Report: EU Commission Preparing 'Statement Of Objections' Over Xbox Activision Blizzard Deal

The EU objecting, bit hypocritical eh considering the wide spread corruption in that institution. Wouldn’t be surprised if Sony paid them off, others seem to have done after all going by recent events.
Oh well we shall see where this goes. Although MS will appeal regardless if the requests made are too much.

From here on out things might get really ugly. If for whatever reason M$ cannot get this deal to go through there will be really bad blood going forward between M$ and Sony.

@Ashadelo If this deal doesn’t go through, expect MS to use that 69 billion to buy exclusivity deals all over the place. I don’t know if they can but imagine COD being PC and Xbox exclusive for a year, I mean I doubt Activision will give Sony the time of day, theirs business and then theirs a company wrecking your take over…

I'm starting to think that MS won't be able to get this deal over the line.

I'm more than ok with that though... I would rather the money was spent on developing new IP at their current stable of studios.

@S1ayeR74 such fanboy nonsense right there.

guess what, large mergers make concessions all the time, MS will do whats needed and it will go through.

@stvevan Yes concessions are made, but they have their limits, no company is going to spend 69 billion dollars and end up with regulators making it so they in effect gain any advantage in the acquisition. That’s not fan nonsense that’s business. Hence I stated we shall see.
But please try and remember, we have the UK and US regulators to give conclusions yet. With the US one already going to court, albeit their own court. And either one can block this deal.

If a concession is that the games in the deal are not allowed on Game Pass, then it’s a pointless acquisition for Microsoft.

@stvevan but what if it doesn’t? That’s what these comment sections are for, right?

“What if Nintendo bought Ubisoft?” That’d be crazy, let’s talk about it instead of disparaging each other for commenting on a comment section

I don't care about Activision's games at all for the most part, and I kind of wanted the deal to go through simply because it's the only way that Activision's dormant franchises will ever be resurrected from the grave of CoD. I kind of don't want the deal to go through because I don't want Sony to go into a retaliatory buying spree.

But at this point I kind of do want it to go through, because if it doesn't, I think things get a lot worse. Activision basically fails and goes to auction as a broken up mess. Maybe Sony buys chunks, maybe MS does, most likely Tencent buys most of it. Even if it sells off its pieces, the debt obligations and chaos will make most of the mini-ABK components fail. Sony probably still goes on a retaliatory buying spree to head off MS's inevitable $70b buying spree, and MS of course goes on that spree since they already have $70b earmarked for their games division growth. Instead of a megapublisher most of us don't care about the two will end up dividing and carving up most of the rest of the industry and things we care about and everything becomes this hideous mess for the next decade.

But I hope before either decision goes through the back room deals of the industry get dragged into daylight and squashed. It's an ugly industry rife with abuses.

@stvevan I don't think it's so much fanboy nonsense in that, if Sony successfully wrecks the deal for Activisions investors, they are going to be on very VERY bad terms with Sony. MS notwithstanding, Activision itself will have been crippled by their supposed "partner"....that does not make for good future business relations, and at the same time Activision will still hold full control over a franchise they now know Sony deems critical to their own success....they'll have Sony over a barrel. MS doesn't need to screw Sony with COD, Activision will now know they have the power to do that alone, even if they're a sinking ship at that point, they'll bleed Sony dry because they know they can now, even if it's just to maximize investor return before they jump ship.

@NEStalgia @Boogaloo_Jenkins oh come on the first sentence said sony had paid them off.

that is fanboy nonsense.

to then think MS investors would release 69bil for exclusive deals.

also nonsense.

give valid real reasons and thats fine.

@nestalgia read above for fanboy comments.

abk will get more money from Sony should it not happen, but abk investors wont leave sony money on the table. MS wil probably get the content sony do, plus dont sony have a current contract with abk?

