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Microsoft's $69 Billion Deal to Buy Activision Blizzard Cleared By UK

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Microsoft's revised offer to buy Activision Blizzard has been approved by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) after its initial acquisition attempt was blocked by the UK antitrust regulator.

microsoft-purchases-Activision.jpeg

Under the revised deal, French video game publisher Ubisoft will be given the rights to distribute Activision's games on consoles and PCs over the cloud.

The CMA said the reworked deal would "preserve competitive prices" in the gaming industry and provide more choice and better services. "We've made sure Microsoft can't have a stranglehold over this important and rapidly developing market," the regulator added.

The approval brings an end to Microsoft's nearly two-year battle to secure the takeover. The company entered into a $68.7 billion deal to buy Activision Blizzard in January 2022, but the CMA blocked it over concerns it would be anticompetitive in the cloud gaming market.

Microsoft was unable to finalize the deal globally until approval was granted.

Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard was approved by regulators in several other regions and territories including Brazil, Chile, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, South Africa, and most recently, the European Union.

Activision is one of the most popular video games publishers in the world, and the deal represents one of the biggest shake-ups in the games industry in recent history. The studio is the maker of hit titles such as Call of Duty, Candy Crush, World of Warcraft, and more.

Microsoft hopes the takeover will boost demand for its Xbox console and allow it to add more titles to its Xbox Game Pass streaming service, where members pay a subscription fee to access a catalog of titles via the cloud.

Xbox Game Pass is available on the iPhone and iPad through Safari, but not the App Store. While Apple does allow all-in-one gaming subscription services to be on the platform, every game offered on the service must be submitted individually for approval through the ‌App Store‌ review process.

Article Link: Microsoft's $69 Billion Deal to Buy Activision Blizzard Cleared By UK
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2023/10/13/microsoft-to-buy-activision-blizzard/
I literally only play old games now so this means nothing to me. Old games are much more enjoyable and replayable and I don't need to log in and be fleeced by executives and their micro transactions.

It's not hard to make good games that are affordable and sell extremely well, but gaming execs who come from finance live in an echo chamber where they think it is ok to fleece children.
 
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NEPOBABY said:
I literally only play old games now so this means nothing to me. Old games are much more enjoyable and replayable and I don't need to log in and be fleeced by executives and their micro transactions.

It's not hard to make good games that are affordable and sell extremely well, but gaming execs who come from finance live in an echo chamber where they think it is ok to fleece children.
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One of my favourite old games is Moon Cresta 😂
 
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I believe Ubisoft already had existing contracts with Activision-Blizzard to host their games on it's platform but the buyout by Microsoft would have terminated those contracts and Microsoft had no intention of renewing them which meant Microsoft would have had complete exclusivity over Activision-Blizzard games. There was no way the UK regulator was ever going to allow this and they didn't hence why the buyout stalled, in my opinion.
 
NEPOBABY said:
I literally only play old games now so this means nothing to me. Old games are much more enjoyable and replayable and I don't need to log in and be fleeced by executives and their micro transactions.

It's not hard to make good games that are affordable and sell extremely well, but gaming execs who come from finance live in an echo chamber where they think it is ok to fleece children.
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I mean, echo chamber any case, “free to play” mobile game profit margin can be 30x or even 100x, cause it’s once and forever deal. All you need to do on that front is just doing reruns.

It would be extraordinarily difficult to persuade otherwise. Fleecing children they may be, but do they even care?
 
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Shirasaki said:
Fleecing children they may be, but do they even care?
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I think the evidence points to them not caring at all. There's a parasitic dangerous doomer cult that pervades the executives and venture capitalists in gaming, gambling, crypto, AI. They come from finance and don't believe in sustainability and fairness.

They appear to believe that the future of the planet should only belong to a few thousand extremely wealthy people and to achieve that ambition they need to vacuum up all the money and land in the world until everyone else is extremely poor, dead or a serf.

So not surprising to see them endorse rent seeking models such as micro transactions, subscriptions, 'rented virtual home', nfts and other very regular costs. In the long run people who pay these things monthly will end up with nothing when they are old. No money to retire on. No money to leave their children. No money to even have children. No home they can own themselves.
 
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So long as Starcraft 2 continues to run on Mac, but I do have a Steam Deck and a PS5 coming. No need to use MS anymore for games. Apple does seem to be making some small inroads though into gaming.
 
