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Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard
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this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2023
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I see a lot of people using argument #2 and it's really short-sighted to treat acquisition the same as exclusivity deals. However much I don't like either, acquisitions are clearly worse. If you had to pick one, why would you wouldn't just leave it as case-by-case exclusivity deals?
Say, SquareEnix and Atlus are fully capable of releasing games for other consoles even with all the exclusives they release for Playstation. And nothing stopped Microsoft from waving a wad of cash their way to change their minds.
There is absolutely no way such a large acquisition will be better for competition. The publishers become unable to make their own platform decisions, no matter what benefits there are. You are losing sight of the market as a whole and the independence of studios by focusing exclusively on who gets the #1 console crown.
A case-by-case exclusivity deal for a big publisher like Activision is just exclusivity on about 4 franchises. Let's be real. They don't make much more than that these days, which is why those big publishers are looking to sell now that they've thoroughly un-diversified themselves. I don't get to pick which option Microsoft went with, but functionally, it's not any different.
I don't know you, but there's a pretty good chance you own a PlayStation 5 and not an Xbox Series X/S. They play almost exactly the same games basically exactly as well as one another, but PS5 is running away with the market. There's no world where PS5 having so little competition from Xbox is good for anyone. We're closer to a world with zero consoles than we are to a world where another competitor can break into the market anyway, so I say burn down the way exclusives and consoles work in general (like their own little monopolies on their digital storefronts), but this will result in a more competitive console market than we have now.
I really don't see how your arguments contribute to your point. Even if Activision Blizzard only had 4 franchises, an acquisition would still be much more drastic than an exclusivity deal. It is not the same as making deals for all franchises.
For an example, as much as Final Fantasy XVI is exclusive to PS5, the new Dragon Quest Monsters will be exclusive for the Switch. SquareEnix can choose what platforms to release what games for, including all of them if they want to.
And to be clear. No, Activision Blizzard doesn't only have 4 franchises, it has a whole portfolio of franchises, plus many studios under their umbrella. Even if the argument is that they aren't making games for some franchises, Microsoft could still hire them to make games for different franchises as an exclusive, without acquiring them.
Yes it would be good if Playstation had more competition from XBox, but I have absolutely no confidence that they will get there just by acquiring publishers. They already acquired Zenimax/Bethesda and Redfall turned out to be a disappointment. Same for Halo Infinite. I also remember how pretty much every Rare franchise died, they only have a single game going. Microsoft doesn't need to buy their way into becoming competitive, and there is no good that will come from doing that, it will only come at an expense of multiplatform games. What they need is to actually fund and make good games. Sony is making God of War and Last of Us with their own studios, they don't need to buy exclusivity for that. Same with Nintendo making Mario and Zelda. What is Microsoft making? What good would it be to let them have even more publishers and franchises?
Oh shit, Microsoft nabbed Bubble Witch Saga and Gabriel Knight. Competition is over.
A Gabriel Knight comeback could be pretty cool tbh
They aren't making games for most of the franchises they own. Current market forces certainly aren't inspiring them to do so. Contracting them to make a new Metal Arms, for instance, means they're allocating personnel away from their money makers, which raises the price of that contract to make up for the opportunity cost.
I have absolutely no confidence that they'll get there without it. And to be clear: I hate that. I hate that when Sony gets an exclusive game, it means I have to wait two years to play it on PC. I hate that my friends hate the new PS5 controller but have to use it because that's where you play God of War. But exclusives dictate a console's success, as much as I wish they didn't. So even if Xbox has quick resume and doesn't arbitrarily make its old controllers incapable of working on newer games that don't use the new controller features like Sony does, two friendlier features in the Xbox camp that would influence a purchasing decision in a perfect world, the customer is hardly ever going to pick Xbox, because the market decided exclusives matter that much.
A game that was in production for a long time before it became a Microsoft product.
There is no functional difference between this and buying other studios, especially since Naughty Dog was also a studio acquisition. Given enough time in the rearview mirror, Activision-Blizzard and Bethesda games will be treated the same way as you just treated that one.
We just saw a ton of games that they're making. And games these days just take so much longer to make, at least at the scale that Microsoft, Sony, and very few other companies insist on making them. Rocksteady has been working for 8 years on one game. The average AAA game has a 5+ year dev cycle now, which is absurd. The next game from Sony Santa Monica likely won't come out until there's a PlayStation 6. The likes of InXile, Obsidian, and Double Fine will have quicker turnaround times than most, and even those will take 3+ years. So with that perspective, the Microsoft acquisitions are fairly recent and are only soon going to start bearing fruit like Hellblade; not even Starfield counts in that discussion.
They already have Zenimax and we haven't much to show for it. It was releasing more games before it was acquired. But I'll grant that not enough time has passed, though I'd say if Redfall wasn't up to shape they could and should have changed the release plans.
But for Rare plenty of time has passed. What do they have to show for it? Sea of Thieves and a Killer Instinct game for the whole of the last decade. Banjo has been declared dead, Perfect Dark keeps getting postponed, and nothing else new. It doesn't bode well.
It wasn't all that many, and most of it likely came at expense of what would previously be multiplatform games. Zenimax would still be releasing games if they hadn't been acquired. Sure, exclusives benefit them but this "competition" was really a net loss for players who don't have Microsoft platforms. It came at expense of the third-party market.
There is a marked difference in scale. If they just bought Treyarch or Toys For Bob that wouldn't be a big deal. But they are bulk buying publishers along with all their studio subsidiaries. Activision Blizzard by itself is the 6th largest publisher. This is not just getting a studio. The comparisons being made to excuse Microsoft's tactics are really glossing over what a drastic sweeping takeover they are doing, All the while they whine about how tiny and feeble they are, because this massive company doesn't dominate the gaming market also.
Killer Instinct was a Rare property but not developed by Rare. And you're underselling how hugely successful Sea of Thieves has been. (Not that I understand it; the game seems incredibly shallow, but it found a huge audience.) We have a pretty thorough accounting of what Rare's been doing, and Sea of Thieves happened under new management at Xbox that wasn't running the show post-Nuts-and-Bolts.
The same is true of Sony's acquisitions.
If you want to talk about scale, the industry in general, especially the type of game that sells these consoles, is so much bigger than it was in the 90s. If you're buying a studio in an attempt to compete with a console outselling yours 5:1, you're not buying a studio with a few dozen people who sold a few hundred thousand copies of a game. You're buying a company with hundreds or thousands of people who sell millions of copies and a large percent of those customers buy DLC and microtransactions, because that's what moves the needle. A large portion of those customers, by the way, only bought a PlayStation for that game, because that game was associated with PlayStation in the marketing, even though it was also available on Xbox.