Three-quarters of public comments want Microsoft to take over Activision Blizzard

[midian182]

In brief: It's no secret that Sony is vehemently against Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard, but how does the public feel about it? About three-quarters of people in the UK who commented on the merger are in favor of the Redmond firm buying the gaming giant.

The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is one of the global monopoly watchdogs that is still investigating the $68.7 billion Microsoft/Activision Blizzard deal. The agency said in September that the merger could lead to competition concerns within the video game industry. This led to the CMA opening an extended stage 2 phase of its probe in which the acquisition faces increased scrutiny.

Part of the CMA inquiry involved collecting public comments over two weeks in October. The regulator has now revealed that it received around 2,600 emails, though about 500 were discounted because "they contained abusive content (with no other substantive content), or were blank, unintelligible, stated to be from non-UK consumers, or not in English."

Of the remaining 2,100 emails, around three-quarters were broadly in favor of the merger, and around a quarter were broadly against it.

Some of the views expressed in favor of the deal point out that Sony and Nintendo are stronger than Microsoft in console gaming, and the merger will help the Windows maker to compete more closely against them. This echoes Microsoft's own arguments for why the deal should go ahead.

Other pro-deal comments include claims that Microsoft would not make Activision games Xbox/PC exclusive as the company would lose significant revenue. Again, Microsoft has made this same argument to regulators.

"The Merger is a reaction to Sony's business model for PlayStation, which has historically involved securing exclusive content or early access to popular cross-platform gaming franchises, such as Final Fantasy and Silent Hill," wrote another pro-merger commentator.

Not everyone was in favor of the deal. Some of the 25% comments against it worried that it would set a harmful precedent in the gaming industry of acquiring large publishers rather than encouraging organic growth, which some would say is already the case.

Other anti-acquisition commentators say that despite promises otherwise, Microsoft will make Call of Duty exclusive to Xbox, just as it did with Bethesda after it acquired ZeniMax Media. It may also give Microsoft a total monopoly in the cloud gaming space it already dominates, preventing competitors from entering the market.

The CMA is scheduled to release its final report on the acquisition by March 1, 2023.

Although more of the UK public seems to favor the deal, Microsoft is facing a US lawsuit brought by ten gamers to block the acquisition over fears it will create a monopoly in the video game industry. The suit comes a couple of weeks after the FTC also sued Microsoft to stop the deal.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/97051-three-quarters-public-comments-want-microsoft-take-over.html

 

[Puiu]

And the majority of them don't even know what Blizzard is. Stupid survey is stupid survey.

 

[Morphine Child]

And the majority of them don't even know what Blizzard is. Stupid survey is stupid survey.

At the moment Microsoft is much nicer to gamers than Blizzard so I also hope it happens.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Anyone who thinks there is some great cabal of conspiracies to create megacorporations that take away the rights of people?

Look at this result. 75% of the people are in favor of a trillion dollar megacorporation absorbing one of the largest video game publishers.

This is what the average person thinks is a good thing.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Yeah, there's no chance whatsoever that Microsoft isn't behind this. I mean, that couldn't ever happen, eh?

 

[m4a4]

If Sony didn't keep screwing myself and other friends over with the timed exclusives (one of the main ones being CoD), I might care more.

But at this point, I'd rather see CoD on Gamepass (which is blocked from happening purely by Sony). Then I wouldn't have to worry about maybe dropping $80 on a yearly game franchise that I might play on and off.

With this acquisition, maybe Sony would finally have to answer MS's Gamepass with something less insulting than what they announced recently (which is late to the game while also being underwhelming). And answer MS's porting to PC with more timely releases.

Sony has been resting on their laurels this whole generation (and they've been actively trying to hold things back, like with cross-play). So, I want to see them need to care.

 

[trparky]

You can't do much worse than the asshats that are in charge of them already.

 

[kira setsu]

Meh, Sony isn't doing much other than complaining and probably making another version of tlou.

So if microsoft wants to burn tons of cash to build up gamepass and whatever else they want then why not?

Sony is sitting on a bunch of cool games, devs and tech and seem unwilling to push any of it, they have lots of old games they could use one of those devs on to make a CoD rival(*bungie*). They have an honestly awesome controller that I wish worked decently on pc.

Sure, they're not gonna win a money tossing contest against microsoft but damn they could at least do better than complain and actually try to compete with what they do have.

