Microsoft buys Activision Blizzard

[Cross]

I see what MS is trying to do here but I suspect its not going to play out like they think it is. I suspect its going to be a repeat of what they did with RARE or more recently what Disney did with star wars. Run them all into the ground.

Blizzard has already been run into the ground and Activision has never made anything of value.

FFS they could not finish that phantom dust remake nor Scalebound

To be fair on Microsoft, Scalebounds fuck up was entirely Platinum's fault. They repeatedly failed to meet their milestones and once the gameplay was finally shown it had an extremely poor reception. Pulling the plug on it was the correct thing to do.

Strong disagree. Activision gave us some of the all-time greats:

Dark Reign

Interstate '76

Civilization Call to motherfucking power

The first (and only good) Call of Duty

Rome: Total War

Each one of those had a massive impact on gaming history.

Dark Reign and Rome: Total War were published by Activision, but made by external developers. That's like crediting Activision for making Bloodlines.

 

[Artyoan]

Investors will typically want a 25%+ premium for a buyout on larger companies. So while they can purchase quite a bit here, they have to pay up and basically pay the taxes on it for long term investors

 

[vonAchdorf]

Microsoft has Sony in the corner. I think even overpaying for EA wouldn't help them. Take Two could fit in their portfolio of premium first party titles, but would cost them 40 billion at least and the are themselves in a merger with Zygna.

 

[Catacombs]

They also do "land acknowledgements"

What is that? How is that relevant to software/hardware development?

 

[Storyfag]

They also do "land acknowledgements"

What is that? How is that relevant to software/hardware development?

Isn't Gates the largest landowner in the US or something?

 

[Zarniwoop]

I see what MS is trying to do here but I suspect its not going to play out like they think it is. I suspect its going to be a repeat of what they did with RARE or more recently what Disney did with star wars. Run them all into the ground.

Blizzard has already been run into the ground and Activision has never made anything of value.

FFS they could not finish that phantom dust remake nor Scalebound

To be fair on Microsoft, Scalebounds fuck up was entirely Platinum's fault. They repeatedly failed to meet their milestones and once the gameplay was finally shown it had an extremely poor reception. Pulling the plug on it was the correct thing to do.

Strong disagree. Activision gave us some of the all-time greats:

Dark Reign

Interstate '76

Civilization Call to motherfucking power

The first (and only good) Call of Duty

Rome: Total War

Each one of those had a massive impact on gaming history.

Dark Reign and Rome: Total War were published by Activision, but made by external developers. That's like crediting Activision for making Bloodlines.

Good point, they deserve credit for Bloodlines too.

They funded the development and marketing, thus deserve some credit. Back then being a publisher meant something. You couldn't just shit a game out and sell it on Steam for 2 [LOCAL_CURRENCY_UNIT]s. There were big, sleek monolithic boxes with fancy art, CD's/DVD''s and thick printed manuals inside. Those cost money.

Activision wasn't the genius behind those games but was smart enough to make them possible.

 

[Zarniwoop]

They also do "land acknowledgements"

What is that? How is that relevant to software/hardware development?

Glad you asked



Edit:

Unabridged, original, boring as fuck video so you can't accuse anyone of editing tricks (funny how as one of the biggest companies in the world they couldn't do better than 1080p lol)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PraEcNDGSqY

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

With the sexual harassment scandals the Activsion share price apparently dropped 40% this year which probably made it an attractive target for acquisition, although at $70 billion I did have to check if it was April Fool's Day or not when I woke up this morning.

The SEC should look into this :fabolouslyoptimistic: - it would be interesting to see if he made those statements (November) before or during their negotiations.

My scale is that Star Wars was worth 4 billion. Theres been horrible inflation since, but I don't see it being over 16 times as big a prize.

Star Wars didn't have consistent revenue comparable to Activision. CoD alone has 3 times the life time revenue of Star Wars (within less than half the time).

The concept of buying a service company has always been wild to me. What are you even buying? Do they really value the IPs as being worth $67 billion?
Houses of cards built upon houses of cards.

Activision traded for a lower earnings multiple than Microsoft while it was growing faster - for Microsoft the acquisition should be hugely accretive. For Microsoft it also caps almost two decades of trying to force themselves into gaming at considerable costs.

