Utopia Talk / Politics / Microsoft buys Activision for $68.7 bil

murder Member	Wed Jan 19 08:59:12 Sony shares tank over 12% after Microsoft and Activision’s $68.7 billion tie-up plan Sony shares fell more than 12% in Tokyo on Wednesday after Microsoft announced plans to buy Activision. Investors likely fear rising competition to Sony’s PlayStation division as well as the potential for Microsoft to pull some popular games from the Japanese entertainment giant’s platforms. For some time, Sony has been ahead of Microsoft with its portfolio of first-party games, allowing it to stay ahead in the console wars. But should Microsoft close the acquisition of Activision, it will have a strong portfolio of hit games from the Call of Duty franchise to World of Warcraft. That content can help power Microsoft’s subscription strategy around Game Pass, a pay-monthly service that allows users to access a library of games across different devices. It is a rival to Sony’s “PlayStation Plus” and “PlayStation Now” services. When console makers own the gaming studio, they often make those games exclusive to their platforms. Games like Call of Duty are currently available on both PlayStation and Xbox. But investors fear Microsoft could take those games off of PlayStation’s platforms, giving the U.S. company more attractive content to rival Sony. Read the rest if you want to ... http://www...ver-12percent-in-response.html
Habebe Member	Wed Jan 19 09:02:24 Video games are digital scams.
murder Member	Wed Jan 19 09:07:41 I wouldn't know. I haven't played a video game in decades.
Habebe Member	Wed Jan 19 09:15:12 The last Blizzard game I played was tides of darkness.
murder Member	Wed Jan 19 09:58:20 The last blizzard game I played was tearing up styrofoam and pretending it was snowing in Miami. :o)
Paramount Member	Wed Jan 19 12:11:56 I don’t remember which was the Blizzard game that I played. What games do they make? Neverwinters Night? Baldur’s Gate?
nhill Member	Wed Jan 19 12:26:43 Starcraft, Warcraft
nhill Member	Wed Jan 19 12:27:03 How the fuck y'all still chatting in a video game forum but know shit about games.
murder Member	Wed Jan 19 12:52:31 I didn't play Utopia either. I came for the politics.
nhill Member	Wed Jan 19 15:53:07 How the hell did you even find the forum?
Habebe Member	Wed Jan 19 16:31:52 Yeah thats wierd.
Habebe Member	Wed Jan 19 16:44:53 I played utopia, Age of empires/kings, Civilization* , pre rpg Warcraft. Baldur's gate, I think 2. I remember never winter nights preview looking cool like a million years ago, Im pretty sure I own it on android although I havnt played it, it was on sale for like 99 cents.
murder Member	Wed Jan 19 17:12:49 "How the hell did you even find the forum?" I was playing Earth:2025 and hanging out on that forum and someone directed me to the politics forum on the Utopia site. Earth didn't have one if I remember correctly.
nhill Member	Wed Jan 19 17:13:27 Yep Earth did not have one. Forgot about that game.
murder Member	Wed Jan 19 17:22:53 So did Mehul. ;o)
nhill Member	Wed Jan 19 17:26:31 Fun fact, before I retired I used to work down the street from Mehul and passed by his establishment multiple time. It went out of business during the pandemic (some escape room thing), so I never got a chance to pop in and say hello, and I no longer live in the area. Should put it on the "missed connections" section of craigslist. If that's still a thing. :)
nhill Member	Wed Jan 19 17:27:41 Oh, and I didn't find out he owned it until after it was out of business. I'm totally the type of person that would've walked right in and shot the shit about the old Swirve days.
Habebe Member	Wed Jan 19 19:38:00 "Should put it on the "missed connections" section of craigslist. If that's still a thing. :)" Lol, try finding a Saudi. Abdullah Raman is like how Smith. Ive really wanted to find Nazih Shihabi.He lived with my family during the first gulf war, one of the nicest people Ive ever met.Its a needle in a haystack. There is an old Kali Linux tool I used to use that consolidates public information, I forget the name off hand.
Habebe Member	Wed Jan 19 19:44:38 I think it was maltego.
murder Member	Thu Jan 20 05:04:11 I put this cheese out there and not a single nibble from TheChildren?
TheChildren Member	Thu Jan 20 13:22:59 aint nottin 2 say. shits is multiplatform shit will always remain multiplatform. they aint gonna exclusive that shit when theres 10 mill people playin on playstation. and if they r, then i just switch to pc becoz shitbox doesnt have exclusives. everythings available on pc. owned and rekted, xbot.
Habebe Member	Thu Jan 20 13:25:43 PC is best.
kargen Member	Thu Jan 20 13:50:21 I played Call of Duty and one of the early Doom games. Was long ago though. And yeah Xbox does have exclusive titles. If this sale goes through they probably will have more.
Habebe Member	Thu Jan 20 14:39:07 Doom was great....and then golden n64 came out. I started playing again years later, and loved black ops 1 & 2, very addictive online.
TheChildren Member	Fri Jan 21 01:46:42 hello bots, told u stupid brains so didnt i. http://www...ision_blizzard_on_playstation/ told ya fuckin so. "And yeah Xbox does have exclusive titles." >> ... BUHHAHAHAAHAAAHHHAHAA!!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA!!! HHAHAHAHAHAAHAAAAAHHAHAHBUHHAHHAAHAAA!! nice joke. but we all know exclusive games and xbox dunt exist and cant be used in da same sentence.
