<story><title>Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard</title><url>https://news.microsoft.com/2022/01/18/microsoft-to-acquire-activision-blizzard-to-bring-the-joy-and-community-of-gaming-to-everyone-across-every-device/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>cletus</author><text>This is an overly rosy view of Microsoft&amp;#x27;s moat (and acumen) IMHO.&lt;p&gt;For one, Microsoft completely missed out on the mobile revolution.&lt;p&gt;For another, look at Mixer. This was there attempt to clone Twitch. They threw a bunch of money at it and quickly gave up. To me this was insane. Streaming has shown to be great marketing for games and I never thought they&amp;#x27;d give up so quickly and right before the new Xbox launch.&lt;p&gt;Imagine if Mixer streamers had early access to the new console and titles? And drops? Viewers absolutely love drops.&lt;p&gt;What if the Xbox Game Pass included a Mixer sub like Amazon Prime does with Twitch Prime?&lt;p&gt;To me this just showed they have absolutely no idea what they&amp;#x27;re doing.&lt;p&gt;I mean, look at how much money they&amp;#x27;ve thrown at Bing.</text></item><item><author>curiousllama</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s wild how Microsoft has been able to vertically integrate gaming.&lt;p&gt;They now own the distribution (Xbox Cloud Gaming, Xbox Game Pass), the games (Call of Duty, WoW, Starcraft + what they owned before), the OS (Windows, Xbox), the hardware (Xbox, many PCs), and the back end compute (Azure). The only thing they&amp;#x27;re missing, the network bandwidth, is mostly a commodity anyway.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s a heck of a moat.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cwkoss</author><text>I think &amp;quot;the mobile revolution&amp;quot; is a joke and never materialized. 95+% of mobile games are unoriginal clones with layers of mechanisms to reduce fun unless the user pays.  People who enjoy games have largely abandoned mobile, save a handful of decent titles that were ported from other platforms.&lt;p&gt;Mobile-first gamers are: people (mostly kids) who are so naive about games they will accept garbage (or cant afford a better gaming system) and whales who enjoy spending large amounts of money to move up the leaderboards.&lt;p&gt;Mobile gaming C-level&amp;#x27;s loved talking about the mobile revolution for a decade, but I really think it was all optimistic nonsense in service of their fundraising.</text></comment>
<story><title>Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard</title><url>https://news.microsoft.com/2022/01/18/microsoft-to-acquire-activision-blizzard-to-bring-the-joy-and-community-of-gaming-to-everyone-across-every-device/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>cletus</author><text>This is an overly rosy view of Microsoft&amp;#x27;s moat (and acumen) IMHO.&lt;p&gt;For one, Microsoft completely missed out on the mobile revolution.&lt;p&gt;For another, look at Mixer. This was there attempt to clone Twitch. They threw a bunch of money at it and quickly gave up. To me this was insane. Streaming has shown to be great marketing for games and I never thought they&amp;#x27;d give up so quickly and right before the new Xbox launch.&lt;p&gt;Imagine if Mixer streamers had early access to the new console and titles? And drops? Viewers absolutely love drops.&lt;p&gt;What if the Xbox Game Pass included a Mixer sub like Amazon Prime does with Twitch Prime?&lt;p&gt;To me this just showed they have absolutely no idea what they&amp;#x27;re doing.&lt;p&gt;I mean, look at how much money they&amp;#x27;ve thrown at Bing.</text></item><item><author>curiousllama</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s wild how Microsoft has been able to vertically integrate gaming.&lt;p&gt;They now own the distribution (Xbox Cloud Gaming, Xbox Game Pass), the games (Call of Duty, WoW, Starcraft + what they owned before), the OS (Windows, Xbox), the hardware (Xbox, many PCs), and the back end compute (Azure). The only thing they&amp;#x27;re missing, the network bandwidth, is mostly a commodity anyway.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s a heck of a moat.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>redisman</author><text>They tried with the failed Windows phone. I think after that they wanted to stay out and focus on their strengths. Besides this purchase gives them King - of Candy Crush fame. So now they own one of the biggest mobile game devs.</text></comment>