MS to get Bethesda games back on PS and FF and others on Xbox.
  
  That would be fantastic, but it’s really hard for me to have that much faith in corporations. We’ll see though. I was really looking forward to seeing Bethesda make another RPG for PSVR, but I’m sure the odds of that happening now are less than zero thanks to Microsoft.
  
  Great a duoloply again. That's what I want instead of independent game studios just making games and letting people play them on what ever platform they want.
  
  Part of the problem is that since Sony is so heavily invested in exclusives, if Microsoft doesn't have any exclusives and all their games also come out of Playstation, that's incentive for people to purchase a PS5 over an Xbox because they know they'll get all of the games that both Sony and Microsoft make. So even if Microsoft doesn't want to do exclusives, they kind of have to if they want to keep people from just purchasing their competitor's console.
  
  Or they can be like me, just get a PC and if you really need a console, a cheap Xbox.
  
  PC gaming is a plus and game pass is a plus. Sony will eventually give me their games. I've bought multiples of every Sony system in the US since the PS1 through the 4. But I'm done with them
  
  I might pay for the cloud gaming service just long enough to play starfield then cancel
  
  I hope there's a dollar deal in there so I can demo the game
  
  Xbox are not trying to sell consoles, they are trying to sell game pass.
- I would love to hear how this could possibly make exclusivity better. The only possible change is that all of the ABK library becomes Xbox/PC exclusive.
- If Microsoft could stop pushing for needless expense exclusivety you would have a stronger point. DX needs to die so gaming can move on, for example.

101 comments