In the latest unredacted document oopsie stemming from the US Federal Trade Commission’s efforts to stop Microsoft acqu…
Bring back anti-trust regulations. Microsoft has been trying to acquire anything they can get their hands on, and really should be dismantled on principle.
Yes, indeed. This is so obvious and my frustration is immeasurable when hearing that people are too ignorant to understand why this is really bad.
No it’s good! It’ll give them twice the power to make games and it’ll be better! They totally won’t just sit there with their monopoly, monopolies are good! Plus we still have Sony. Wait they want to buy Sony too? Even better!
Yayay, all my games on Microsoft©️ GamePass™️, wait what do you mean they increased the prices? I’m sure one of the competitors…oh
I’ve been repeatedly downvoted on here and on Reddit for pointing out that Microsoft clearly just wants to capture the market and wield their disproportionate amount of power (their money, pretty much monopolistic OS position, ever-growing IP, and strength to push DirectX over other standards, etc) as a weapon.
People really love Microsoft and won’t hear criticism of them.
People look at gamepass and think ooooh that’s great, such a good price. I’m sure they won’t ever jack up prices once they capture the market!
I’m sure it’s fine that MS has sole control over the graphics API pretty much all games use!
It’s fine that MS is spending dozens to hundreds of billions on buying publishers, because Sony bought one too (that’s a 15th the size)! And it’s fine that they’re making that stuff exclusive to their platforms!
It’s fine that Microsoft hurts open standards!
Etc.
I’m so damn tired of people carrying water for multi
billiontrillion dollar companies with immense history of anticompetitive and illegal behaviour.I get your point. You‘re not the only one schooling peeps on this. It’s highly frustrating.
Make sure to not repeat yourself a lot but make a blog, youtube channel, etc. Make your statements, put sources together to make it easy and logical and then just link to it.
The big problem democracy has is efficiency. People who actually know stuff burn out because they don’t accept that they might be right but not efficient. Don’t be that guy.
I‘m currently trying to build stuff up with mastodon but it’s still a wip.
Good luck to you.
I was watching this video this morning, and he points out how these leaks show a pattern of Microsoft basically wanting to buy up all of gaming (I also liked how he called Microsoft’s whole way of think about buying Nintendo as a bit of American imperialism). Folks like their Game Pass and don’t like Nintendo not giving a damn about trends or multiplayer or whatever and just going along doing their own thing, and think it would be a great idea for Microsoft to own them, and…no. Just, no.
This was before ABK, in fact around Zenimax acquisition time. After the excruciating process of ABK’s acquisition which also brought us highly costly leak, I think they won’t dare to buy a big player for now and no regulator would let that happen given it would be a horizontal acquisition if I understand that correctly.
The recent actiblizz situation has shown that Microsoft can do whatever they want, and no regulator will stop them. No regulator currently has teeth or a want to stop any aspect of big business, especially not tech. Thinking a regulator will say no to anything at this point is wishful at beat.
I mean it’s still stuck and CMA may still block it for all we know. Regulators definitely made them go through hoops for this one and it there’s a next one it’ll probably not go well after this.
So I would like to be on board with this. But if you look at every single regulator who even double taked, it was all about cloud. They don’t care about consolidation of media and they have no intention of stopping it.
I think they cared about it, saw the numbers, and realised the case can’t be made because of the current way market is setup. CMA initially wasn’t convinced but with correct calculations it got resolved. FTC actually didn’t make a big point over cloud but that this could destroy PlayStation, which also wasn’t justifiable with data. EU held similar opinions but felt it also is pro competitive given the number of IPs Sony holds.
But after ABK, I don’t think that case can be made anymore. With ABK the number of IPs and content becomes more competitive with PS and Nintendo, and they all kept saying this is a vertical merger, Nintendo or Sony wouldn’t, and thus wouldn’t be allowed.
if Microsoft buys Nintendo, Nintendo dies
So, support from Microsoft on Smash tournaments?
Only on Microsoft sanctioned tournaments. Which I highly doubt that would happen.
They’re doing a fine job killing themselves already.
Microsoft needs to fuck off.
im getting really tired of all of these MS acquisitions. I know the nintendo one is very unlikely, but i would be pissed as fuck to see valve swallowed up by this terrifying beast.