Star Wars sold for way fucking less than it was worth, that's why it sold for $4 Billion. The merchandising right alone for just Star Wars could've probably been sold for more. Star Wars makes billions every year from merchandise. And Disney didn't just get Star Wars, they got everything Lucasfilm owned, which includes the largest FX house in the movie industry (ILM) that most everyone goes to; most movie also seem to do their editing at Lucas Ranch, and Skywalker Sound does stuff like sound mixing and edit for all kinds of different stuff. If Lucas wasn't just looking to drop everything he could've probably made far more.

That said, all that money went to Lucas personally, and like half or more of that was in Disney stock which has went up. It seems now his Disney stock is worth $10 billion.

If the wiki page I was looking at is to be believed Call of Duty has brought in far less money than Star Wars. It's listed right under Dragon Ball at $27 billion. Meanwhile Star Wars is listed as the fifth highest grossing media franchise at $69.4 billion, the revenue it brings in on merchandising was $42.217 billion when last sighted...which looked like it was further back than the CoD one.

 

[vonAchdorf]

Star Wars sold for way fucking less than it was worth, that's why it sold for $4 Billion.

I agree, when the sale happened, I considered 4B quite low. But at the time of the sale, apparently no one wanted to pay more (or Lucas wanted it to go to Disney, because they had the power to revitalize (lol) and globalize the IP).

If the wiki page I was looking at is to be believed Call of Duty has brought in far less money than Star Wars. It's listed right under Dragon Ball at $27 billion. Meanwhile Star Wars is listed as the fifth highest grossing media franchise at $69.4 billion, the revenue it brings in on merchandising was $42.217 billion when last sighted...which looked like it was further back than the CoD one.

Yes, my mistake, I only counted the movies. Thanks for correcting.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

They also do "land acknowledgements"

What is that? How is that relevant to software/hardware development?

Glad you asked

I love this, it's like parody. If you were doing it as some sketch comedy bit you'd have nowhere to take it while staying it the realm of reality.

I'm a white man with hair and glass and I'm wearing a white shirt with black font.

 

[Catacombs]

Isn't Gates the largest landowner in the US or something?

"John Malone is the largest private landowner in the United States. Malone made his fortune as a media tycoon, building the company Tele-Communications, Inc, or TCI, and acting as its CEO before selling it to AT&T for $50 billion in 1999"

 

[vonAchdorf]

Isn't Gates the largest landowner in the US or something?

"John Malone is the largest private landowner in the United States. Malone made his fortune as a media tycoon, building the company Tele-Communications, Inc, or TCI, and acting as its CEO before selling it to AT&T for $50 billion in 1999"

Gates is reportedly the biggest farmland owner though.

 

[Zarniwoop]

They also do "land acknowledgements"

What is that? How is that relevant to software/hardware development?

Glad you asked

I love this, it's like parody. If you were doing it as some sketch comedy bit you'd have nowhere to take it while staying it the realm of reality.

I'm a white man with hair and glass and I'm wearing a white shirt with black font.

That's why I edited the post to link to the original Microsoft video, I thought the first one was some edgy comedy but sadly it's very real.

Microsoft is based in the ground zero of wokeness, Seattle. But it's still hard to believe it's gotten this far.

I mean this shit looks like the lineup for DiRT 5 or Need for Speed Hot Pursuit 17

 

[tritosine2k]

 

[Catacombs]

Glad you asked

 

[FreshCorpse]

For me the incredible thing about this list is how bare it lays Japanese mismanagement of their games companies. Bandai Namco + Konami + Square Enix + Capcom + Sega = just 50% of Activision Blizzard, a single American publisher. Most of these companies are chronically unable to execute and some of them are chronically unwilling. Square spuffed >10 years up the wall on FFXV and it was a critical and commerical letdown. Konami has decided that Japan-only gambling games are a better ROI than making proper games for a worldwide audience. Sega just cannot make a decent Sonic game to save their life.

If I were an a private equity firm (or a big American tech company) I would probably be looking at those publishers and thinking "why don't I just buy a couple of them, fix their internal politics and actually make something of their immense backcatalogue?".

 

[Delterius]

If I were an a private equity firm (or a big American tech company) I would probably be looking at those publishers and thinking "why don't I just buy a couple of them, fix their internal politics and actually make something of their immense backcatalogue?".

You've just described the history of the japanese economy since the 90s. The japanese bent the knee and adopted shareholder capitalism. It happened partly due to a trade war and partly because the japense themselves drank of the american cool aid of liberalism + libertardism. The result is that their economy was bought out by american investors that are subsidized by the american government.

