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Microsoft/Activision Blizzard Acquisition - Information Thread, update: The Deal Has Closed

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Ghost_MH

Ghost_MH

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Posted
24 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

So if you include indies, then 1st party games are even less than a factor?

 

TBH, I always thought that Switch was the console that parents bought their pre-teens so they wouldn't be playing Fortnite on the TV,

 

We don't know actual sales numbers, just dollar amounts. Nintendo doesn't report on digital sales, so even those monthly lists with top sellers are only including Switch retail sales. A ton of inexpensive indies are selling and, very likely, selling well. It just doesn't mean much to Nintendo since their 30% on indies didn't amount to much when their 100% on their games are burning up the charts.

 

@TwinIon is right on the math. If only a quarter of their revenue is on digital sales and half of that is from games that are digital only, you need to figure out how much of that 12% is from indie titles. Do that while keeping in mind that 12% includes Fortnite.

 

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JPDunks4

JPDunks4

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Posted

It was a smart time for Microsoft to announce this.  So many people still can't get a next gen console that may want one.  Now when you are looking at both boxes, you have to weigh the possibility that PS5 may miss out on - 

 

Call of Duty - Yearly title

Overwatch

Diablo

Elderscrolls

Fallout

Doom

Wolfenstein

 

And all the various other projects the studios have in the works.

 

And when you also look at Sony's lineup of exclusives compared to last gen, they also lost The Show as a big yearly exclusive.  

 

This is a pretty drastic departure from the Xbox One vs PS4 days when consumers objectively look at both pieces of hardware and need to decide, if they in fact can only afford one and don't game on PC.

 

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GameDadGrant

GameDadGrant

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Posted
13 hours ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

So if you include indies, then 1st party games are even less of a factor?

 

TBH, I always thought that Switch was the console that parents bought their pre-teens so they wouldn't be playing Fortnite on the TV,

 

LOL! Scarily enough, there are some people out there that actually, truly believe that. 

 

It's been my experience that the pre-teens (and teens) play Fortnite on either a tablet or some other portable "PC" kind of device. Laptop or something like that, assuming they don't have their own gaming PC in their bedroom. 

 

And of course, everyone knows that the Switch is only for mature games, for mature gamers such as myself. :p 

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GameDadGrant

GameDadGrant

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Posted
5 minutes ago, JPDunks4 said:

It was a smart time for Microsoft to announce this.  So many people still can't get a next gen console that may want one.  Now when you are looking at both boxes, you have to weigh the possibility that PS5 may miss out on - 

 

Call of Duty - Yearly title

Overwatch

Diablo

Elderscrolls

Fallout

Doom

Wolfenstein

 

And all the various other projects the studios have in the works.

 

And when you also look at Sony's lineup of exclusives compared to last gen, they also lost The Show as a big yearly exclusive.  

 

This is a pretty drastic departure from the Xbox One vs PS4 days when consumers objectively look at both pieces of hardware and need to decide, if they in fact can only afford one and don't game on PC.

 

 

That's a pretty significant hit to Sony's third-party support! Assuming Microsoft doesn't keep these games multi-plat and just watch the money roll in from all the various platforms. 

 

On a personal note, I just realized how little this buy-out is going to effect (affect?) me. That's a short but significant list of franchises that...I simply do not play. This is kind of a big deal for the industry, with a lot of chaos happening in the streets...and I'm just looking out my window watching it all while sipping tea. :p 

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AbsolutSurgen

AbsolutSurgen

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13 hours ago, Ghost_MH said:

 

We don't know actual sales numbers, just dollar amounts. Nintendo doesn't report on digital sales, so even those monthly lists with top sellers are only including Switch retail sales. A ton of inexpensive indies are selling and, very likely, selling well. It just doesn't mean much to Nintendo since their 30% on indies didn't amount to much when their 100% on their games are burning up the charts.

 

@TwinIon is right on the math. If only a quarter of their revenue is on digital sales and half of that is from games that are digital only, you need to figure out how much of that 12% is from indie titles. Do that while keeping in mind that 12% includes Fortnite.

 

Importance to customers <> to Nintendo's revenue.

Nintendo only keeps 20-30% of revenue on 3rd party games, 100% on first party.  (And their % margin on the 3rd party games should be significantly higher, due to not having to cover any development costs.)  His math doesn't account for that.

6 minutes ago, GameDadGrant said:

 

LOL! Scarily enough, there are some people out there that actually, truly believe that. 

 

It's been my experience that the pre-teens (and teens) play Fortnite on either a tablet or some other portable "PC" kind of device. Laptop or something like that, assuming they don't have their own gaming PC in their bedroom. 

 

And of course, everyone knows that the Switch is only for mature games, for mature gamers such as myself. :p 

Scarily enough there are people that I know that did exactly that (buying Switch for their pre-teens), and had them play Fortnite (and other FTP games).  Many kids don't have their own laptop -- and Switch is relatively affordable relative to buying your kid a dedicated tablet/laptop.  

