Re:Has Xbox lost the console wars?
by indigodaddy on Saturday June 24, 2023 @05:04PM
(#36462634)
Sony has way more exclusives than MS— why would it be catastrophic to even that particular playing field? This just sounds like Sony fans pissed that a few games are going to get taken away.
Sony isn't trying to buy activision ? The issue isn't sony, it's the size of Activision/Blizzard in the gaming market.
exactly, a nice concise answer
it shocks me every time how few people here seem to understand that scale changes things. is this not a forum frequented by SV techies?
No one is having issues understanding the scale of the acquisition—a $70 billion dollar price tag kinda makes that obvious to everyone.
The question that myself and others in the thread have been asking without getting a clear answer is how could this acquisition make Microsoft a monopoly in the gaming space?
Even with the scale there doesn’t seem to be any legitimate path to Microsoft becoming a monopoly: video games is a $200b a year industry. Activision Blizzard’s 2022 revenue was $7.5b and combining that with Xbox’s $15b revenue still doesn’t even surpass PlayStation’s $24b. Is that a monopoly? I don’t see it.
If Microsoft buys Activision/Blizzard, it's safe to assume that future A/B games will go the same way, and only be available on Xbox or Windows. This is problematic because Activision's IP portfolio is massive (including huge console annuals like Call of Duty), and Blizzard games are still extremely popular. If a normal game studio acquisition is like a comet colliding and adding its mass to the Earth, this would be like the moon crashing into the Earth.