HW News - Microsoft Buys Activision Blizzard for 68.7B, NVIDIA Annual GPUs, Sony PS5 'Slim'
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Date: 2023-10-14
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Comments and reviews: 20
eddiehimself
Steve, I think your content is great and extremely insightful and well thought out. But I think the concerns of industry consolidation regarding the Microsoft ABK deal are somewhat overblown. Even with this acquisition, Microsoft still owns fewer IPs than Tencent or Embracer group. But because the latter two have become behemoths by slowly buying out individual studios and relatively smaller publishers in a piecemeal way, they end up flying under the radar.
But the most important thing here as far as I'm concerned is barrier to entry. If this was a deal that involved the manufacturer of commercial airliners, satellites (or in the case of Arm Holdings, CPU architecture development), I would be _deeply_ concerned. But video games have the lowest barrier to entry of virtually any technology-based business. Literally anyone with a PC can program a game, put it on a platform like Steam, and it might end up being a huge success.
The final thing I would say is that the video game industry (at least when it comes to AAA games) is already quite frankly in a shambles. We are constantly being given half-baked, poorly-optimised games that are using things like DLSS as a crutch for poor performance (as you yourself have commented on numerous times) with price hikes to hardware and games thanks to corporate gaslighting about inflation and rising costs. Quite frankly, what the industry could do with at this point is another Video Game Crash like what happened 40 years ago, so whoever's left will actually start making good quality games again and not just charging people out of the nose for games that are broken at launch and they'll fix them later with patches.
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Steve, I think your content is great and extremely insightful and well thought out. But I think the concerns of industry consolidation regarding the Microsoft ABK deal are somewhat overblown. Even with this acquisition, Microsoft still owns fewer IPs than Tencent or Embracer group. But because the latter two have become behemoths by slowly buying out individual studios and relatively smaller publishers in a piecemeal way, they end up flying under the radar.
But the most important thing here as far as I'm concerned is barrier to entry. If this was a deal that involved the manufacturer of commercial airliners, satellites (or in the case of Arm Holdings, CPU architecture development), I would be _deeply_ concerned. But video games have the lowest barrier to entry of virtually any technology-based business. Literally anyone with a PC can program a game, put it on a platform like Steam, and it might end up being a huge success.
The final thing I would say is that the video game industry (at least when it comes to AAA games) is already quite frankly in a shambles. We are constantly being given half-baked, poorly-optimised games that are using things like DLSS as a crutch for poor performance (as you yourself have commented on numerous times) with price hikes to hardware and games thanks to corporate gaslighting about inflation and rising costs. Quite frankly, what the industry could do with at this point is another Video Game Crash like what happened 40 years ago, so whoever's left will actually start making good quality games again and not just charging people out of the nose for games that are broken at launch and they'll fix them later with patches.
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TheSteelRodent
Honestly thought MS had already bought Activision, didn't know it was in limbo, but buying every game publisher under the sun is the opposite of diversity .
Also, the Unity thing - they need to get rid of the runtime fees. It's not just absurd, it also discourages developers from making good games on Unity, because if you make something people want to play and they then play a lot, you will have to pay an arm and leg to Unity just because you made something other than the usual crap that uses that engine. Unreal isn't just a competing engine, it's still far superior and performs better - even a poorly optimized game on Unreal can be smooth with stable framerate, while the same lack of optimization on Unity would make it unplayable. Unity still has numerous performance issues inherent to its clunky design, because it was made for 2D and had 3D slapped on top (which is also why they use XZY coordinates instead of the correct XYZ), and these performance issues have only gotten worse with Unity 4 and 5. They really should be working on improving the engine itself instead of focusing on ripping off their own customers.
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Honestly thought MS had already bought Activision, didn't know it was in limbo, but buying every game publisher under the sun is the opposite of diversity .
Also, the Unity thing - they need to get rid of the runtime fees. It's not just absurd, it also discourages developers from making good games on Unity, because if you make something people want to play and they then play a lot, you will have to pay an arm and leg to Unity just because you made something other than the usual crap that uses that engine. Unreal isn't just a competing engine, it's still far superior and performs better - even a poorly optimized game on Unreal can be smooth with stable framerate, while the same lack of optimization on Unity would make it unplayable. Unity still has numerous performance issues inherent to its clunky design, because it was made for 2D and had 3D slapped on top (which is also why they use XZY coordinates instead of the correct XYZ), and these performance issues have only gotten worse with Unity 4 and 5. They really should be working on improving the engine itself instead of focusing on ripping off their own customers.
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Phlogistan
Thanks Steve!
Honestly talking about the history of Blizzard games and not mentioning StarCraft is just a gut punch. The first and biggest e-sport completely abandoned by Blizzard two or so years ago... It is VERY sad and reminiscent of Red Dead Redemption 2/RDR2 Online. Take Two/Rockstar went out to get cigarettes three years ago and never came back....