It would never happen as long as Gabe is still at the helm.
For sure. I hope he’s found a good successor that will keep Valve’s core values alive for years to come.
Valve isn’t any more likely than Nintendo, given you can’t buy shares because there are none, and it’s a money printing machine that would have a truly absurd value.
I’d like to think the Japanese government wouldn’t approve that.
Neither should the EU
Neither should the US, Australia or any other country that Nintendo or Microsoft trade in.
Didn’t they want to do this 2 decades ago also? The offer was laughed at.
Looks like the lads took it personally.
They misspelled Dwayne Johnson. Hah
Duane Johnson
MS wanted to buy Nintendo. The company that has so much money on hand that they are a noticable thing to the japanese banking sector?
Of all possible companies they were looking at buying? Heck, Sony might be more realistic by comparison, at least their gaming/console parts!
And of all the hubris to want to rock up to a company that is over 125 years old and still going strong to tell them you would know better how to run their company than them.
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Yup, anyone who responds like that gets a block.
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Market cap of Nintendo - 50 billion Market cap of Microsoft - 2.4 trillion
It’s really hard for humans to imagine things at that scale, but Microsoft is so many orders of magnitude larger than Nintendo that whatever Microsoft (and other mega tech companies like Apple and Google) does the entire global international finance system feels it.
Sony is worth more than twice as much as Nintendo.
Heck, Sony might be more realistic by comparison, at least their gaming/console parts!
I mean, judging from the quotes, even MS considered it pretty unlikely back when the email is sent.
What’s your point? Microsoft is easily several times bigger and is a “noticeable thing” in pretty much every country.
The email describes a hostile takeover: buy enough stock to own the board then pressure the company to sell.
Microsoft will buy my teapottery if anti-trust regulations don’t keep them in check. And, in today’s climate, I don’t believe for a moment that anybody will make a reasonable attempt to do so.
What the fuck, this will actually kill Nintendo. Aren’t they way too big to buy?
Microsoft is bigger.
Nintendo’s market cap is about $56.7 billion.
Microsoft’s market cap is $2.44 trillion, with $111 billion worth of cash (not equity, cash) in the bank.
Microsoft is 43 times bigger than Nintendo. They can pay for Nintendo with only cash, if they desire.
These trillion-dollar players are an order of magnitude larger than anyone around them. They can do what they want, same as how Apple ($2.8 trillion) can easily buy Disney ($150.5 billion) if they wished.
This isn’t an exact science, but you can use market cap to ballpark these things and get an idea of how much an acquisition would cost. For example, Twitter had a market cap of $31 billion in August 2022, and Elon bought it a few months later for $44 billion. That’s a 1.4x increase, so applying the same math buying all of Disney would “only” cost about $214 billion - which both Apple and Microsoft (and Google) could do. Nintendo would cost about $80 billion, which Microsoft could do without even taking out a loan.
The issue isn’t necessarily the price; it’s the regulators.
What is Microsoft even making money on these days?
googles
https://www.kamilfranek.com/microsoft-revenue-breakdown/
Azure, Office, and (still) Windows, apparently.
Only 8% of revenue is gaming. They sure do went to grow that.
Yeah, also they probably have no interest in being bought. I wouldn’t worry about what a greedy MS corpo wants in this regard
Xbox games are on PC. Playstation games are on PC. Nintendo is Nintendo. If Microsoft ever bought out Nintendo, Nintendo would disappear, effectively making consoles obsolete. People will still buy consoles, but they would be pissing away their money.
There will always be a market for consoles. If you buy a game, know for a fact that it works. If you have a PC, it can start to be obsolete, or your graphics card might not be supported, or your OS might not be patched, or…
There will also always be a market for PCs, because you can do things cheaper, and/or better than consoles.
While I don’t expect every single Xbox and PS owner to drop their preferred console in favor of PC, even though they should, those issues you listed as benefits of console over PC aren’t real. Consoles become obsolete just like PC hardware, your graphics card might not be supported is the same situation, your OS might not be patched is not an issue whatsoever. It’s just a shame that console owners think those things are issues.
But… you’re wrong though. They are issues.
PCs slowly drift out of support for games. Over the years, some, but not all, of AAA games just don’t work on your computer. Consoles have static generations where things either work or they don’t. This is the pro and the con of the PC.
