Microsoft / Activision Deal Leaves Sony Stans in Shambles | M$ Wins Fight Against FTC

[gurf]

PlayStation boss’ private email said he wasn’t worried about Xbox-Activision deal

‘We’ll be more than OK,’ Jim Ryan wrote in January 2022

www.polygon.com

Playstation gamers keep the activision games, and sony acknowledges they have to give their own customers more to compete.

Competition is good for consumers.

Now You explain why this deal would be bad for anything other than sony’s dominance?

Sony has been competing just fine without spending 100b on buying up publishers, why can't M$?

It's more than COD, we've watched M$ make Zenimax games exclusive, what makes ACTI any different?

You and any other Xbot would have the same reaction if Sony spent 69 billy buying up EA. Why are you acting like this shyt is some run of the mill purchase?

 

[gurf]

I'm looking at it from the side of gaming as a whole.

Gaming is stagnant, and in a bubble that's about to pop. (when it comes Triple A gaming) ABK being able to use their resources to make games and not have to worry about sales or having a game out by a certain date helps gaming.
Gamers being able to get game pass and play a number of ABK helps consumers.


ABK doing what they do now, doesn't help anyone but ABK and sony. And it's clear that Sony currently out for self interest 1st 100 percent. ( yes all companies are, but playstation aint pulling no punches when it comes to consumers.

How did ABK and the market get in this position?

Consolidation of the software market....

 

[MeachTheMonster]

Sony has been competing just fine without spending 100b on buying up publishers, why can't M$?

Sony spends lots of money on content. They just purchased a publisher recently and talked about the millions they have set aside for acquisitions.

It's more than COD, we've watched M$ make Zenimax games exclusive, what makes ACTI any different?

You’ve also watched them continue to make games like minecraft and fallout 76 available for playstation.

Jim ryan himself said this deal isn’t about exclusive games.

You and any other Xbot would have the same reaction if Sony spent 69 billy buying up EA. Why are you acting like this shyt is some run of the mill purchase?

No. Again sony buys all types of shyt, and dictates where and when lots of games release. Nobody complain about none of that shyt. You wanna play Final Fantasy, you buy a playstation.

This is you exposing your own stanary and projecting it on others.

 

[High quality poster]

Xbox nikkas watching cnbc while Sony just dropped another classic

Jim Ryan sent his AI hologram in for you nikkas while he plays FF16

All this energy spent on this deal, when the shyt falls through y’all gonna commit that.

 

[gurf]

Sony spends lots of money on content. They just purchased a publisher recently and talked about the millions they have set aside for acquisitions.

You’ve also watched them continue to make games like minecraft and fallout 76 available for playstation.

Jim ryan himself said this deal isn’t about exclusive games.

No. Again sony buys all types of shyt, and dictates where and when lots of games release. Nobody complain about none of that shyt. You wanna play Final Fantasy, you buy a playstation.

This is you exposing your own stanary and projecting it on others.

I didn't know Sony bought Square. News to me.

You do understand that Square has an option to release games elsewhere (like nintendo systems), pretty sure M$ can afford/outbid if they wanted. Same with Atlus hence why Persona games are coming out for Xbox now. Independent publishers have these options.

 

[Tim Lord]

Here's the thing tho. Right now Microsoft no longer has a monopoly in cloud gaming. They brought up the 20M to 3M number in regard to cloud but those numbers lack the context that that 3M was from back when Playstation Now was a thing. That 20M was counting gamepass users as being cloud users. Now that cloud gaming is apart of Playstation Plus and not just silo'd off into PSNow, Sony's cloud marketshare based on the calculation the FTC is using already outranks Microsoft.

So they don't have a monopoly in cloud using the FTC's own calculation.
They definitely don't have a monopoly in the console market.

There's no reason to block this deal beyond "big tech bad" and "69B is a lot of money therefore you can't do it". This deal does nothing to hurt compeititon, even Jim Ryan agrees with that.

I hear you, good point, but I don't think this is about the cloud gaming landscape right at this moment.

When going to trial for these types of acquisitions some foresight has to be applied.
I don't think that it matters how much of the market Xbox has right now. The fact is they have the money, cloud infrastructure and intellectual property to be vertically integrated/self-reliant. Allowing them to purchase Activision-Blizzard-King inorganically furthers their current position while forcing their competitors into doing business with them. (I bet if they were just purchasing King this wouldn't be an issue since they don't have a presence in mobile gaming)

Currently, Sony is a competitor in console space, and Nvidia is one of their competitors in the cloud gaming space. Without Xbox owning Activision, both of these companies are free to compete for content from Activision against Xbox. So that is where the monopoly equation comes into play since it eliminates that area of the "free market".