As for your representation of the Unity situation..... SPOT ON SIR.
Pod People, Mind Flayer, Puppeteer ... definitely something along those lines....
As for Unity wasssisname Ricckyticky tallo..... yeah... that choice piece of work will have to just make do with his zillion dollar golden parachute just like the vampire Bobby Kotick.... shudder
The damage those two alone have done to gaming over the last couple decades is just .... UHG... If there are war-crimes against gaming those two would be somewhere between Dresden and the Holodomor.
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Thanks Steve!
Honestly talking about the history of Blizzard games and not mentioning StarCraft is just a gut punch. The first and biggest e-sport completely abandoned by Blizzard two or so years ago... It is VERY sad and reminiscent of Red Dead Redemption 2/RDR2 Online. Take Two/Rockstar went out to get cigarettes three years ago and never came back....
As for your representation of the Unity situation..... SPOT ON SIR.
Pod People, Mind Flayer, Puppeteer ... definitely something along those lines....
As for Unity wasssisname Ricckyticky tallo..... yeah... that choice piece of work will have to just make do with his zillion dollar golden parachute just like the vampire Bobby Kotick.... shudder
The damage those two alone have done to gaming over the last couple decades is just .... UHG... If there are war-crimes against gaming those two would be somewhere between Dresden and the Holodomor.
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Dave
nVidia doing yearly releases? Revolutionary... literally we are going back in time to revolutionary times, when they used to do yearly releases... So egh.... whats new here? They are still screwing the customer.
Well it's good to see people catching up with the idea of right to ownership, I encountered this HARD with the PS3 where they took away features and made the console worse. Stuff I had paid for. It was clear I did not own my hardware. It has been a few years and console generations but hey at least people are catching on. You own nothing and you will be happy about it.
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nVidia doing yearly releases? Revolutionary... literally we are going back in time to revolutionary times, when they used to do yearly releases... So egh.... whats new here? They are still screwing the customer.
Well it's good to see people catching up with the idea of right to ownership, I encountered this HARD with the PS3 where they took away features and made the console worse. Stuff I had paid for. It was clear I did not own my hardware. It has been a few years and console generations but hey at least people are catching on. You own nothing and you will be happy about it.
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IslandRock
In my experience, another problem with AMD setting a high MSRP and dropping it later, is that it might take a while for the new pricing to propagate to non-US markets, if a price drop occurs at all. Retailers have may have stock purchased under the previous pricing. A chicken and egg effect where consumers won't buy their current stock at the old pricing, causing the retailers not to replenish their stock at lower prices may occur. This assumes that the discounted pricing does not apply to old stock. Obviously anecdotal, I suppose other non-US markets may be more reactive.
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In my experience, another problem with AMD setting a high MSRP and dropping it later, is that it might take a while for the new pricing to propagate to non-US markets, if a price drop occurs at all. Retailers have may have stock purchased under the previous pricing. A chicken and egg effect where consumers won't buy their current stock at the old pricing, causing the retailers not to replenish their stock at lower prices may occur. This assumes that the discounted pricing does not apply to old stock. Obviously anecdotal, I suppose other non-US markets may be more reactive.
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RedPillAlways
Good for them. They won't be missed Everything Craptivision does is Trash Microsoft wont make that any better since most of Xbox Microsoft does is Trash.. Online multiplayer and games-as-a-DISservice garbage can stay over there..
Sorry PC I know its y'all main jam..
Keep REAL GAMES that PC gamers Cry an can't wait for(years After Release) with PS an Nintendo aka the Biggest an Best Gaming Platforms where REAL GAMES are played.
The gaming industry wasn't built off Online multiplayer and games-as-a-DISservice but it will be destroyed by it so good luck.
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Good for them. They won't be missed Everything Craptivision does is Trash Microsoft wont make that any better since most of Xbox Microsoft does is Trash.. Online multiplayer and games-as-a-DISservice garbage can stay over there..
Sorry PC I know its y'all main jam..
Keep REAL GAMES that PC gamers Cry an can't wait for(years After Release) with PS an Nintendo aka the Biggest an Best Gaming Platforms where REAL GAMES are played.
The gaming industry wasn't built off Online multiplayer and games-as-a-DISservice but it will be destroyed by it so good luck.
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Ardgal
Unity's change is not the right change , they've done irreparable damage to their trustworthiness as an entity, and the only way to heal that is to make sure that their terms of searvice clearly state that they cannot be changed with a one-sided press release and that every future version of Unity would also use the same terms of service. Using a game engine is often about the long term prospects, as in, ensuring that if you spend your time, money, and effort to training staff to write on the engine today, those skills are still useful to you in 5-10 years.