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Simple solution so that no one is left out is to buy a PS5 and an X Box One Series S. Those on Mac only can use Game Pass cloud gaming, although you will obviously get input lag, but its better than nothing.
 
headlessmike said:
All this just to get that juicy Candy Crush revenue. That's where the real money is.
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It's not just Candy Crush. Getting King is a big factor but it's also to get Blizzard's legacy catalog, as well as Call of Duty. Call of Duty is especially where the point of contention is, as during the Xbox 360 Call of Duty was the big franchise that made Microsoft's 7th gen console the slam dunk it was over the PlayStation 3, all the advertising having Xbox logos tied to them, and new DLC would be timed Xbox exclusives before going to PlayStation and PC/Mac. (Heh, remember when macOS actually got Call of Duty games? Man those were funny times)

And then the Xbox One happened, the console that set Xbox back 10 years. The One was such a misfire that the 8th generation pretty much went to Sony before it even started. The once Xbox exclusive Call of Duty mappacks were now going to PlayStation that generation, and every CoD ad had a PlayStation logo tied to it. That helped cement the PS4 as the juggernaut it was, as they outsold Xbox 2:1 in just the first year.


There's a reason then PlayStation executive Jim Ryan was fighting hard to get the EU to block the merger, because if Microsoft bought ActiBlizz, the free PlayStation advertising they were enjoying for a decade goes bye bye, and future CoD ads would have an Xbox logo on them with platform benefits going to Xbox again. The biggest platform benefit for Microsoft: Game Pass. The entire Call of Duty series, as well as future entries, all on Game Pass. That's a value proposition that Sony cannot match, and would make Xbox a threat again.
 
Konigi said:
Candy Crush is so awkward in this family photo.
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Spaceboi Scaphandre said:
It's not just Candy Crush. Getting King is a big factor but it's also to get Blizzard's legacy catalog, as well as Call of Duty. Call of Duty is especially where the point of contention is, as during the Xbox 360 Call of Duty was the big franchise that made Microsoft's 7th gen console the slam dunk it was over the PlayStation 3, all the advertising having Xbox logos tied to them, and new DLC would be timed Xbox exclusives before going to PlayStation and PC/Mac. (Heh, remember when macOS actually got Call of Duty games? Man those were funny times)

And then the Xbox One happened, the console that set Xbox back 10 years. The One was such a misfire that the 8th generation pretty much went to Sony before it even started. The once Xbox exclusive Call of Duty mappacks were now going to PlayStation that generation, and every CoD ad had a PlayStation logo tied to it. That helped cement the PS4 as the juggernaut it was, as they outsold Xbox 2:1 in just the first year.

There's a reason then PlayStation executive Jim Ryan was fighting hard to get the EU to block the merger, because if Microsoft bought ActiBlizz, the free PlayStation advertising they were enjoying for a decade goes bye bye, and future CoD ads would have an Xbox logo on them with platform benefits going to Xbox again. The biggest platform benefit for Microsoft: Game Pass. The entire Call of Duty series, as well as future entries, all on Game Pass. That's a value proposition that Sony cannot match, and would make Xbox a threat again.
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The funny thing is that, as far as I can tell, Candy Crush is the biggest income source of the bunch in that list. For "serious" gamers, these are some pretty big game series that Microsoft will reign over. But casual gamers are a much larger market and brings a lot of money, especially relative to the development cost which I imagine are much lower for a game like Candy Crush than for a modern CoD game.
 
headlessmike said:
The funny thing is that, as far as I can tell, Candy Crush is the biggest income source of the bunch in that list. For "serious" gamers, these are some pretty big game series that Microsoft will reign over. But casual gamers are a much larger market and brings a lot of money, especially relative to the development cost which I imagine are much lower for a game like Candy Crush than for a modern CoD game.
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Modern Warfare 2019 made $600 million in it's first three days, Modern Warfare II (2022) earning $800 million in three days. I don't think you understand the kind of money Call of Duty brings in. It's such a big deal that regular retailers in Europe had warning signs in the video game sections about the ActiBlizz merger and saying to choose your console carefully because of that.
 
I missed many old amazing games. I can tell you a few games that are amazing:
  • Total Annihilation
  • SimTower
  • Sim City 4 (the last true Sim City)
  • Phantasy Star Online (Dreamcast in 1999)
  • Heroes of Might and Magic IV (the last true game)
 
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