 

[R00sT3R]

CoD free on Gamepass is all they're thinking about.

 

[Xallisto]

Sorry but Sony has brought this upon itself, this is only their own philosophy turned against them.

 

[brucek]

I give Microsoft a 0% chance of obtaining a monopoly on gaming, the biggest chunk of which is on mobile and in which MS is currently not a player at all. And wasn't it just recently there were threatened anti-trust suits against Valve/Steam? They can't both be right.

Meanwhile, when it comes to consoles, I feel Sony has been far less friendly to gamers, pumping out plenty of exclusives for their consoles, often being the sole holdout for server cross-play, and still not even being able to make enough PS5s to satisfy demand two years after launch.

Compare to Microsoft, whose Game Pass is excellent, and is happy to ensure a lot of their titles run on both PC and Xbox, and is the only platform left in town happy to let developers sell direct for a 0% cut (on the PC side at least.)

Then there's the cherry on top, which is that a lot of gamers would be pretty excited to see the top layer of Activision Blizzard management replaced.

Any government agency who is favoring Sony (and more subtly, Apple & Google via their mobile stores) over Microsoft has a lot of explaining to do to gaming consumers, who are they people they are supposed to be protecting.

 

[SimonMetcalf]

Anyone who thinks there is some great cabal of conspiracies to create megacorporations that take away the rights of people?

Look at this result. 75% of the people are in favor of a trillion dollar megacorporation absorbing one of the largest video game publishers.

This is what the average person thinks is a good thing.

It says more about Activision-Blizzard than it does Microsoft: that most people want someone, anyone, to take them over. No one else could be worse, well except EA or possibly Ubisoft I suppose.

It says a lot about how bad Activision is that, relatively, Microsoft are the good guys in gaming. Activision/Ubisoft/EA don’t get my money. It goes to quality indie devs.

 

[NintPlayBox]

The people has spoken!
Let the merger begin!

 

[GettCouped]

I hope this doesn't happen. The constant consolidation of businesses via acquisitions and mergers is bad for the consumer.

 

[BigRedPDX]

It's apparent most of the people over there either forgot or don't know about Microsoft's previous monopoly lawsuits.

 

[dangh]

Ms already taking about closing some existing ip like elder scrolls 6 and people forgetting it was ms who started subscription for online gaming and 3rd party exclusives deals (tomb raider anyone?)
There is only one reason company is pumping billions into gaming business: to make customers pay trillions back and gain monopoly.
In no way consolidating number of huge publishers under one megacorporation is good for consumer.
And voting? Lets vote if musk should give all his money to random tweeter users, 1000 per head.
Sorry, this is no solution. Mob making important decisions do not end well...

 

[axiomatic13]

I agree that monopolies are bad but the culture at Activision/Blizzard is not changing and if Microsoft were to buy them that would stop much faster.

 

[Julnor]

I don't understand why all of a sudden only now are console exclusives such a bad thing. This stuff has been going on forever.

I don't think you can really have a monopoly in entertainment, but if you can, regulators need to be looking at the music and film industry first. And also social media and yes big tech companies, MS should be looked at, but so should Google, and much less for gaming but far more for privacy and other tech consolidation they've done. Gaming is the least of my concerns. There are always more studios popping up, and most of the best games are indies these days anyway.

 

[m4a4]

I don't understand why all of a sudden only now are console exclusives such a bad thing. This stuff has been going on forever.

They've always been a bad thing for consumers, but it helped sustain gaming on consoles (because of distribution and rising popularity), so it was tolerated. And then up until recently, it was hard to port to multiple consoles without a lot of time/money (so, multi-platform games were far less common).
It's just that with things being much easier to be interconnected (and as digital as things are now), artificial walled gardens are looking less and less appealing (and a lot of us consumers want to see those walls get removed).

 

[Hexic]

At the moment Microsoft is much nicer to gamers than Blizzard so I also hope it happens.

I never thought I'd see the day where I read this, and it's true. Sad times for the video game industry when a company like Blizzard is in the straights they've put themselves into.

 

[Puiu]

At the moment Microsoft is much nicer to gamers than Blizzard so I also hope it happens.

It's still Activision. No ammount of MS copium will change that

 

[Morphine Child]

It's still Activision. No ammount of MS copium will change that

Well worse it cannot be. So call me optimistic if there's a slight chance for improvement.