 

 

 

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crispy4000

crispy4000

Posted
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21 minutes ago, GameDadGrant said:

On a personal note, I just realized how little this buy-out is going to effect (affect?) me. That's a short but significant list of franchises that...I simply do not play. This is kind of a big deal for the industry, with a lot of chaos happening in the streets...and I'm just looking out my window watching it all while sipping tea. :p 

 

I'm in a similar place.  Don't play CoD, haven't cared about Blizzard since Starcraft 2.  The few properties I am still interested in, Crash / Spyro / Tony Hawk, had their teams restructured into support studios for Blizzard and CoD work. :/  Maybe the buyout could change priorities a bit.

What I'm actually most looking forward to now is Microsoft E3 showings.  Not only do they have a gargantuan 1st party base to tap into, but Activision hasn't had a real presence at the show in years.  I'd love to see something (other than CoD) announced on stage by them.

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JPDunks4

JPDunks4

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12 minutes ago, GameDadGrant said:

 

That's a pretty significant hit to Sony's third-party support! Assuming Microsoft doesn't keep these games multi-plat and just watch the money roll in from all the various platforms. 

 

On a personal note, I just realized how little this buy-out is going to effect (affect?) me. That's a short but significant list of franchises that...I simply do not play. This is kind of a big deal for the industry, with a lot of chaos happening in the streets...and I'm just looking out my window watching it all while sipping tea. :p 

 

Well there is a much larger list of franchises, those were just the biggest that came to mind. 


Tony Hawk

Crash Bandicoot

World of Warcraft

Spyro

Dishonored

Prey

Wasteland

Outer Worlds

Hellblade

Prey

Evil Within

Guitar Hero

Geometry Wars

 

 

 

 

 

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Ghost_MH

Ghost_MH

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1 minute ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

Importance to customers <> to Nintendo's revenue.

Nintendo only keeps 20-30% of revenue on 3rd party games, 100% on first party.  (And their % margin on the 3rd party games should be significantly higher, due to not having to cover any development costs.)  His math doesn't account for that.

 

Scarily enough there are people that I know that did exactly that (buying Switch for their pre-teens), and had them play Fortnite (and other FTP games).  Many kids don't have their own laptop -- and Switch is relatively affordable relative to buying your kid a dedicated tablet/laptop. 

 

There is zero chance Nintendo makes more from that 30% cut than their 100% cut in their own games. Nintendo is one of the leanest companies in the entire industry. They pull in well over $1m per employee.

 

zippia-og-image.png

Nintendo Revenue - Zippia

WWW.ZIPPIA.COM
Nintendo's revenue is $15.5 Billion - Learn more about Nintendo's revenue by exploring their annual revenue, historical revenue, quarterly revenue, and revenue per employee.

 

They have 3,000 fewer employees than Activision Blizzard, 4,000 fewer than Epic, 12,000 fewer than Ubisoft. It's wild what can be done when you aren't run like Activision and pay their exec team enough to make them and they're families wealthy for generations. Kotick makes multiple times more than what Nadella over at Microsoft makes. Just dropping him, alone, would make this acquisition for Microsoft worth it.

 

Also, yes. The Switch is a very popular Fortnite console. Perhaps not in dollar amounts since the market there is generally cheaper, but all of Fortnite on the Switch is part of the 12% revenue that also encompasses all the indies.

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AbsolutSurgen

AbsolutSurgen

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Just now, Ghost_MH said:

 

There is zero chance Nintendo makes more from that 30% cut than their 100% cut in their own games. Nintendo is one of the leanest companies in the entire industry. They pull in well over $1m per employee.

 

zippia-og-image.png

Nintendo Revenue - Zippia

WWW.ZIPPIA.COM
Nintendo's revenue is $15.5 Billion - Learn more about Nintendo's revenue by exploring their annual revenue, historical revenue, quarterly revenue, and revenue per employee.

 

They have 3,000 fewer employees than Activision Blizzard, 4,000 fewer than Epic, 12,000 fewer than Ubisoft. It's wild what can be done when you aren't run like Activision and pay their exec team enough to make them and they're families wealthy for generations. Kotick makes multiple times more than what Nadella over at Microsoft makes. Just dropping him, alone, would make this acquisition for Microsoft worth it.

 

Also, yes. The Switch is a very popular Fortnite console. Perhaps not in dollar amounts since the market there is generally cheaper, but all of Fortnite on the Switch is part of the 12% revenue that also encompasses all the indies.

Nintendo's revenue is 30% of the MSRP on a 3rd party game.  Their margin on that is probably close to 90%.

 

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SuperSpreader

SuperSpreader

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2 minutes ago, Dre801 said:

A 2+ trillion dollar company vs. 160 billion dollar company.  Sony's pockets just aren't anywhere near as deep.  They'd better acquire what they can.  MS probably isn't done.