"Big bad tech" is definitely one of the reasons why all of this is happening. FTC is trying to build a case of past company behaviour (MS has a history), past Xbox division behaviour/statements (FTC bringing up emails from 2019 and even as recently as Sept 2022 - that MS now conveniently says has changed ), these all play a factor in building their case.

The FTC lawyer is kind of jumping all over the place so it was a bit hard to follow her flow at times. The judge was asking better follow up questions and doing a better job of having the witness clarify their answers.

The statement from Jim Ryan to the employees or the board or whomever he was talking to about not hurting competition is just corporate speak. Whenever mass or public emails go out in any corporation, they are almost always spun to be positive, anyone who has ever been in corporate knows this.

 

[High quality poster]

I hear you, good point, but I don't think this is about the cloud gaming landscape right at this moment.

When going to trial for these types of acquisitions some foresight has to be applied.
I don't think that it matters how much of the market Xbox has right now. The fact is they have the money, cloud infrastructure and intellectual property to be vertically integrated/self-reliant. Allowing them to purchase Activision-Blizzard-King inorganically furthers their current position while forcing their competitors into doing business with them. (I bet if they were just purchasing King this wouldn't be an issue since they don't have a presence in mobile gaming)

Currently, Sony is a competitor in console space, and Nvidia is one of their competitors in the cloud gaming space. Without Xbox owning Activision, both of these companies are free to compete for content from Activision against Xbox. So that is where the monopoly equation comes into play since it eliminates that area of the "free market".

"Big bad tech" is definitely one of the reasons why all of this is happening. FTC is trying to build a case of past company behaviour (MS has a history), past Xbox division behaviour/statements (FTC bringing up emails from 2019 and even as recently as Sept 2022 - that MS now conveniently says has changed ), these all play a factor in building their case.

The FTC lawyer is kind of jumping all over the place so it was a bit hard to follow her flow at times. The judge was asking better follow up questions and doing a better job of having the witness clarify their answers.

The statement from Jim Ryan to the employees or the board or whomever he was talking to about not hurting competition is just corporate speak. Whenever mass or public emails go out in any corporation, they are almost always spun to be positive, anyone who has ever been in corporate knows this.

These nikkas don’t have jobs

 

[winb83]

It’s hard to argue that PlayStation will be harmed by this when their boss says they won’t be.

Email reveals PlayStation boss wasn't actually worried about Call of Duty becoming Xbox exclusive: 'We'll be OK, more than OK'

Shortly after the proposed acquisition was announced, Jim Ryan said he expects to see Call of Duty games on PlayStation consoles "for many years to come."

www.pcgamer.com

 

[MeachTheMonster]

I didn't know Sony bought Square. News to me.

You do understand that Square has an option to release games elsewhere (like nintendo systems), pretty sure M$ can afford/outbid if they wanted. Same with Atlus hence why Persona games are coming out for Xbox now. Independent publishers have these options.

Again, why try to outbid the market leader on their terms when you could just buy the shyt outright.

Sony had the option to buy activision if they wanted to.

That’s how capitalism works

 

[gurf]

For the “gamers” or attempt to buy everything available because of “capitalism”?

Which one is it?

 

[winb83]

For the “gamers” or attempt to buy everything available because of “capitalism”?

Which one is it?

Either way there needs to be competition in this space and right now there really isn't. You can argue that a company buying up other companies isn't good but a company dominating a field with like 70% of the market is arguably worse. When companies don't face competition they start leaning into more anti-consumer behavior.

 

[SCJoe]

Xbox nikkas watching cnbc while Sony just dropped another classic

Jim Ryan sent his AI hologram in for you nikkas while he plays FF16

All this energy spent on this deal, when the shyt falls through y’all gonna commit that.

FF16, Thats the game where Square said nikkas don't exist right?

 

[MeachTheMonster]

For the “gamers” or attempt to buy everything available because of “capitalism”?

Which one is it?

All of this only exists cause somebody is trying to make money.

Competition usually results in benefits for consumers.

 

[High quality poster]

FF16, Thats the game where Square said nikkas don't exist right?

Yup, that crack

 

[daze23]

Phil on the stand tomorrow

Jim on VHS