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Unity's change is not the right change , they've done irreparable damage to their trustworthiness as an entity, and the only way to heal that is to make sure that their terms of searvice clearly state that they cannot be changed with a one-sided press release and that every future version of Unity would also use the same terms of service. Using a game engine is often about the long term prospects, as in, ensuring that if you spend your time, money, and effort to training staff to write on the engine today, those skills are still useful to you in 5-10 years.
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LS
So what happens when Xbox has all these publishers and brands and game franchises and STILL plays second or third fiddle to Sony and Nintendo? How much will get cut, canceled or sold off when Microsoft has to cut losses? I admit, Xbox for PC is a really solid product and I use it. But I haven't owned an Xbox console since the OG Xbox. They will never get me to buy another console. I just don't care that much. But if they are buying up all these games, they expect people to buy the games. And for that, they will need to sell more consoles. Or else.
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So what happens when Xbox has all these publishers and brands and game franchises and STILL plays second or third fiddle to Sony and Nintendo? How much will get cut, canceled or sold off when Microsoft has to cut losses? I admit, Xbox for PC is a really solid product and I use it. But I haven't owned an Xbox console since the OG Xbox. They will never get me to buy another console. I just don't care that much. But if they are buying up all these games, they expect people to buy the games. And for that, they will need to sell more consoles. Or else.
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QuantumS1ngularity
AMD really struck gold with the 5800X3D. It's been 18 months since i bought mine and to this day it performs rock solid. I still remember the day when it blew my mind away the first time i launched Cyberpunk 2077 with it and then ACC with my old GTX 1070. I just hope that they will keep that excellent work with the 3nm Ryzen 8000 CPUs, because that's where i plan to join the AM5 platform, of course again with the equivalent of the 5800X3D/7800X3D.
And the game analogy for Unity - absolutely EPIC. Pure gold this one.
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AMD really struck gold with the 5800X3D. It's been 18 months since i bought mine and to this day it performs rock solid. I still remember the day when it blew my mind away the first time i launched Cyberpunk 2077 with it and then ACC with my old GTX 1070. I just hope that they will keep that excellent work with the 3nm Ryzen 8000 CPUs, because that's where i plan to join the AM5 platform, of course again with the equivalent of the 5800X3D/7800X3D.
And the game analogy for Unity - absolutely EPIC. Pure gold this one.
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Tyla
Super pumped about MS buying Activision, everybody got to realize MS is behind Sony and Nintendo in market share so them buying Activision is only going to help the market compete. Also considering how horrible the corporate rot was at Activision i have no doubt MS is going to clean house, say what you want about MS but they don't play with that shit that was going on at Activision. Excited to see them revive old titles and see what they can do with games like Overwatch and even Diablo that are really struggling right now.
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Super pumped about MS buying Activision, everybody got to realize MS is behind Sony and Nintendo in market share so them buying Activision is only going to help the market compete. Also considering how horrible the corporate rot was at Activision i have no doubt MS is going to clean house, say what you want about MS but they don't play with that shit that was going on at Activision. Excited to see them revive old titles and see what they can do with games like Overwatch and even Diablo that are really struggling right now.
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0lfan
The palpable disappointment in execs when they finally realize that AI can never create, only ever predict what comes next based on what it's been trained with You want to write great software, something new, innovative? You still have to find, train and motivate great people. They can hand off repetitive tasks to AI systems and get more stuff done, but they will be the ones you owe your success to, they will get sick, go on vacation, even leave if you mistreat them. Damn, that sucks, and boy don't they want to hear it.
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The palpable disappointment in execs when they finally realize that AI can never create, only ever predict what comes next based on what it's been trained with You want to write great software, something new, innovative? You still have to find, train and motivate great people. They can hand off repetitive tasks to AI systems and get more stuff done, but they will be the ones you owe your success to, they will get sick, go on vacation, even leave if you mistreat them. Damn, that sucks, and boy don't they want to hear it.
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Fatih
We have heard a lot of rumors about AMD's next gen RDNA won't have high end gaming gpu, just like RX 5000 series was. If these rumors are correct and AMD won't have a high end card, Nvidia has no reason to launch better gaming cards do they? It doesn't make sense for a company to launch better products unless there's competition. They want to sell as many 4000 and 3000 series cards they can. They might launch 4080 Ti and 4090 Ti but a 5000 series will kill all 3000 and 4000 series sales which is bad for Nvidia.
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We have heard a lot of rumors about AMD's next gen RDNA won't have high end gaming gpu, just like RX 5000 series was. If these rumors are correct and AMD won't have a high end card, Nvidia has no reason to launch better gaming cards do they? It doesn't make sense for a company to launch better products unless there's competition. They want to sell as many 4000 and 3000 series cards they can. They might launch 4080 Ti and 4090 Ti but a 5000 series will kill all 3000 and 4000 series sales which is bad for Nvidia.
