Poll of the Day > microsoft beat the ftc

(+) Yeah! (+)

more competition is a great thing

as well as returning them to nintendo platforms, too

moreover, abk games will be available to more people than ever before

https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/11/23779039/microsoft-activision-blizzard-ftc-trial-win

Reddit being Reddit, this is apparently good news because now Overwatch and Diablo can come to game pass. Yeah that sure is the take away alright. Surely this wont have any negative consequences for the consumer or industry as a whole.

How does having fewer independent companies result in more competition?

That's not going to change regardless of who owns them.

And that's just a bad thing all around, because ABK is fundamentally a terrible company run by evil people and reaching a broader audience just means they have more opportunities to find new victims for their predatory monetization. Not that this is actually going to help them reach a broader audience, since they already publish on whatever platforms they want to.

you mean sony needing to try and actually develop and utilize their ip's instead of just depending solely on call of duty to keep them afloat isn't going to actually make them compete now?

contracts have already been signed, so yes, it very much is already planned to change

yes, which is why it's also a good thing that the terrible people who were running it wont be running it any longer. again, not a bad thing.

more competition is a great thing, and anything to break sonys stranglehold on the market is absolutely a win for everyone involved

and immediately the cma is backing down too

That's not "more competition," though. That's just making competitor's products worse

And it's still not worthwhile to deal with the technical limitations.

Last I heard, there were no plans in the proposed merger to oust Kotick or any of the other festering parasites that have made ABK a successful business worth buying, and even if that's changed, I can almost guarantee that there will be massive layoffs (one of the scummy things ABK likes doing on a regular basis) if MS tries to be any less evil because being evil is a critical part of ABK's business model. I have zero faith that Microsoft will remove everyone implicated in the rampant sexual harassment/assault problems, allow teams to unionize, stop crunching teams, stop shamelessly exploiting mental illnesses, or start paying any of the people actually making the games a minuscule fraction of what the billionaire executives get.

it's only not more competition if they don't do anything, that's not anyones fault but their own at that point.

and yet

https://theconversation.com/microsoft-signs-10-year-contract-to-bring-xbox-games-to-nintendo-heres-what-that-means-for-players-200778

it's happening.

ah okay. so you have no faith that microsoft will do the stuff they've been doing for years now

MS still hasn't made the market better by doing that, though

And it's still not worthwhile to deal with the technical limitations.

Companies don't spend $69 billion dollars acquiring other, highly profitable companies, only to immediately turn around and stop doing everything that made those companies so highly profitable in the first place. That's not how businesses work.

unless you're saying the fact that they're going to be putting them on nintendos platform and various streaming platforms aren't making for a better market

in addition, sony has already stepped up their efforts, too. they've made their own purchases. they just recently bought bungie and firewalk. they turned square into essentially a second party with their exclusivity agreements, ect.

and yet it's still happening.

i never said it was how they worked. you did, by claiming microsoft wasn't going to do anything. when historically we know that they do get involved, bad eggs are gotten rid of, hr departments get more robust, working conditions improve, ect. this ain't it chief.

imagine thinking it's anti-consumer to make something more available on more platforms.

you mean sony needing to try and actually develop and utilize their ip's instead of just depending solely on call of duty to keep them afloat isn't going to actually make them compete now?

EA has entered the chat.

you mean sony needing to try and actually develop and utilize their ip's instead of just depending solely on call of duty to keep them afloat isn't going to actually make them compete now?

You clearly know fuck all about Sony if you think the only reason they haven't went under is because of Call of Duty lmfao

Honestly, not that much. By and large, those that care about CoD have already bought a PS or Xbox to play it. You'll get a small handful of people trying them out on Gamepass and maybe deciding they like them, but at the end of the day it's just one game (rereleased annually because apparently that's good enough for people) that most people already have access to in some form or another. Not exactly revolutionary, and certainly not enough to offset the obvious market-wide harm it would do to remove them from Sony platforms.

And that's also bad for the market. Exclusivity deals only help the owners of the systems to which the games are exclusive. Everyone else - especially consumers - are hurt by them.

And yet it's still not worthwhile. Don't get too attached to the idea.

Do you genuinely believe this is an act of charity and not something they expect to be profitable? ABK is as valuable as it is because of how evil they are. That's just capitalism. Buying something valuable and then gutting its value makes zero business sense.

That's entirely the opposite of what I said, and I said the opposite of that in response to you suggesting that it's pro-consumer to make something available on fewer platforms ("Sony won't be able to depend on CoD anymore," to paraphrase).

You clearly know fuck all about Sony if you think the only reason they haven't went under is because of Call of Duty lmfao

Microsoft relies on CoD to stay afloat and Sony actually makes games.

uh huh. so making a game more available is ultra harmful to...one specific company that benefitted greatly from said game not being more available.

yeah, except no. it has not once ever worked this way in real life. exclusivity will always breed competition. as evidenced by, y'know, it being the thing everyone does to be competitive.

it being worthwhile is also irrelevant, as evidenced by the fact that it's happening. so clearly, and this is a hard concept to understand i'm sure, it is worthwhile to do if it's being done.

not only did i not say this, i didn't even imply it. i argued that microsoft was the lesser of two evils. try more.

please point out where i said it was pro-consumer to make something less available.

head of playstation jim ryan says you are wrong.

head of playstation jim ryan says you are wrong.

head of playstation jim ryan says you are wrong.