@S1ayeR74 you don’t know of what you’re talking about

@stvevan Contracts expire, and the EU has had members found guilty of corruption in the last few months, it’s all been reported on. I stated I wouldn’t be surprised, that’s not a ‘fanboy’ comment, that’s a comment on a whim based on recent events. Have you never in your life said, I wouldn’t be surprised if….. ?
Perhaps you shouldn’t be taking comments in a comment section so seriously?

And if you want to be serious, do you honestly think Activision Blizzard and especially its investors will ever see Sony in the same light again if this deal is blocked? Considering Jim Ryan himself has personally visited each regulator in turn to try and get the deal blocked with his case? They will lose billions most likely if it’s blocked.

And yes, investors want Game Pass to grow, if they can’t do that by acquisitions of course they will allow, they don’t personally release Microsoft’s money you know, for money to be used for exclusive deals, that way Game Pass can still grow. It sure why you don’t understand that? Microsoft wanting to use its money to grow its share of a marketplace. Do you want a researched written report citing verified sources with pie charts and a PowerPoint presentation to make that point?

@Cero In what way? Your comments a bit cryptic I’m afraid.

@stvevan Fair point on the "fanboy nonsense" but the concept is still sound in that the decade long business partnership would be completely annihilated and Sony have exposed dependence upon Activision that Activision will absolutely wholly exploit with a vengeance. Yes, there's a contract, and terms to renew will not be favorable for Sony now that it's been made clear they need it.....and will therefore accept any terms and pay any amount. In gunning for stopping MS from becoming a more dangerous rival they also exposed their Achilles heel should they succeed and Activision can now be predatory against them, because what's Sony going to say "no, we won't bother with CoD advantages?"

Meanwhile MS has already earmarked $70b for growth in gaming and will look for new places to spend it. Whether it's exclusives or a litany of buyouts, they're going to spend it and they're going to grow because they've already earmarked the spending for that goal.

Like @SplooshDmg said, a victory here for Sony's interests is a Pyrrhic victory. They succeed in preventing MS from becoming a stronger competitor, but at the cost of burning their bridges with a partnership they themselves have declared critical to success, and making an enemy out of said partner, by effectively burning the executive management AND investors out of fortunes for their own gain. There's no reality in which business continues in a favorable sense after that. Ironically Sony's fortunes from COD are probably better with a Microsoft-owned COD and pressured concessions than one in which ABK is spiraling into oblivion and management is out for blood, and MS just happens to have a few billion to kick around to help sever some ties.

@SplooshDmg The biggest problem here is, at this point, after all this fallout, I think if this falls through Activision is simply done. It's curtains for them. Their value will be worthless, their costs on this whole thing extreme, and they can't even find a new sugar daddy to buy them because after this no one would touch them with a 100 foot pole, they're a toxic acquisition. At that point it'll be down to close the doors, or break up and sell in pieces which is just another phrase for slow liquidation. They'll survive a few years possibly with MS money floating them (CoD exclusivity, lol), but if this doesn't go through, it's a safe bet "Activision-Blizzard" simply isn't around by the PS6 launch. I'm sure Sony knows that and is totally fine with scorched earth. If they can't have it, no one can.

Lets not forget Tencent is a major stakeholder here. They have MANY ways to turn the screws on Sony for this. Lets not forget they own a chunk of Ubisoft, Nintendo, Epic (which Sony also holds a stake of) etc. etc. If Sony is perceived as costing them money....business conditions will change to be less favorable to Sony in multiple avenues, not just with ABK for it's limited remaining lifespan, but in the host of things Tencent has sway over the board on. It's not to say "PSDoomed!" but life will be harder and profits narrower and deals less favorable in multiple areas for PS I think. There's a difference between raising objections and running a scorched earth campaign, and Jimbo chose the latter.

Edit: Actually it could be a boon to PS fans in that, the end result could be culling Jimmy as the sacrificial scapegoat for the whole thing. Suddenly things are looking up!