 

Companies like EA spent the last ~25 years buying companies and closing them and now the game is buy up all the talent and keep them from the competition. Imagine if EA hadn't been so short sighted for some short gains, they'd be so powerful right now. Now they're stuck revisiting "unsuccessful franchises."

 

 

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crispy4000

crispy4000

Posted
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1 hour ago, JPDunks4 said:

It was a smart time for Microsoft to announce this.  So many people still can't get a next gen console that may want one.  Now when you are looking at both boxes, you have to weigh the possibility that PS5 may miss out on - 

 

Call of Duty - Yearly title

Overwatch

Diablo

Elderscrolls

Fallout

Doom

Wolfenstein

 

And all the various other projects the studios have in the works.

 

And when you also look at Sony's lineup of exclusives compared to last gen, they also lost The Show as a big yearly exclusive.  

 

This is a pretty drastic departure from the Xbox One vs PS4 days when consumers objectively look at both pieces of hardware and need to decide, if they in fact can only afford one and don't game on PC.

 

 

Against better judgement, I'm holding out hope this will make PS5's easier to find soon. lol.

Until GPU prices cool, most people won't be able to afford being PC and console gamer both.  Or even to be on PC at all.  It's still far and away the best option for game choice, discounts, freebies and avoiding recurring fees ... but that all matters for less when the price of entry has skyrocketed.  I've been gungho on PC the entire PS4/XBO gen, but definitely feel pressured to find a console for the short-term.


I will miss the days of 'console wars' being about who makes the better exclusives with the studios they already have.  The rulebook has been entirely rewritten within the past 6 years.  There's benefits to change too, of course.

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Commissar SFLUFAN

Commissar SFLUFAN

Posted
Posted
12 minutes ago, Dre801 said:

A 2+ trillion dollar company vs. 160 billion dollar company.  Sony's pockets just aren't anywhere near as deep.  They'd better acquire what they can.  MS probably isn't done.

 

The most "reasonable" major publisher/developer acquisition target for Sony is Square-Enix (should they even be remotely interested in doing so).

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crispy4000

crispy4000

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17 minutes ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

 

The most "reasonable" major publisher/developer acquisition target for Sony is Square-Enix (should they even be remotely interested in doing so).

 

Absolutely.  But after seeing this, you'd have to wonder if Microsoft would make a better offer.

If I were in Sony's shoes, I'd look into a merger with bigger companies wanting a stake in their business.

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SuperSpreader

SuperSpreader

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3 minutes ago, crispy4000 said:

 

Probably.  In that case, it's high time for Google, Apple or Amazon to go shopping.

 

Google has shown they're incapable of creating content, they're a platform company and their creativity ends with Google Doodles. 

 

Amazon has games for a long time and haven't produced anything (no vision, poor corporate and upper management)

 

Apple could create games for their universe (dare I say meta? No. I don't.) But I don't know that Apple understands the value of gaming like they understand film/tv. 

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Mercury33

Mercury33

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Sort of related. I didn’t realize WoW was down under 1 million monthly users. Or around there. I assumed it was still

chugging along. FF14 really was that WoW killer everyone was predicting for 20 years. I’m assuming MS might make WoW subscriptions part of gamepass to try and jump start it again. 

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The def star

The def star

Posted
Posted
10 minutes ago, SuperSpreader said:

Sony + Square-Enix + Sega + Capcom + Konami + Bandai Namco I could see. Maybe throw in Samsung or Toshiba. But I don't think the large companies would allow others to control them due to pride. (Toshiba/Samsung/Sony)

 

And what would you be buying? Sonic, Street Fighter, and Metal Gear? Way to win 1996 and 1998.

Street Fighter and Final Fantasy are already exclusives so Xbox wouldn't really be losing anything :p 

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JPDunks4

JPDunks4

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23 minutes ago, Mercury33 said:

Sort of related. I didn’t realize WoW was down under 1 million monthly users. Or around there. I assumed it was still

chugging along. FF14 really was that WoW killer everyone was predicting for 20 years. I’m assuming MS might make WoW subscriptions part of gamepass to try and jump start it again. 

 

I think WoW has been dying pretty steadily for awhile now.  Lack of new content along with a host of other issues.

 

MS did say a reason they bought Activision is they saw their roadmap and saw a lot of new exciting things.

 

Imagine a legitimate WoW successor with updated engine/graphics exclusive to Xbox Console and PC.

 

I think WoW will be included as a Game Pass Ultimate Sub.

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crispy4000

crispy4000

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33 minutes ago, SuperSpreader said:

 

Google has shown they're incapable of creating content, they're a platform company and their creativity ends with Google Doodles. 

 

Amazon has games for a long time and haven't produced anything (no vision, poor corporate and upper management)

 

Apple could create games for their universe (dare I say meta? No. I don't.) But I don't know that Apple understands the value of gaming like they understand film/tv. 


There’s issues with all of them, yeah, but nothing an experienced party with an established business couldn’t address.  It’s more a question if they want in badly enough seeing the steps MS is taking.

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