Just think of the games they could have made with that $70 billion. If Microsoft wants to fight this for the next 3 years then it will be another missed opportunity.
All that time money, energy, and resources wasted with still very few games announced and released, but honestly this is good news for the health of the industry and hopefully the end of the publisher buying war for ALL COMPANIES.
Hopefully, MS will focus on putting on a big Showcase in the next month or two, with actual release dates for all the games we've been seeing the last 3 years, otherwise, they can just go. It's been 10 years of mid, decent, solid, and underwhelming moves by team Xbox, made even more sad when a portion of their fanbase greatest hope is for the parent company MS to buyout former 3rd party developers to remove their games from other platforms (specifically PS), just to attempt to compete, rather than cultivating talent and creating their own new IPS and reinventing their current IPs.
The crazy thing is if this is completely blocked, Activision still gets billions from MS for the failed merger, just like T-mobile did when AT&T originally tried to purchase them, and how T-mobile turned around and bought Sprint, basically on AT&T's dime. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if Bobby gets his golden parachute out of Activision once these billions hit the bank account, and then Activision goes on to purchase another major 3rd party publisher themselves and become one of the following:
Activision-Blizzard-Warner Acitivision-Blizzard-Ubisoft (the most likely IMO, considering how quite they've been and the report selling) Activision-Blizzard-Embrace Group (Tomb Raider) Activision-Blizzard-Some established PC brand like Corsair.
And it's unlikely, but there's even the possibility of Take-2 or EA.
Microsoft's and Sonys stock are both about to skyrocket. Sony stock will go up because the deal is blocked. Microsoft's stock will go up because without the $70 billion charge off their next financial result will in fact include profit to speak of.
MS stock is likely to fall a bit after this, bad news often comes with a stock drop, and MS likely has to pay $7 billion to Activision for the failed merger, the same way AT&T had to pay T-mobile $4 billion for it's failed merger after trying to acquire them for $39 billion.
Activision stock might be shaky for just a moment, but it should skyrocket once the dust settles and they have a $7 billion sitting in the bank. As much as Bobby and others were acting as if this was do or die for them, they were going to profit regardless of the outcome. I wouldn't even be surprised if Bobby was on TV saying Sony needs to get out of the way, and then hop into a Sony board meeting right after and truthfully say we honestly don't care if this goes through or not we're getting billions one way or another regardless of the outcome.
Bobby fits right in with the snake-oil Politicians running the country.
***but honestly this is good news for the health of the industry and hopefully the end of the publisher buying war for ALL COMPANIES.***
Amen! I get people will disagree for their own reasons, but this is the most valuable take from this and I hope it is maintained. The health of the industry relies on not buying up competition to reduce said competition and create more walls on content access.
"Just think of the games they could have made with that $70 billion." This reminds of some old E3 maybe during Xbox One era, when Phil Spencer boasted that they're investing one billion to first party game development. All the xbots across the world were announcing God of War and Uncharted killers left and right. Literally NOTHING remarkable came out of that 1 billion dollars. I don't know, 70 billion times zero is still zero.
Microsoft has never been interested in the fight with Sony/Nintendo.
They should be making studios and pumping out amazing exclusives. But Do you remember that show where they said.
TV TV TV. Nobody gives a crap about a Halo series and never will.
Microsoft lie all the time, When have they ever done what they promised. They should just pull out of the gaming universe altogether. They aren't needed.
This is perfect for them, another 3 years of appeals NOT spending 70 billion dollars and having Xbox fans singing praises to another 3 years of the waiting game.
So far the FTC is fighting, the CMA has blocked, and the EU is a question mark. And they need all three. So I think it’s pretty unlikely this passes in the future
MS was really, really, really after that sweet COD revenue. Essentially rent-seeking without having to do any work on their own, aside from making the merger happen. Not sure that there is any other franchise that smells that much of money from them to get too interested in after this.
Interesting that you say CDPR. Didn't CDPR help develop Horizon open world? There were also articles and rumors that Sony was trying to acquire CDPR multiple times late last year 🤔
Wouldn't this put them of doing that? Maybe slap some sense into them that despite all your money the rules still apply to you and you can't buy your way out of your problems
@aloymetal Sony and remedy have been rather buddy buddy lately I believe remedy is working on a PlayStation exclusive at the moment to.
not that it hasn't stopped ms before look at Bethesda Sony had two exclusive ps5 game deals with them and ms swooped in and acquired them during development
@necro No chance cod will be exclusive Activision couldn't bankroll that and it's punishing half their player base also Sony wasn't the cause 9f the block it was cloud gaming
What else would we expect them to say? This deal isn’t going through unless CMA changes it’s mind. And this move by CMA helps FTC’s case too. EU has yet to decide
If this deal falls through Microsoft is still on the hook for more than $2 billion so regardless, Activision is going to get paid. The right thing to do here is to block off all publisher acquisitions by any company who is also selling their own hardware
There are so many smaller developers available, who would definitely be helped if Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo, were to buy them
As far as legal opinion is concerned, CMA does not rules in the judicial process. Even though they are independent of their federal government. Courts also don’t like going against CMA because CMA does it’s investigation really well before making a decision
Only if the CMA changes their minds, which they generally don't do. MS would likely have to alter the terms of the whole acquisition in ways that wouldn't benefit them to the point of rendering such a purchase pointless to begin with- it's probably going to be a long, expensive dead end for them.
Activision is so big that some title concessions such as keeping CoD multiplat and having some key titles remain multiplat as well would still benefit MS greatly. Specially since they would profit from software sales and deals on other platforms, not only PS. But hey, greedy much.
Oh boy good luck Microsoft might not go well.
Can ms actually win the appeal? Good luck