@S1ayeR74 the ones taking a bribe were caught yes? so arent on the commission to influence it. unless you are saying all are corrupt.

abk and investors want money. they dont care where it comes from, sure they will want more from Sony but as CoD sells more on PS so abk will need that money.

of course they dont greenlight everydeal, never said they did. i said they wouldnt give them the 70bil to spend on exclusives. thats not how business work.

Well, probably will end up coming through with concessions. If not then it's time to repurpose that money, surely they have a plan B. I think Xbox should strengthen their Japanese arm, definitely an area where it's a lot weaker than others. Also, perhaps it shouldn't be about buying other studios and IP so much, perhaps paying for key IPs and launches is better and investing in hiring good people and developing new IP etc.

@SplooshDmg CoD is strong as a brand certainly. But Activision is far from healthy in many ways, and were that not the case they would not have been shopping a buyer to begin with. The resulting damage to their value, and thus their balance sheets, their credit rating, etc will be catastrophic. I just don't see an out with their business model. The impact on their credit alone will devastate them no matter how valuable CoD is. And their financial statements show a lot of the problem. Revenue is high, but costs are also high, so despite the revenue of CoD, it's profitability is only "good" not great, and still looks anemic next to King's profitability. Without King they'd have been sunk long ago. If they have to liquidate in parts.....that doesn't bode well. Failed mergers on this scale don't happen often, and when they do, usually someone goes down or gets a different buyer at fire sale pricing. But nobody will buy this one.

@stvevan Firstly I never made the assumption they are all corrupt, how ever we have had a EU party member state ‘my PlayStation 5’ in a tweet, one who used to work on the competition commission, and the EU has been accused of defending Sonys market share as opposed to the market and its consumers. Not stating it as a fact at all. Just giving some light with just a few of the examples we’ve had as to the reason behind the whimsical comment.

As for the rest of your post, no. Activision Blizzard investors stand to make millions of not billions from this acquisition, If the deal is blocked, many fingers will point to Sony due to their officially reported actions in trying to get it blocked, you honestly think those investors (we aren’t even talking Activision Blizzard themselves here), won’t care Sony will have just lost them masses of money and make a deal with them? And this is all assuming Microsoft doesn’t come along with a much better more lucrative offer.

I don’t think you understand this, no idea why. No, Sony will get half the treatment they have had and most likely no exclusivity or marketing rights, that’ll go to Microsoft I expect who will pay more for it, as stated several times by myself and other members to you, that 69 billion is ear marked for the Xbox business, it is there to be used and most likely has to be used as it’s been released for the purpose of growing Xbox and Game Pass. That’s what it will be used for if the deal is blocked. That IS how business works.

I just want this over with one way or another. Tired of this continuing to keep coming up in the news

So if Microsoft buy Activision blizzard, then no other game companies or developers are ever allowed to be created or formed from that day forward?

No?

Then how is this purchase against or hinder a fair and open market?

The defense rests, you honor.

@stvevan No, its not nonsense at all. Maybe you're new to gaming. But there was this little amazing game known as nfl2k5.

It was so good, so amazing, so groundbreaking, that even to this day still regarded by many be the best NFL game ever made.

EA was so scared of the franchise going forward, they paid the NFL massive pile of cash they would be the only developer to make NFL sim style games for years to come.

Sony very much could dropped pile of cash out of fear to someone somewhere behind closed doors to stop the deal going thru.

If you think that is fanboy theory you definitely not understand how politics, business, and really, the world operates today.

@SplooshDmg Before or after their value and credit craters post failure?

Softbank is fine in part because they sold off the Sprint that was crippled by the failed attempt at AT&T merge to T-Mo. Softbank was selling divisions, not selling Softbank itself.

@SplooshDmg Phil doesn't need to get gray over it, they're the one with the bulging wallet. I'm sure he's eying up what dozen other companies to buy instead and also how much assassins cost near San Mateo and tracking which liquor stores have the highest sales volume in Scotch around that zip code for "market research."

Bobby's going to be so gray he'll belong in a Wii commercial, though.