 

[vonAchdorf]

For me the incredible thing about this list is how bare it lays Japanese mismanagement of their games companies. Bandai Namco + Konami + Square Enix + Capcom + Sega = just 50% of Activision Blizzard, a single American publisher. Most of these companies are chronically unable to execute and some of them are chronically unwilling. Square spuffed >10 years up the wall on FFXV and it was a critical and commerical letdown. Konami has decided that Japan-only gambling games are a better ROI than making proper games for a worldwide audience. Sega just cannot make a decent Sonic game to save their life.

If I were an a private equity firm (or a big American tech company) I would probably be looking at those publishers and thinking "why don't I just buy a couple of them, fix their internal politics and actually make something of their immense backcatalogue?".

Japanese companies used to be shielded pretty well against that, but recently American activist investors made inroads and successfully pressured Japanese companies to comply.

 

[Caim]

I see what MS is trying to do here but I suspect its not going to play out like they think it is. I suspect its going to be a repeat of what they did with RARE or more recently what Disney did with star wars. Run them all into the ground. Microsoft was unable to push out games for xbox one when they had 1 or 2 studios so I fail to see how increasing that number is going to help anything. FFS they could not finish that phantom dust remake nor Scalebound and Halo infinite had to be restarted at least twice and is still only half the game Reach was. Unless there is some ultra major shake up in the management(by which I mean they replace everyone with racist white shitposters) the chances of them doing anything of value with these studios is right next to 0.
They will probably just burn billions only to run their flashy new properties into the ground and leave them in their IP vault.

Microsoft forced Lionhead Studios to make weird always online shit and Kinect games out of Fable, and when that didn't work out because Lionhead can barely make Fable games they were driven to the same ditch EA dumps the corpses of the studios they liquidate. Bungee managed to buy their way out in time, otherwise it'd've been the ditch for them as well.

 

[vonAchdorf]

If I were an a private equity firm (or a big American tech company) I would probably be looking at those publishers and thinking "why don't I just buy a couple of them, fix their internal politics and actually make something of their immense backcatalogue?".

You've just described the history of the japanese economy since the 90s. The japanese bent the knee and adopted shareholder capitalism. The result is that their economy was bought out by american investors that are subsidized by the american government.

It also happened the other way 'round. Japanese companies, armed with trillions of freshly printed yen expanded internationally.

 

[Delterius]

If I were an a private equity firm (or a big American tech company) I would probably be looking at those publishers and thinking "why don't I just buy a couple of them, fix their internal politics and actually make something of their immense backcatalogue?".

You've just described the history of the japanese economy since the 90s. The japanese bent the knee and adopted shareholder capitalism. The result is that their economy was bought out by american investors that are subsidized by the american government.

It also happened the other way 'round. Japanese companies, armed with trillions of freshly printed yen expanded internationally.

Japanese companies already had an international profile. If they didn't there wouldn't have been an US - Japan trade war. But yeah, once you join the liberal world order you get a lot of business opportunities. After all, the US wouldn't be able to print infinite money like they do if Indonesia and Japan couldn't trade with each other in dollars. The question is wether your country in particular is organized in such a way that you, individually, can benefit from said trade expansion. Generally speaking you're shit out of luck if you're neither an european/american landlord or a member of the japanese middle class.

 

[ghostdog]

I don't play, or plan to play, any of their games, nor wait for any sequels, so... zero fucks given.

 

[Deflowerer]

Kotick is the real winner in all of this. Dude made massive bank during his tenure (and to its shareholders since ca early 2000s) and also gets to go out somewhat gracefully with a nice bonus, and left relatively milked out company for Microsoft.

 

[Zarniwoop]

Can somebody please explain to me how this Zach guy ("Stop Asian hate") is still on this website and hasn't been canceled/arrested yet? 100% of "Asian hate" is being committed by niggers, so "Stop Asian hate" is just another way of saying "Stop nigger violence". How come he hasn't been arrested for committing this hate crime yet?

Sure, right after we explain why BLACK LIVES MATTER burned mostly black neighborhoods for months or why ANTIFA supports an unholy union of government and large corporations.

 

[IDtenT]

My problem with Gamepass is that it changes pricing power from the developer to Microsoft that can do what the fuck it wants. Nowadays any game that wants to be on steam is in there and can charge as much as the developers want for it. With gamepass, Microsoft controls developer revenues directly what gives them alot of leverage.

Not a problem since Microsoft IS a lot of the developers now and will soon be all of them.

Their technological distinctiveness will be added to the Microsoft collective. Resistance is futile.

Internal or external, Microsoft will rate success by playtime manhours.