Jim Ryan also thinks people want a Horizon MMO and a remake of the first game already. He's a fucking moron.

Jim Ryan also thinks people want a Horizon MMO and a remake of the first game already. He's a fucking moron.

It doesn't matter what he said. Where are all the xbox exclusives? How are Rare's IPs doing? Sony's IPs are putting out games consistently and Microsoft has to resort to buying game studios to gain an edge.

i'd be interested to see an mmo

i'll have you know i platinumed horizon forbidden west, tyvm.

But Sony isn't benefitting from the game not being more available. They're benefitting from having it in addition to other things that all add up to put them ahead of competitors. They would suffer if it were taken away from them.

It does breed competition, sure, but it's a thoroughly lazy way to do it that yields no direct benefits to the market, only harm that must then be offset by other companies' efforts to compensate for what was lost. That's not something to be lauded. Quite the opposite, in fact. This goes back to my initial question: How does having fewer independent companies result in more competition?

It being worthwhile is entirely relevant because whatever worth they're finding in it is based not on how much money it will make directly, but on the broader effects the release will have on their market position. That means when those ten years are up, if keeping CoD on Nintendo systems is no longer necessary to erode Sony's market share, it's going to stop being on Nintendo systems. Which is why I say not to get too attached to the idea. The six people that bought a Switch hoping that it might get CoD are going to be able to enjoy it for the next few years, but after that it's anyone's guess.

By insisting that making Sony unable to rely on CoD was a good thing for the market. Whatever "other platforms" get CoD (noting that your "other platforms" diagram just includes Nintendo's and a bunch of minor PC services nobody cares about), removing it from Sony's would be a massive reduction in the number of people who want to play CoD and currently can (particularly where so many people have already made their console buying decisions based on that). However many "other platforms" get the game, when such a large platform with so many people loses it, that's making it less available.

and? that's not anti-consumer. that's anti-business. sony isn't the consumer. you are the consumer.

ah yes, quite the opposite. meanwhile when there really weren't exclusives, the video game market collapsed, because there was no incentive to actually make something good and for the specific hardware capabilities of a single platform.

if you want to argue what could happen in 10 years, then i can just as easily say that in 10 years nintendo will absorb microsoft.

you cannot make something less available by making it more available. period.

moreover, call of duty is not leaving playstation, and not once did i ever even imply that. try again.

sony losing the amount of revenue they get from it is what they're upset at,

you mean sony needing to try and actually develop and utilize their ip's instead of just depending solely on call of duty

And if I've chosen to buy a Playstation over an Xbox because it offers more exclusives that interest me in addition to being able to play CoD with friends, and Playstation stops having CoD, that means I need to spend more money to keep play CoD with friends and also enjoy the exclusives that interest me. That's anti-consumer.

Also, when was the last time a noteworthy game was made "for the specific hardware capabilities of a single platform"? Aside from Kinect/Move/VR stuff, Playstation, Xbox, and PC have been more or less functionally identical to each other since 2001, and when Nintendo's been trying to do their own thing with unique hardware and games that take advantage of it, much of the market writes it off as meaningless gimmicks (which is true, in many cases) and they get excluded from most multiplat releases.

Well no, because that would be you pulling a random possibility out of your ass, whereas I'm actually trying to put some thought into why Microsoft believes putting CoD on Nintendo platforms will be beneficial when ABK did not.

Step 1: Add game to 6 new platforms with 47 total users
Step 2: Remove game from one platform with 35 million users
Step 3: iT's aVaIlaBlE On mOrE PlaTFoRmS!

You say you haven't suggested CoD is leaving Playstation, yet you keep talking about how Sony is going to lose it or won't be able to rely on it.

More than that, whether CoD is leaving Playstation in the foreseeable future or not, it's hopelessly naive not to recognize that threat. With this merger, some of the most lucrative third-party franchises in the industry are now in Microsoft's hand as a bargaining chip, and both Microsoft and Sony know full well just how valuable that is (which is why Microsoft is willing to spend $69 billion on it and Sony doesn't want them to). That will be leveraged to give Microsoft an advantage, most likely in ways that yield zero benefit to consumers and will likely actually make the market worse in terms of direct impact.

sony had an entire gen pretty much
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_(processor)

straight up there were ps3 exclusives that literally can't run on anything except a ps3. it's the reason why we haven't seen metal gear solid 4 outside of it, for example.

about that
https://www.vgchartz.com/article/457676/bobby-kotick-regrets-not-bringing-call-of-duty-to-the-switch

so, here's the part where i tell you that the c suite in playstation don't even think it's an exclusivity play, they said it's a play for the king part.

More competition is good

Acquisitions like this are objectively terrible.

Nobody should be applauding this.