You simply do not have that problem with a PS4, it works for PS4 games. If you want a game that is only released for the PS5, then you buy a PS5.
I’ve never had a game stop working, ports to PC occasionally break but I’ve never had one just quit being compatible. Hell I can boot up early 90’s games on my windows 10 machine right now right alongside early 2000’s, 2010’s, etc.
To do the same on console you’d have to have like five or six different console gens and their discs just laying around all over the place.
PCs over the years are home to new operating systems that kill off older standards that run games (dos support, 64 bit architecture, etc) but that happens once every 20 years. With console gaming, it happens once every 6 years. If I want to play Half-Life 2, I can. If I had a PS5 and wanted to play GTA San Andreas, I couldn’t.
Bad example on San Andreas. I have it on my PS5. And not the trilogy version.
But then again, I bought the PS4 version before the trilogy was released. So, I pull my opinion. Good example, dangblingus.
Xbox has backwards compatibility for games all the way back to the original Xbox. Not only is there backwards compatibility, but pretty much all those old games also get HDR support and some of the big ones like Red Dead Redemption and Mass Effect also got 4k textures for 10+ year old games, free of charge (don’t have to buy a remaster, etc)
I have a PC where I could (and regularly) play almost every single game ever made, from Pong to Elden Rings. If I bought a PS5 today, I could only play games exclusively made for PS5 (not many, mind you), this also means a lot of PS1, through PS4, games that have never been ported are unplayable on a PS5. On my PC however, I can comfortably play almost every single game from every single generation of PlayStation up to PS4. I can also play every single AAA game ever released in history. Something that the PS5 cannot do, it only plays PS5 games.
Completely ignoring that collectors preserve computer games the same way they do consoles, and just preserve a computer with the necessary requirements.
And both those computers and those consoles are subject to deterioration which has been a large argument towards backing up games through emulation. While you may never want to good luck finding a working Atari Jaguar CD, and that’s just one of the easier examples.
Nah man PC building is too much, I wanted to do it in my new place so I could run some emulators in my living room, thought I’d finally use Steam etc. but the prices to build are painful. I’ll take a console and go without retro gaming for a bit.
Heys guys, look! We’ve finally found him. The world’s most well-informed gamer!
O’ great Gamer, hallowed be thy name… please bless us peasants with yet another nugget of your immaculate gaming wisdom!
I primarily play PS consoles. I prefer the controller. With today’s technology and cross-platform play, I can still keep playing the controller that I like with friends I have developed over the years.
PC will be my way forward as I transition past this generation. I’ve been on Sony since the PS1 (I’m old). Plus, at least I can play the older PS1/2/3 titles on PC without a SUBSCRIPTION.
I’d love if they bought Nintendo, it would make me buy Xbox and whatever service I could use on a PC and Xbox. Their psn.
Nintendo suck. Their games get delayed, their consoles are mid. They literally only sell because of Mario and Zelda. That’s why they absolutely drip feed that content. The only reason we’re getting a new Mario Bros is because they’ll announce a new console next year and they can re release it. And charge full whack because they have a captive market.
At least if Microsoft had Mario we’d get regular releases of new Mario games. That’s all I want Nintendo for.
Their games get delayed because they actually finish them before release. They’re one of the last AAA publishers who still believe in quality control. This is a very bad take.
It’s not a very bad take, Sony does the same thing, we have 2 fully sledged open world Horizon Games and 2 incredible God of War games released in the time it’s taken Nintendo to announce a Mario Bros platformer for their flagship device. Literally the most Nintendo game ever and they couldn’t get one that wasn’t a port on to the Switch
Odd examples to pick, Horizon Forbidden West and God of War Ragnarok were both delayed and the first original Mario platformer for the switch came out in 2017 (Odyssey - if you think 3d Mario games aren’t platformers you haven’t played them). Nintendo has also been releasing tons of other games as well so it’s not like they’ve been doing nothing.
Also, to be fair, When you have a platform with 10 times the total sales (Wii U sold ~14m, the switch is at ~130m right now) it makes sense to port over the good games from the console no one owned. Mario Kart 8 deluxe, a game originally from the Wii U, has sold ~55m copies, which is about 4 times what the entire Wii U console sold. There’s a reason they kept doing it, and it’s because most of the Wii U titles were good games that people will enjoy which released on a dead platform.