@Ashadelo Absolutely. I’m not sure why Sony looked at that massive amount of money a competitor is willing to throw around and decided to poke that very massive, dangerous hornet’s nest with every sense of disingenuous harping over actions they themselves practice.

Sony is making an enemy they can't afford to make. If they ruin this deal for Microsoft, then the gloves are coming off and it's going to be ruthless hostile takeover time, where he who has the most funds wins, and Sony might as well be another acquisition target compared to Microsoft.

Jim Ryan could be the end of the company. Sony might want to reconsider having him in power.

@S1ayeR74
So if deal goes through then we can say that Microsoft paid some people?

@Neverwild ? They paid investors yes, they bought their shares.

@S1ayeR74
No, just as you mean Sony does.
Bribing certain people.

@JayJ If MS can't buy Activision then that kills them buying any other Corp and unless Sony wants to sell MS can't just buy them nor would they even be allowed to buy them. Sony can easily afford to make MS an enemy because PS is outselling Xbox.

@WallyWest they cant buy others..... Rejecting a world record aquasition in gaming doesn't mean you cant buy smaller ones... They wil buy many publishers still... Maybe 2 like ubisoft that is suffering and sega.. And they can buy as many studios as they want... Lets not forget how much money they can put on 3rd party exclusivity and exclusive contents as thats like money change for microsoft

@Gamingforlife MS are not going to buy an endless amount of Devs why? Because they don't want to pay and maintain an endless amount of Devs, they barely do much with who they already have so no way are they adding another 10 or whatever and even then that wouldn't be allowed. They want Activision and Bethesda and big ones like that because it means MS can sit back and let them do they're thing. Also Ubi are not going to be bought because the family what own and run Ubi have no interest in selling.

End of the day MS may have endless money but it doesn't mean they are going to just do whatever with it. They want profits as well and returns so throwibg money away is not something they will do. The fanboy idea of MS is simply not true and shows how little they know about Corps.

@WallyWest sony are nobodies compared to Microsoft, they are irrelevant in every sector and are $ trillions in debt while making peanuts and being worth trash. On the other hand, Microsoft keeps growing big and are a multi $ trillion company. Only question of time before sony pay a very heavy price and it will be gorgeous to see.

@fox99 Yet Mr Fanboy Sony have beat MS in console sales every single generation and are making more money in the gaming market then MS with also the Playstation brand being bigger then Xbox but yeah "nobodies". Dude Sony are going no where in gaming and considering where PS is compared to Xbox the one taking a hit is more likely MS, in fact MS are more concerned over controlling its consumers with Gamepass then worrying about Xbox's future.

Some advice dude enjoy your Xbox like i enjoy mine but i suggest you stop bootlicking because its really not healthy. Also before you say i'm "bootlicking Sony" i'm not i'm just stating the facts or stuff MS has been stating these past few months

@Neverwild I see what you did there, fair enough you could make the assumption. But last I checked Phil Spencer’s wasn’t flying round to the UK, US and EU regulators trying to push their case. Perhaps if it saled though with out any concerns or deep dives or change requests you could state that, however, the commissions have used language and terms seemingly implying they are protecting Sonys market share, not Microsoft’s. Mark of that what you will.

@WallyWest Sony 2022: $70 Billion revenue, $8 billion profit, over $2 trillion debt. MS 2022: Over $180 billion revenue, $80 billion profit, almost $3 trillion company. Don't think I need to say more. Pretty sure the 2023 report will be even heavier for sony.

@fox99 I'm talking about the gaming side not the sides of both companies that have no bearing on the gaming side but hey you know more then MS who i'm just repeating, i mean MS have bigged up Sony more then anyone else this past year haha

@WallyWest The gaming side, Playstation made $9 billion more than Xbox in 2022 but nothing indicates that the pc side of xbox and cloud were included in the revenue. Then, Xbox hasn't even released their games yet, while Sony already put out everything and they didn't even complete the Activision deal + other acquisitions. You can be sure that once all that is done, the tables will have turned massively. Even now, despited having a big bigger revenue in the gaming side, Sony had around 49% profit drop while Xbox had their best year in profits so far.

