bigsocrates

@donutello: PC Game Pass. The Cloud. Microsoft's best in industry port/backwards compatibility team.

If you're thinking "what's playable on Xbox today" then you're not thinking the way that Microsoft is about this.

@nameredacted: There's a ton of discussion of that in the other thread.

@donutello: I'm not saying the deal is good or bad, but one thing to remember is that Activision has a massive back catalog and Xbox wants content for Game Pass. They've shown that they want to use back catalog as a way to beef up Game Pass's value (all the old Dooms are on Game Pass and Quake has been added too.) So it's not just those huge franchises it's everything. It's every Diablo. It's the best games of the Atari era (you may think there's not a big market for those but it's a value add.) It's World of Warcraft. It's all of it.

IP and content are in huge demand, not just the big current franchises.

@turtlefish: Nadella said that he got all in on games after Spencer convinced him that the future of gaming was in the cloud, which is where Nadella sees the company's future.

This is a Game Pass play pure and simple. Xbox is in a transitional phase where they are still making hardware, and they may never stop, but they want to sell Game Pass subscriptions. That's their core gaming business now. They are happy for people to play wherever; on Xbox, on PC, via mobile phones or on other machines if they can use Game Pass on them. They won't publish much directly on Sony or Nintendo's platforms because they don't want to pay the 30% to them and they don't want to support them, but if Sony or Nintendo will let them on with Game Pass for a smaller cut I'm sure they'll be happy to do it.

This is about building a Netflix for games. That's very close to Microsoft's core business model and they're pretty open about this. The announcement of the purchase came with discussion of playing anywhere via streaming and the fact that they have 25 million Game Pass subscribers. That stuff is in there for a reason.

@bladeofcreation: There's no conflict involved in buying lefty things on Amazon because the way to change things is through political action not through individual consumerist choices.

You cannot participate in society without using services of immoral corporations. What computers will you be able to use? What phones? What cars or busses or trains can you ride in? Are you going to handmake all your own clothes?

Boycotting individual corporations when they do something very bad sends a signal but change is achieved through regulation and enforcement, not refusing to listen to audio books sold by a certain vendor.

We're all on the Giant Bomb web forums and Red Ventures has plenty of issues on its own, as does your ISP and the company that makes your browser. It's just the way life is and while it can change, politics is the best hope we have of making that change.

@brian_: Then their shareholders would get mad. I'm not saying Microsoft is a good guy here, it's a big business and it does big business things, many of which are bad. But saying "Microsoft could do better things with this money" is different from saying "I'm disgusted by the fact that Microsoft is complicit in this abuse" when they really aren't.

I do think we can get mad that Microsoft's CEO is praising Kotick publicly, which just isn't necessary and makes Microsoft look very bad and like it won't fix anything.

@brian_: You're preaching to the choir here, buddy. Abuse needs to be taken more seriously at every level. But it's a collective action problem as well. Microsoft alone cannot boycott Activision because that gives a competitive advantage to Sony and Nintendo, and it's not clear who would suffer more there, Kotick or the rank and file employees who might lose jobs or not hit performance metrics.

It's a complicated situation and it needs broad societal change to address.

But I'm not sure that Microsoft buying Activision Blizzard makes them complicit in abuse unless they don't do anything about the abuse. Yes it benefits Kotick et al but it's less about whether they benefit than what happens to the employees going forward. If they buy the company and clean it up have they really done anything wrong?

That's why I'm grading this incomplete. We need to see what they actually do and then judge them for it.

@brian_: Relying on "speaking out" to drive down the stock price and drive out the villains IS relying on the market and it doesn't work. Bobby Kotick was still there before Microsoft bought AB and there are literally dozens of other examples of villains who remained at their companies despite exposure and whistleblowers and even congressional hearings.

Boards and the market don't really care about this stuff.

Meanwhile Riot Games just paid out $100,000,000 in a class action settlement and is trying to push out its bad apples because of the legal exposure.

Are courts perfect at this? Far from it. There are a ton of problems with them. But remember that this whole Activision Blizzard thing came out because of court filings. They are where accountability is supposed to be found and where it sometimes is, though generally there's no accountability anywhere.

But the market sure as heck isn't going to provide it.

And not buying a company because its leadership is evil just entrenches that leadership.

Blame Microsoft if they fail to clean up the toxic mess, but don't blame them for the pre-existing mess in the land they bought. If they hadn't bought it that wouldn't have made it any cleaner.

@brian_: What matters is that conditions improve. Accountability is for the courts, not the market. As for unionization being unnecessary...obviously they should still unionize but if they don't because conditions have improved that's not necessarily Microsoft's "fault." "You started treating people better so they didn't unionize" is a weak accusation.

In some ways this gives a better chance of improving conditions than any other outcome. It's not like Activision Blizzard as a stand alone company held anyone accountable!

Need more time to evaluate.

If Microsoft closes the deal and a year later Kotick is still there and reports are that nothing has changed then yes, I will be angry. But Microsoft also has the opportunity to fix things. So far Spencer has a good reputation. This will be make or break for him and he knows it. Yes they've said Kotick is staying on and that is bad, but it's also standard for a big purchase and we don't know for how long. It might just be something transitional and a statement to steady the markets.

So far my grade for this is: Incomplete.

Not happy about the consolidation factor but that's just how business works now.