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Walkir
It's always so weird to see Steve complain about Sony losing the right of non-competition. Not using these words, of course, but complaining MS now stands a chance is some sort of monopoly is ridiculous.
I can't take consoles serious, think MS is evil and go by the market share data discussed in the court case. After going through all of that... yeah. Rule of law won, be glad not to be an open banana republic in the US.
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It's always so weird to see Steve complain about Sony losing the right of non-competition. Not using these words, of course, but complaining MS now stands a chance is some sort of monopoly is ridiculous.
I can't take consoles serious, think MS is evil and go by the market share data discussed in the court case. After going through all of that... yeah. Rule of law won, be glad not to be an open banana republic in the US.
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Guiorgy
1 more thing I'd have mentioned: If you have an AMD 7000 series GPU and play Counter Strike 2, AMD released a new driver update with Anti Lag+, the use of which results in a VAC ban. It is recommended to make sure it is not enabled (for CS2) until Valve and AMD release fix the issue.
Edit: Looks like AMD rolled back the update (23.10.1) for now, so if you hadn't updated your drivers recently, you should be fine.
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1 more thing I'd have mentioned: If you have an AMD 7000 series GPU and play Counter Strike 2, AMD released a new driver update with Anti Lag+, the use of which results in a VAC ban. It is recommended to make sure it is not enabled (for CS2) until Valve and AMD release fix the issue.
Edit: Looks like AMD rolled back the update (23.10.1) for now, so if you hadn't updated your drivers recently, you should be fine.
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Tyla
Its kinda hilarious how some people are talking about MS being bad for them buying Activision while Sony is literally over here being the definition of anti-competitive with their prices and business practices (vertical stand for 30, killing 3rd party plates, etc) and also being a monopoly with the way they lock down their digital store, all stuff that has been going on for years. But yeah MS bad i guess am i right
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Its kinda hilarious how some people are talking about MS being bad for them buying Activision while Sony is literally over here being the definition of anti-competitive with their prices and business practices (vertical stand for 30, killing 3rd party plates, etc) and also being a monopoly with the way they lock down their digital store, all stuff that has been going on for years. But yeah MS bad i guess am i right
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CoinRingsUSA
Nvidia is shooting for yearly generational upgrades now? Well, since they are currently making a new gen every 3 years or so, and each gen is barely 10% faster than the last, that means we're going to see about a 3% increase with each generation from now on lol! I can't wait to spend 1200 per year on a new GPU that is only 3% better than the last gen!
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Nvidia is shooting for yearly generational upgrades now? Well, since they are currently making a new gen every 3 years or so, and each gen is barely 10% faster than the last, that means we're going to see about a 3% increase with each generation from now on lol! I can't wait to spend 1200 per year on a new GPU that is only 3% better than the last gen!
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itech
As if Blizzard Activision did not have enough issue. MS getting a hold of them just means they will cease to exits shortly. Just look at how well Starfield went under the umbrella of Micrshaft. It may have gotten a ton of sales based off of initial hype but it now has a ton of refunds on Steam and very very angry dissatisfied customers.
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As if Blizzard Activision did not have enough issue. MS getting a hold of them just means they will cease to exits shortly. Just look at how well Starfield went under the umbrella of Micrshaft. It may have gotten a ton of sales based off of initial hype but it now has a ton of refunds on Steam and very very angry dissatisfied customers.
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Felice
An initial high price on a card that's known to happen every time and then always come down is akin to a reverse auction, allowing people who want it now and have money to burn to supplement the R&D costs while people who wait get to spend less, and has the added benefit of making scalping much less feasible. It's a good thing.
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An initial high price on a card that's known to happen every time and then always come down is akin to a reverse auction, allowing people who want it now and have money to burn to supplement the R&D costs while people who wait get to spend less, and has the added benefit of making scalping much less feasible. It's a good thing.
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Dennis
While I do think that it is a shitty move from Sony to monopolzie the accessory market for the PS 5, there are some people who would prefer to buy their accessories from the console creator to make sure the accessory actually works as intended. These people are prepared to spend more money to get ease of mind.
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While I do think that it is a shitty move from Sony to monopolzie the accessory market for the PS 5, there are some people who would prefer to buy their accessories from the console creator to make sure the accessory actually works as intended. These people are prepared to spend more money to get ease of mind.
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M3PH
17:38 all version of counter strike have had this console variable and it has always had a valuie set. this is not abnormal. what is wierd is that it was set to 300 which is a little low for modern pc's. You have to remember the source 2 as an engine is just an iteration of source and gold source before that.
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17:38 all version of counter strike have had this console variable and it has always had a valuie set. this is not abnormal. what is wierd is that it was set to 300 which is a little low for modern pc's. You have to remember the source 2 as an engine is just an iteration of source and gold source before that.
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