@WallyWest i said if activision didn't go thro!!!
70 billion can buy half of the AAA gaming industry!!!!! Let me feed you some big publishers worth:
Ubisoft 2.8b
Take two 17b
Bandai namco 13b
Capcom 6.9b
Konami 6b
Square enix 5.8b
Sega 3b
Cd projekt 2.8b
Koei tecmo 5.8
Embracer group 5.8b

Imagine microsoft can buy these with that money and still have change....
You underestimating money power...
Let me tell you something... Microsoft wasn't serious about gaming with xbox it was like a small side business for them but now with how much gaming make.... Microsoft is going full in starting with bathesda activision and we will see more... In the 4 gens of gaming i never saw microsoft serious about xbox till this gen.... They will buy and buy till they get blocked and will grabe every compititor into an endurance war of loss (gamepass) to grow fast

This is the thing... Microsoft will buy there way up like it or not... For me as long as gamepass is fed i don't care but it maybe come a day we regret being fans tho if xbox is in total control

Edit: they call MS the sleeping giant for a reason... Microsoft (bill gates) go the company to the top with bad blood watch a documentary about the past but his now a good guy so microsoft is nice too but they still ruthless in business and grab compitition into endurance war and buy them in the end... Sony pissed them off and i dont know if microsoft will take it personally

@SplooshDmg ABK's value is propped up now BECAUSE it's merging with MS though. If the merger falls through, watch that value crash.

Starcraft, Diablo, and Spyro are the only things I even care about at all from ABK at this point, and one is abandoned, one has been in the gutter, and the other one is anyone's guess.... Warcraft stopped existing to me the moment WoW happened.

@SplooshDmg I'm skeptical as to how "stable" they are without the promise of MS shares/cash in the wings. I know MW was a big hit, but I mostly feel they were just put in stasis when the deal was announced, and the cryo sleep ends if it collapses. At a minimum they'd be facing a mass staff attrition that hung on only for this deal which would be value damaging alone.

Jims cats will get extra helpings of scotch and gummy bears though, so that's good.

@Gamingforlife Dude MS can only buy something that wants to sell and not only that MS (along with Sony) are going to find it difficult buying up studios and Corps in the future as all these mergers have finally attracted looks from people who are getting concerned. End of the day MS are not buying half of gaming because legally they can't, if this deal goes though it will properly be it and if it doesn't MS are going to be very closely watched in the future.

Jesus christ this merger has really shown how little Xbox fanboys and gamers in general know about business, mergers and the laws around it. If this deal is blocked its not because of Sony its instead a show of force that yeah we can very much block you and control how you spend, i can see them using MS as example.

Fun thing you notice Disney have stopped at Fox? Why do you think that is? Its because Disney knew they were pushing their luck with Fox and won't be allowed anymore mergers like that.

@SplooshDmg Yeah I was going to say, this will have a reverberating effect far beyond gaming. Until now all mergers to duopolies in all industries worldwide to two planetary competitors has been seen as normal. If that changes now, the global markets will be shaken by this overall.

To be fair, there's a 0% chance the US would block it at all in the courts. But if the EU makes a move they're signaling a major change in the EU which alone will rock markets.

@WallyWest It sounds like you have a lot to learn about the world of corporate business and acquisitions.

@SplooshDmg I think the speculation until now has been that EU is reasonable and their previous actions demonstrated as much, that they would not take issue with it. The US isn't in question, FTC antics aside, the courts will approve absolutely. So it's all about what the EU is doing. But if EU starts taking a stance against vertical mergers, the global economy is about to jump the shark. Technically I wouldn't disagree with that position, I've been saying that has to end for decades and thought nobody would ever listen, but in the middle of a looming global recession seems like an amazing choice of times to signal a continent is about to abruptly halt industry consolidation moves.

Next thing you know they'll start charging Apple for back taxes.

