Are you guessing at the spelling, or just testing how many incorrect spellings you can sneak into a single post? :D
I do hope they keep Blizzard as is for the foreseeable future. Whatever disillusionment with them is common these days, they still produce games I love to play. I think they have the potential to create future classics.
The rest of Activision, I care little about.
I forgot about Ybarra, so that does make sense. But I also feel like saving Blizzard is such a big job they may ask him to devote his time to that. The existing studio management at Microsoft can integrate Activision’s studios.
Sure, could go that way. But clearly he’ll remain at the top.
Then you have homework. Go watch Knives Out, and the scenes she is in from No Time to Die.
You don’t need to have a monopoly to be guilty of anticompetitive activity.
Yeah, and Phil went on tour telling everyone MS doesn’t believe in paying to deprive players of games or content.
And MS is making it so you can play their games for a really reasonable price without even owning an Xbox or a PC.
It’s true, you can play all the games MS just picked up with a Game Pass subscription which costs $15 for a month, full price. If Sony adds a full-featured web browser, you can even play on a PS5. And if not, xCloud clients will be on smart TVs, roku, firetv, etc.
I’m sure xCloud will support higher resolutions over time too; it’s limited to 1080p right now but the games are running on XSX hardware.
But long story short, if you want to play the latest call of duty or Starfield or whatever, you will be able to play those games without a gaming PC or Xbox. Streaming isn’t the best experience yet, but it’s pretty good, and rapidly improving.
It’s true that xCloud streaming isn’t quite perfect, in the sense that I do still get very occasional stutters. But, I have to say, given what I was experiencing when I tried to play last year on a browser, it’s pretty damn close.
I’m as sensitive to lag as anyone, but I don’t notice any anymore. Playing Forza, I’m zooping through crowds of cars, swerving in and out, with no trouble. I don’t know what arcane spells they’re casting on their servers, but it’s working.
I, for one, welcome our post-console world.
Maybe they’ll bring back the Mediagenic name. ;)
For reference, this is one estimate
Activision’s $8 billion of 2020 revenue was about 6% of global gaming revenue (excluding hardware); the share is certainly higher — around 11% — if you limit the market to consoles or PCs. Meanwhile, while Microsoft doesn’t report first-party gaming revenue explicitly, “Xbox content and services revenue” — which includes licensing from third-party titles (including Activision’s), Xbox Game Pass, and first-party titles — was $12.3 billion in Microsoft FY 2021; if we assume the licensing overlap accounts for $4 billion, that means the combined entities accounted for around 11% of global gaming revenue, and around 25% of console + PC revenue (excluding hardware).
It just dawned on me, Microsoft is now the largest behemoth in gaming?
For reference Sony’s FY2020 reported ~23 billion in gaming revenue
So still less
Apples to apples are hard given how each corporate entity chooses to divide and report their earnings
No, after the Activision purchase they will be #3.
Tencent #1
whoa.
Blocking Microsoft for buying up Activision on monopoly grounds but not breaking up Amazon years ago on the same grounds would show US regulators have failed as an institution.
Huh, they’ve been dropping that ball for quite awhile now. Like decades.
I saw 1. Tencent 2. Sony 3. Microsoft after the purchase. (But I didn’t fact-check it.) So that kind of kills the monopoly argument.
As for US regulators, I’m always shocked when they DO block something nowadays, given what they’ve allowed to happen with tv/movie/cable media companies.
Yeah, the idea that the feds should block this acquisition because it lets Microsoft… Narrow the dominance of Sony? Seems kind of weak.
Honestly, having Microsoft reemerge as a strong challenger to Sony is good, because when Sony gets complacent they treat their consumers like trash. They need to be kept honest.
Sony is essentially going to be forced to put together something that competes with Gamepass, which is good.