"In a ruling submitted today, Judge Corley said the following:
Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision has been described as the largest in tech history. It deserves scrutiny. That scrutiny has paid off: Microsoft has committed in writing, in public, and in court to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation for 10 years on parity with Xbox. It made an agreement with Nintendo to bring Call of Duty to Switch. And it entered several agreements to for the first time bring Activision’s content to several cloud gaming services. This Court’s responsibility in this case is narrow. It is to decide if, notwithstanding these current circumstances, the merger should be halted—perhaps even terminated—pending resolution of the FTC administrative action. For the reasons explained, the Court finds the FTC has not shown a likelihood it will prevail on its claim this particular vertical merger in this specific industry may substantially lessen competition. To the contrary, the record evidence points to more consumer access to Call of Duty and other Activision content. The motion for a preliminary injunction is therefore DENIED. "
This is really a tough one. I hate consolidation, but I also really hate Bobby Kottick.
Kotick gets rewarded by the deal going through. Billions of dollars from the sale. Worst case for him after that is a few hundred million from a golden parachute if he’s fired. We have no real reason to think he will (or won’t, to be clear) be fired though, so there’s a very real chance this is full reward for him: giant piles of money and continues to get to run Activision-Blizzard, just with Microsoft bosses above him.
The deal going through isn’t something you want if you hate him.
The only reason I’m for the merger is that I know how much Microsoft can affect a corporations executive structure. I would hope they are already planning to replace him already, but either way he won’t last when he gets tossed into MS’ culture.
At least, that is what I’m hopping.
At least Kotick is capable of making good game franchises before killing them with endless sequels. Microsoft is completely incompetent at making games unless it’s a driving sim. This is the final nail in Bliizard’s coffin. Bye bye Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo.
It potentially could have opposite effect. Spencer said that one of the IPs he wanted to revive was StarCraft
Microsoft is completely incompetent at making games
I mean, AoE was pretty awesome
I think that’s the point of the Xbox Game Studios. They purchase a bunch of existing games studios with good talent and let them mostly manage themselves and their own games direction.
MS doesn’t want full control anyway because yeah, they aren’t great at it. They just want to buy enough companies that they get the money from the good games. Then they’ll pull the good talent out of the shitty studios and shut them down.
I don’t think Kotick was really in the picture when all their game franchises were being created. The only thing he’s good at is acquiring already successful games and companies and then squeezing everything he can out of them before they turn to shit.
He made Call of Duty from the ashes of Medal of Honor Allied Assault by helping form the studio Infinity Ward. He wisely bought Guitar Hero from a small device manufacturer. Under his watch Tony Hawk and Spyro made several hundred millions before he ran them into the ground. I hate his guts, but I’m not going to deny his business acumen. There’s a chance MS doesn’t even replace him and he can go further into MS executive suite.
What’s the point of all these lawsuits over mergers when every single time there is clearly a monopolistic merger it just goes through anyways.
The issue in this instance is that’s its hard to prove that a company not even close to leading to the market is going to somehow dominate that market through a single (albeit large) acquisition.
It’s not a “single” acquisition though. Microsoft have been acquiring huge companies (Bethesda, for example), hit games (Minecraft), and key development parters from competition (remember Rare?) from the beginning of Xbox.
To think that they spent all of those billions of dollars to buy out everything but that they aren’t going to use that to benefit their platforms, is just crazy to me.
Just like they said in one of their internal emails, they are in a unique position to spend their competition out of business, and the entire industry will be worse for it.
Microsoft have been acquiring huge companies (Bethesda, for example), hit games (Minecraft), and key development parters from competition (remember Rare?) from the beginning of Xbox.
And yet, they are still in third place in the gaming market behind Sony and Nintendo. If those acquisitions didn’t turn Microsoft into a monopoly already, what will be significantly different if they acquire AVB?
Oh great, more consolidation and monopoly building.
'Tis the era of Indy Games, my friend. Abandon the Graphically amazing games that cannot be built upon passion due to have dev teams of 10,000 strong. Instead, embrace the smaller titles developed by less than 10 people whom cry with joy at the prospect of showering you with entertainment and art.
You’re saying this 3 weeks before BG3 drops lol
This is the best year for big studios in a loooong time
Just don’t buy it or wait a couple years to grab it at good discount. Or if you’re feeling extra feisty, take the high seas.
As much as I hate Activision Blizzard as a publisher and Bobby Kotick as a person, I feel this level of corporate consolidation is a terrible thing for the games industry and gamers.
There is so much more to this than CoD being on Playstation or not…
Break Microsoft, Meta and Google. They will kill humanity