@NEStalgia With the world in such a volatile position, a lot of people in power positions are likely to find their standings under threat as conditions worsen for the general public. It's very likely we could see changes in leadership before we know it. Today's regulators are playing with fire essentially. Who knows how many of them will still be in power a year or two from now.

@WallyWest how old are 10? You dont understand metaphor?
For buying studios they always can and they will lets wait fpr this to finish even phil said were not done... So you know better than phil you Mr. CEO?

Games will sell but you dont understand how large companies dominate an industry MS will endure a lost to dominate the industry!! You lose todat to win tomorrow

And they can always buy 3rd party exclsusivity and create studios from veterans...
Its you who just dont want to beleive that microsoft now means business and this is a free world yes you cant buy half of the industry but you can take control of most of it..ask windows

@JayJ I think, if they block, they're taking a populist stance. It's technically a stance I agree with. But the time to do it was the past 25 years. Rocking the boat while it's taking in water isn't a great plan...

@NEStalgia Well I think it's going to bring up a lot of questions and actions that will extend far beyond anything going on in the video game industry.

@JayJ yup!

@SplooshDmg There's also a problem if it goes that way where, if they turn around and allow Sony or Tencent to buy Ubisoft, or ABK, or Square, or really anything, and draw some undefined line in the sand that "company X is permitted but Company Y is not at our discretion" they've moved away from a law based system into fiat governmental selection of winners based on arbitrary and undefined criteria of their own choosing not unlimited to bribery no doubt. That alone sets up a decade of "interesting" business across the entire economy if we've moved into companies fearing government "selecting" themselves or their competitors, and attempting to curry favor. Nothing does wonders for business and economies more than perpetual uncertainty and kingmaking.

@SplooshDmg I'm not even against closing the barn door after the cows have left. I think it needs to be done. There's not much choice. We honestly do stand at the point that the future of earth is an oligarchy of 100 corporations as total earth government and supposed public governments exist as little more than enforcers for their interests. Which is the expected future every sci-fi author saw coming since the 40's. The barn door needs to be closed no matter the immediate damage. We're dangerously close to returning to the 17th century as it is.

But.

This is not the economic period to try doing it in, and a lawless version not defined by actual rules everyone knows but by secret favor currying and fiat whim of rulers of who shall and shall not act, not based on the action, but on who they are or an arbitrary ever changing market cap standard, based on the political currents is not the way to do it.

And on top of ALL of that, is the tiny detail that this particular deal actually does elevate competition against the actual near-monopoly and their actions of blocking would serve to protect the monopoly.

But I guarantee, if this gets blocked, Sony could buy Ubisoft, 2K, and Square the week after and it will be eagerly signed off with no challenge on as "the little guy winning", purely because their market cap is smaller and the total numerical sale price is smaller. Or even Tencent could do it despite being even bigger than MS because because everything China is always a help to our partnership!

I like current "friendly" Microsoft but technically I don't like MS or any of the big tech companies (or even much smaller non-tech giants in industry.) Nothing good comes from that much consolidation of wealth and power. But blocking a deal that enables one of them, the only ones that can, to push into a market currently held under a near monopoly and raise the competition stakes is insanity.

IDK how to really fix it. Ultimately I think we've reached the end of "capitalism"/free-market economies actually working. They were a good 18th century idea, that brought us almost through the 20th, but I think technology really broke much of what the underpinning system that makes it work is. Effectively an endless demand for labor, much of it "unskilled" and a wide swath of inefficiency in which to carve markets makes free-market work. With technology, we've arrived at a point where unskilled labor is unneeded, skilled labor is less needed, automation replaces human labor in most areas, and the quest and tech enabled obtaining of efficiency has eradicated the swath of inefficiency in which new markets and price pressure is created, breaking most of the pillars that make free markets work and turning into something more closely resembling feudalism. The problem is nobody has thought of how to address this, the masses turn to communism/socialism as a "solution" which didn't even work in the 19th century model let alone the 21st, and any such solution leads to.....this....arbitrary fiat rule based on political whim. I don't think "free market"/Capitalism has a place in the future. It's a model designed for an obsolete way of life. But nobody has a decent replacement, or at least one the oligarchs and feudal lords will permit, and violent uprising, the traditional fix, doesn't work with modern weaponry, so we're a "capitalist" mirror of the late-era USSR while we wait for collapse or replacement.