If you’re going to criticize Nintendo, criticize actually valid things like the scummy price increases on the ports (not just the ports’ existence), the poor online system that costs up to $50 per year per account, and a legal team who goes after anyone doing anything that isn’t directly playing the game. To be clear, a Microsoft buyout probably wouldn’t change any of those things because it’s making them money. Look no further than American companies like Disney largely using the same strategies Nintendo does. Microsoft is no different.
To be fair, the Switch has Super Mario Maker 2, which is the definitive 2D Mario platformer. The only real advantage that Wonder has is that the game isn’t limited by the items in the game, and the trust that the levels are curated to be good. Otherwise Mario Maker is a superior product. It honestly feels weird to see Wonder being released at all.
Yeah I’m not sure if Wonder will be good, I mean probably because they have a high standard and all but still. I do think Maker is different in that the world design is unimportant, secret levels and Easter eggs etc. and there is zero curation. I actually gave up after a bit because I kept just getting ridiculous levels that were boring.
Wasn’t this a thing forever ago and didn’t Nintendo just laugh at them? They just had a super successful console and now have more successful IPs than ever, they would be straight up insane to sell a business that runs this good.
Nintendo is publicly traded, it may be the case that the board won’t have that much of a say.
Turned out well for Rareware…
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If Nintendo diversified its titles onto other platforms then they wouldn’t be in a position for an offer to come from Microsoft.
Can you imagine how popular key Nintendo titles would be on PC or under a game pass deal.
This was in 2020 they were thinking this, and it doesn’t seem like Nintendo was interested at all.
Microsoft offered to buy them back in 2000 or something, and got laughed at. Nintendo is not looking to be bought out. Nintendo does things its way and stays in its lane.
I honestly don’t have the faintest belief that Nintendo would ever take the deal. Sure they don’t diversify their platforms, but they also have the best cut from their platform.
None of that matters. They won’t ever sell because of pride. Their culture goes against it on every level. It won’t happen.
The only company I’d trust to buy Nintendo is Apple. But I’d rather that not happen
FUCK NO
Do you mind expanding on why you are opposed to it? To me, the companies have very similar values, especially the “we know what the consumer wants better than the consumer does” attitude and similar values toward being a walled garden with crafted experiences rather than openness.
I know that those things aren’t popular with those who hate apple because of its philosophies and those who think it’s morally correct to pirate Nintendo games; but from a purely business standpoint, Apple would be a much better steward of Nintendo’s IP
My primary concern is that Apple has a bad habit of taking anything that they buy and only making it available within the apple ecosystem. I’m not in the Apple ecosystem and do not wish to be. There are, of course, notable exceptions to this. Apple music comes to mind.
A very valid concern. Thank you.
The other concern I would have is that Apple hasn’t really dealt with physical media since like the install disc for either lion or snow leopard (can’t remember the last one you could go to Best Buy and buy an install DVD) so I’d be concerned they’d abandon dedicated gaming hardware completely or even if they did have an AppleTV like console, they’d have no support for physical media.
They have the opposite mindset when it comes to how they handle hardware. Nintendo targets the cheapest demographic, willing to use old technology if it meant turning profit., Apple targets the complete oppisite by always buying out bleeding edge TSMC nodes. The only thing they share in common is both sell at profit on hardware sales.
Why would you even type such a thing?
I would prefer no one bought Nintendo and they kept on doing what they do. They’ve been around for over 125 and you can still buy the hanafuda playing cards they started out making, so I’m pretty sure they know what they’re doing.
Bought one many years ago, it’s unexpectedly pricey for a 5cm paper card (48 cards). IIRC it’s their excuse is “traditional look”. The box is nice though.
I absolutely agree with you, the gaming industry is much stronger with Nintendo’s presence. I was just stating that if Nintendo went up for sale, for whatever reason, I’d trust Apple to continue Nintendo’s design philosophy better than Microsoft, Sony, Google, or another big tech company.
I can’t wait for yearly Nintendo console releases with merely cosmetic changes at $1500 price points and breaking OS changes that prevent you using games you bought two years prior!
