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Penny Arcade - Comic - The Emerald Eye
Dog
Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
Penny Arcade - Comic - The Emerald Eye
Videogaming-related online strip by Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins. Includes news and commentary.
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I think if they tried to buy Sony, some lawyers would sue them for having a monopoly (while conveniently ignoring the existence of Nintendo, Valve, Tencent etc)
Doesn't Microsoft own Minecraft as well? They could make all sorts of cool crossovers now, like a diablo-type game set in the world of minecraft
If you're a PS or Nintendo owner only, it could mean the end of anything from ActBliz.
Also it's not great with all the terrible assault reports coming from that company. Kotek and the other awful people will benefit from this.
I don't have any illusions about Microsoft being a "good guy" or anything like that -- they're still sleezy, but it's in the corporate suit-wearing-weasel sort of way, rather than the frat club kind ABK was.
This is going to make the Game Pass absolutely massive value, when it already was one of the best subscriptions you can have.
On an individual basis? I think it's probably good (or neutral-good at least) for us as customers and gamers. As an industry, I think the worry is about having one company with such a large control over gaming and entertainment.
It's a meta-level analysis that doesn't really affect us common folk. The gaming industry has been more than capable of being trash all by itself WITHOUT being part of a megacorp.
In a very simple way: a board of directors now owns an absolute massive pile of IPs and they are going to decide which of these go in the freezer. Instead of 3 WWII shooters released at the same time with publishers trying to move as many copies as they can, one company will just look at their portfolio, appoint one IP to one studio and all the other IPs are left in the freezer. It stifles creativity.
Thankfully there is a vibrant indie scene, I hope everyone knows where to find it.
I feel like Tycho is attending a... specific type of puppet show.
To add on to Aldo's excellent summary with an example:
Imagine Company A and Company B competing in the marketplace. There is 10 million dollars worth of market for a Big Game of a certain type. Let's say Company A and Company B each made equally compelling games and wound up splitting the money and each making 5 million dollars.
However, Company A might buy Company B, with the hopes that they could just release one game instead of two. They realize that this game might only appeal to enough people to make 8 million dollars, but that's more they were making before so that other 20% of the market can just go fuck themselves because it's a better profit than before.
(Yes, this is an incredibly simple example and ignores a lot of factors. But that's the general gist of why it might be bad for consumers when companies conglomerate and reduce competition and choices.)
Only the sauciest of puppets are allowed.
Well, the silver lining is that it seems like Kotick will be gone.
Seems like most of the middle players are either gone or part of a big studio. Some operating more independent than others for sure.
Adam Conover gives an actual live example of the gutting of truTV:
Competition is good. Microsoft is now the third largest games publisher in the world, and owns two platforms (though Valve does most of the games sales on PC, but since Microsoft's plan is focused on Gamepass they don't really care).
It's also concerning because this is Microsoft throwing their Windows and Azure and Office money around to buy their way into a dominant position in the gaming market. XBox is not nearly profitable enough to justify buying both ZeniMax and Activision, this is part of a longer term strategy. And that bully position, and them being willing to use it, is bad news for other publishers and platform holders. It's not enough that Sony and Nintendo can produce good games in-house, they make most of their money from the publisher cut on third party games and microtransactions through their store. If Microsoft buys up all the AAA studios and those games are only available on PC and XBox, they can starve out their competitors and have a de facto monopoly.
pleasepaypreacher.net
Hell, if they cornered enough of the publishing market, Microsoft might even stop making consoles altogether. Why bother with that when you can control Sony and Nintendo's markets from the inside?
pleasepaypreacher.net
I mean, consumers want to keep that option open for consumers. Microsoft's certainly not above axing projects if they don't make money, even if they're good for consumers. Remember Mixer?
pleasepaypreacher.net
You've just kind of proved the point. Mixer was bleeding money and eventually was shut down. This is because the thing Microsoft mainly cares about is money, not about pleasing customers who didn't like existing products. Yes, some products they're willing to allow to bleed for a while if they can make the long term case of market domination. Mixer wasn't one of those.
But Mixer also proves the point of why it sucks to go up against big companies that just keep buying up their big competition. Those companies will be able to out-compete you for plenty of reasons that don't have to do with the awesomeness of your product. They'll be able to out-advertise you and out-network you. They can get their product all kinds of places you just won't have the reach. You better run a lean company and stay inside your lane, because if you try to play in the Big Leagues they grind you to a paste. And then throw away the paste.
pleasepaypreacher.net
Activision had a market cap of only $35 billion at the beginning of 2019 while the controversy only lowered the market cap to $45 billion and it had already recovered to $52 billion before the sale was announced.
I don't think the controversy has anything to do with this especially as the only reason Activision saw such a huge share price spike is because of the pandemic and it's causing of the government to flood the market with cash.
Buying Sony would reduce global console makers from 3 to 2 which would be a much bigger deal. Tencent and Valve are basically irrelevant outside of China and a niche audience respectively.
It's going to kill Sony, I get that the gamer audience on Penny Arcade, Reddit etc don't really care about CoD games but they make up a huge amount of games sold per PlayStation console and now they will probably go Xbox exclusive.
5 of the top 20 selling PS4 games are CoD sequels and when you add Fallout 4 that's 6 of the top 20 selling PS4 games future instalments becoming Xbox exclusive.
No it merely lost the insane over valuing caused by the flood of money into the stock market caused by the pandemic it's market cap was still over $15 billion more than it was in early 2019.
As to EA or Ubisoft buying Activision that's a laugh EA at it's highest never came close to matching Activision's lowest market cap caused by the controversy. While Ubisoft is worth less than Zenimax/Bethesda.
While I agree with most of the rest of what you said, I think your numbers are a bit off and/or cherrypicked:
That already exists. It's called Minecraft Dungeons.
Are they that far along on Diablo 4? Didn't they have some pretty major changes in their creative team recently?
-Tycho Brahe
But this'll be a different one though.