@SplooshDmg I've actually made the argument many times that communism and capitalism are actually the same system with the same end goal, they just take different routes and different lengths of time to get there. Ultimately both seek to consolidate all wealth and power into a limited autocracy. They have different marketing, and communism is a faster route to the goal, but they both get there which is why it feels like a bluer shade of late USSR on a global scale now. It took a long time of pondering, before realizing that what broke was efficiency. Capitalism, to work in that middle ground REQUIRES vast inefficiency to work. All the opportunity comes from that inefficiency. All of it. With tech, we've gone to total information awareness, psych profiles for everyone to predict behavior before it happens, JIT manufacturing with no waste, no inefficiency.....the very concept of capitalism and free markets very literally can not exist. With little to no inefficiency to exploit, the idea of competition and opportunity don't exist and the whole system goes with it. Market economies can't exist in a world where near-perfect efficiency is an obtainable goal. The model is entirely obsolete. Only autocrats, continuous consolidation, and permanent entrenchment remain, and disruption comes not through competitive forces but purely by further consolidation. Which is really what's at play here.

Sony is an entrenched monopoly in consoles. How can that monopoly be broken? A new console competitor isn't capable at that scale of emerging on its own, and the only place a console can come from is from an even larger company, such as MS, or Apple, further consolidating the market under their even bigger tent. Or displacing and rendering obsolete the market itself by simply merging the former market into an even bigger market (phone/PC.) There's no waste, no inefficiency to carve into a new market. The king lives until the emperor deposes him.

@SplooshDmg The whole mass layoff thing may end up being ms shooting themselves in the foot on the deal after all.. I don't care if it's "only" 5%. The optics of a 5 figure layoff while governments are trying to decide if the company should buy another mega company...... I mean I think I'D vote to block if they made me a judge today. That mass hiring and firing while acquiring makes them look incompetent and poor stewards for such a purchase. Amazingly puzzling move.

@SplooshDmg And I don't see what being a trillion dollar company has to do with MS being a monopoly in gaming while Sony has the market under it's thumb....but....."regulators" do....

Make no mistake the optics of a 5 figure layoff just made this deal a LOT harder in government circles. Remember government is interested in keeping employment high, and MS showing huge cuts while begging to shift employees from one company to theirs, increasing redundancies is a very bad look when they're already under the looking glass. I know that technically from a business angle it's all just normal. But not for outside scrutiny.

No disagreement on 343 but like I said on the other thread, even if they just shut the whole studio down, that's barely even going to register in this body count. They're not even the bulk of this.

@SplooshDmg All true, but regardless of that, doing this bad thing at this moment while asking to take on another bloated company they already don't want them to take on..... It's like the town headsman inviting everyone to dinner while his axe is still dripping.

Aside that I read the words "premier flagship F2P game" and I think that headsman's axe looks very inviting....

@SplooshDmg I'm speaking only of the optics of the mass layoff along with the begging governments to let one of earths biggest 3 companies buy one of earth's biggest 500 companies. Yeah, they're going to acquire logs of employess.....and then dump some of them because they'll be redundant. Regulators weren't focusing on that before. They will now. Politicians will not be rewarded for "helping" that happen (to favor big business), etc.

Also, in that equation will be how many of those 190,000 are in US, UK, EU. I'm betting 100,000 of those 190,000 are in India, and none of the involved regulators do, or should GAF about those.

@SplooshDmg You and I know that. You and I do not work in government. They have standards and we unfortunately overshot the required threshold about 400 posts ago. No pensions for us.