TheChildren Member	Fri Jan 21 07:58:06 playstation will remain da masta race this gen next gen and all da gens after it. period. that da bottomline. we play all da games. we have all da games. ultimate masta race.
murder Member	Fri Jan 21 08:18:07 They have to say that so that the acquisition doesn't get blocked. Once it's approved then we'll see.
kargen Member	Fri Jan 21 13:35:06 Honoring existing contracts is good business and doesn't negate the idea of x-box exclusive games going forward. Cross play becoming more prevalent in the gaming industry probably we are going to see less and less exclusives on any platform. Money to be made.
nhill Member	Fri Jan 21 14:18:17 It's weird to me that TC doesn't understand Microsoft's Gaming Division doesn't care if you buy the game on Xbox or PC anymore. They get a cut either way. Xboxes are starter PCs just for gaming. Microsoft Gaming is going to dominate the shit outta Sony after this and the ZeniMax Media purchase. The greatest number of AAA exclusives are going to be on PC/Xbox. Sony losing market share. That's why their stock is down over 10% lmao.
nhill Member	Fri Jan 21 14:21:41 Tech stocks are getting hammered this week, but Sony reacted very negatively to the acquisition news. http://www.tradingview.com/x/lcfi2nJ3/
Dukhat Member	Fri Jan 21 21:47:35 This deal has a good chance of not standing up to regulator scrutiny. Customer choice will clearly be decreased after a merger. But the drumbeat of huge corporations buying up shit to make up for their own failures in innovating continue. And no, Xbox will not take over. COD is big in the US and UK but is simply replacing Halo which shit the bed and is no longer a Triple-A franchise after Bungie left it. COD itself is getting worn out because the creators left and it's been putting in the motions. Microsoft is buying a shit company that just lost all its best talent (founders of blizzard and then the last good people they hired due to the sexual harassment). That being said, Sony would do well to just partner with Bungie and get a decent shooter out there. People are tired of these decade-old IP's.
nhill Member	Sat Jan 22 00:02:41 World of Warcraft and Candy Crush alone have generated 17B in revenue. Call of Duty: Warzone is on pace to generate 1B/year in revenue and it's a relatively new battle royale game. This is a no brainer acquisition based on the IP alone. They can hire people to maintain and enhance the games. Sure, it degrades the quality (see Halo), but it doesn't decrease the revenue much. As for Halo, if I'm generous and leave out ODST, the Bungie games took in an average of ~9.5M per game (Halo 1, 2, 3 & Reach). Halo 4 and 5 averaged ~9.6M despite being lower quality games and not made by Bungie. The fanbase alone feeds the beast. Doubt anything will come of antitrust investigation.
TheChildren Member	Sat Jan 22 10:16:24 lol is this dumb fucker pretendin he knoiws anythin bout videogames. listen xbot, ur shitbox dunt got no xclusives, kid. world of warcraft is a dead ip. call of duty is never gonna be exclusive. and yea its a declinin ip. u got no games. NO GAMES. capiche. playstation is master race. we hold all da games. stick 2 ur cryptos lol. ur way in over ur head here.
Dukhat Member	Sat Jan 22 11:14:32 Growth is what matters. GM and Toyota have huge marketshare and yet Tesla eclipses them in stock despite tiny marketshare. Why? Because it looks like Tesla might end up with 60% marketshare of the overall car market in 20 years when everything is electric. WOW is a joke and has been slowly decreasing subscribers for a long time. They don't even report numbers anymore. From something like 12 million subscribers paying $15 a month to maybe 2 million. It's no longer a cash cow. COD is big but its doing remakes and remasters and all this other shit. It's a franchise ripe to be replaced by something else.
nhill Member	Sat Jan 22 12:50:44 I haven’t owned an Xbox forever, no need to when you have an RTX 3090 PC. Something TC will never have. ;) Washed out or not, CoD Warzone is a cash cow and they don’t have to make a new one each year since it’s free to play battle royale. You can give your shitty opinion on the games, but no one cares. It’s a public company and revenue has been growing. Just look at their quarterly.
kargen Member	Sat Jan 22 13:18:59 "call of duty is never gonna be exclusive." Of course it isn't. That would be fucking stupid. Going forward they may or may not produce exclusive titles. As I said above the industry is heading to more cross play so inclusive will become the standard. Sony is going to have to negotiate even more so than now with Microsoft so they are not the odd man out. THose negotiations are going to happen whether this buy happens or not. The industry is changing and Sony if it wants to continue to have a large piece of the pie is going to need to agree to more cross play titles. This isn't so urgent on single player games. I'm guessing instead of exclusive for those we will see early access to the preferred platform. Maybe Sony makes releases single player games to Playstation six months before a full release. The really big games (I'm guessing) will be available eventually across all platforms.
Dukhat Member	Sat Jan 22 13:33:15 I'd put the odds of the merger happening at slightly less than even anyways. It makes no sense from an economics perspective. Microsoft is just trying to limit user choice.
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