They don't see "hey Acti is going to probably go bankrupt or liquidate in chunks if we vote no, and then the whole thing is a bloody mess on our hands". They see "if MS consolidates them, we the politicians will be held accountable for job losses at the hands of big tech. We'll prevent that carnage by forcing Activision to liquidate to China, then it becomes their problem!"

Though to be fair, I get the sense that most of those 10,000 at ABK don't actually WANT the job unless MS buys it and half will probably quit on their own if it fails, so the government gets to wash its hands in peace over their caviar paid for by the people that quit.

@SplooshDmg All true. Ironically there's a reason why government contracts are the last lucrative market of opportunity left on earth (and half of Microsoft's trillions come from that!) - the ocean of inefficiency creates an ocean of opportunity!

Don't worry, though, they'll never raise the taxes, they'll tax the greedy corporations! Because raising Sony's taxes 3% will punish them and they definitely probably unlikely won't raise the price of video games to make the difference up to report profit growth to investors! Taxing corporations more fixes inflation! Everyone knows that as soon as they figure out 2+2=22!

Difference between us is that I see government and corporations as the same entity. They wash each other's hand. Government isn't against business. They're for whichever business pays them to kill another business. Actually, being in a Yakuza frame of mind, and speaking of similar organized criminal organizations, government and business are basically like the Dojimas and Kazamas. Sure, they keep trying to murder each other, and often succeed, but at the end of the day they both are partners working for the Tojos and the "good" guys still need "cleaners."

Then again it depends on what country. The French are about to burn down France because they're raising the retirement age 2 years from 62 to 64. In the US the politicians regularly suggest raising it from 65 to 75 and we're like "cool, this guy knows whats up!" Because every company wants to hire 73 year olds? Silly senators. 80 year olds making six figures only works for government!

On the other hand you just made me imagine a government-made video game console and I think I now want to buy that VR headset that kills you if you die in-game, and then play Souls games.

@SplooshDmg People always assume that the "old white guys" that founded the constitution just couldn't have imagined our modern corporate situation when they wrote the constitution, but that's not entirely true. Sure they couldn't have seen 2T microsoft and their global corporate hegemony exactly, but they did have precursors of the current world fully in mind at the time. The Royal seal companies were their eras version of our modern government-corporate collusion, and they had their own corporate behemoth that represented the functional equivalent of today's in East India Company/United Company of Merchants (it even sounds modern. ucom.com for all your east indies logistics needs!) , an easily unshakably huge, internationalist, government-tied corporation of their own era to draw on for the examples of how business functions. They drafted the constitution amidst the height of the gilded age. If anything our modern world looks remarkably like theirs of 1776. They didn't draft it in a primitive world of farmers and mom and pops. That was just the local situation as a colony under the boot.

I don't think it's so much that they couldn't foresee this kind of condition, so much as the opposite, our current condition was the very condition of UK/Europe they started a war to break away from. The expectation was that the newly founded country was to CHOSE to separate itself from that way of life and lead a simpler, more rustic way of life as had already been built in the colony, in order to be free of the burden and ruin of what became the gilded age in Europe.

And then before those guys were even dead they watched that expectation fall apart, as Washington's memoirs note him grumbling about that and how the landowners were then sending their kids to the universities of Europe to raise them in that very decadence that messed everything up to begin with.

Strict constitutionalism wasn't written in ignorance of our corporate republic. It was written in expectation of it! Its only flaw was expecting people would actually chose to live simpler lives to escape that. They weren't even cold before everyone ran right back to whatever glinty opulence they could get their paws on.

Washington had it all worked out. He was against the formation of political parties, and even Jefferson just ignored him and did it anyway. Poor guy got flipped off in his own time. But hey, at least his portrait buys you a month of Game Pass and that's not nothing!

@SplooshDmg Yakuza crime families have a sense of chivalry, justice, and honor. Political partisans do not. That's really the major difference. Both get their money the same way but Yakuza balance the books, politicians do not.

I've actually not even heard of that show! I don't escape the video game world as far as entertainment goes that often. What's it about?