Blizzplanet shares the audio and a transcript of Blizzard Entertainment CEO Mike Morhaime's presentation before the shareholders.
The presentation took place on May 6th during Activision Blizzard Q1 2014 financial results conference call. Morhaime discussed the status on World of Warcraft, Diablo III, Heroes of the Storm and Hearthstone; and future plans.
Today, nearly 400 video game workers within Blizzard’s Platform & Technology department have voted strongly in favor of union representation with the Communications Workers of America (CWA), either by signing a union authorization card or indicating that they wanted union representation via an online portal.
When you're owned by the biggest corporate c**t to have ever existed then you better be in a union.
May 7 (Reuters) - A federal appeals court on Wednesday rejected a legal challenge by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to Microsoft's (MSFT.O), opens new tab $69 billion purchase of “Call of Duty” maker Activision Blizzard.
The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower judge's order that said the FTC was not entitled to a preliminary injunction blocking the deal, which closed in 2023.
Final nail in FTC´s coffin!
It was a lost cause from the start and a waste of taxpayers money!
Indeed. When sony got exposed with some of their deals it was pretty much game over.
That's not at all how this works. Sony made deals Microsoft, the trillion dollar company couldn't? You think that's what won them this case?
This wasn't seen as a act of attempting to monopolize the industry. Plain and simple.
"Indeed. When sony got exposed with some of their deals it was pretty much game over."
And now that MS is releasing all of its Xbox games for all platforms, Phil is free to buy whatever studio or publisher he wants and FTC won´t have a case to say sh!t.
Like I said; It´s final nail in their coffin!
"exposed with some of their deals"
Says the company who said their plan was to "spend Sony out of business", you know a year before they bought Zenimax.
What deals and what "exposed"? Sony did nothing that Microsoft didn't already do during the 360 era. You seem to have a selective memory.
@Reaper22
What? Exposed? Deals? Stop talking gibberish.
On topic:
Hope MS’s xbox continues to go down the drain for this. I love how this deal was the nail in xbox’s coffin when some of the corporation worshippers here were hoping MS would deprive others from games that otherwise everyone would be able to play. Instead, MS was forced to put its own games on other platforms to pay for the billions they spent on this mergers/acquisitions. Hope they choke on it.
It was a lost cause once ms went multiplat, they cant be anti competitive if they release on everything......
No bud this is an appeal, they already failed the first go and the FTC seeked to block the deal way before MS showed any signs of making their games multiplatform. Like most of the courts rulings, it just wasn't seen as the monopoly.
Right. And they stated from the beginning that their intent was not to keep games off of plastation. Microsoft served subpoenas on Sony to produce documents and testimony related to the lawsuit, and the FTC ordered Sony to disclose information about its third-party exclusivity deals. And it exposed their dealings with other publishers to keep games off xbox and Gamepass. That is what helped them most in securing the deal.
Right, however 10 years from now (gen after next) ms could very well reverse that and get away with it. They'd already have made their money back from the purchase, any contract deal they signed would've be honored and finally expired
Let’s not rewrite history though. They only went multi platform because they were forced to. They failed to compete so badly it was that or close Xbox completely.
lol, celebrating consolidation. Good thing this is the deal that broke Microsoft’s back and made them go the 3rd party route on every platform.
No. FTC has multiple appeals since then. It was very unlikely they would win any, but they still had them. People claiming it was over with the first judge ruling don't understand how the law works and what avenues the FTC had available to them even though appeals are quite normal.
It goes like this in the USA first trial the court of appeals it can be a partial court of judges if so after you got another appeal to the full court then after goes the supreme with a non full court after it’s another appeal to the full court when the full court decide on it then it’s over till then anything can happen.
Edit I forgot to say that this is a simplified version of things it can take multiple years to get through all the appeals on both sides
This FTC case provided fascinating insight into gamers' views on economics/politics. It's very common for gamers to blame capitalism for many of the negative trends in the industry, but as soon as the U.S. government started exercising one of the most recognized limitations on capitalism (monopoly regulation), most gamers turned into libertarians and starting spouting Republican talking points (or at least pre-Trump era Republican talking points, lol) on "government staying out of the way of private businesses."
They weren't told how to think on this topic so it let them use their brains without being told what to think about a topic. They ended up being reasonable and rational.
I remember when certain people here were saying they weren't going third party, guessing to recoup that 69 billion they are doing just that.
@TriniOutsider
MLB The Show. But arguably that is a special case. The seemingly accepted story behind that is that MLB told Sony they had to start making the game multiplatform to keep the MLB license. I haven't ever read definitive proof that happened, but assuming that (or something like it) is true, that isn't really indicative of a multiplatform trend in the same way that MS's recent launches on PS5 are.
The only PlayStation owned games on XB is Destiny 2 which was already multiplatform & MLB The Show & that's because it's licensed by the MLB & wanted the game multiplatform. XB first party legendary exclusives are going multiplatform as well as the new games that were supposed to be exclusive to the XB gaming console. It looks though the XB gaming console will have minimal timed exclusives to no exclusives at all.
@TriniOutsider
Get those gloves ready my boy. Gonna need em to move those goal posts. Think with your brain not your gamer heart. You think sony sees ms making all this money and says.. ok get that without us. Help me out here my guy! Sony charged you for psn, then they put their games on pc. What do you think is going to happen next?
Well said, hahahaha that’s so smart and intelligent and not gaslighty my man. you can now definitely play a lot of Ps games on Xbox. That’s the argument. That’s the point. Well done. PS is going third party. Wow, congratulations, no one realised it. Emphasis again on: it’s PlayStation making the moves to put games on Xbox AND PC. I can’t think of another publisher that’s actually doing that…. Mmmmmmm…. Anyway. Only Sony is doing that and not anyone else, not at all.
They also lost money on activision in the last few quarters too dont forget, ms make money hand over fist, that's not new, but I highly doubt the investment has paid off yet.
To be honest as a long time ps gamer, this deal initially made me panic.
but if I had known that it make MS u-turn on exclusive strategy, I would have happily joined xbox fans supporting the acquisition.
They never made a u-turn. Initially Microsoft offered sony a 10 year deal but they turned it down but eventually they agreed. They've always said they wouldn't keep games away from playstation. But that is something Sony was doing to them.
That's the thing. They said they did not aim to take games away from the competition with the acquisitions and that they weren't taking games away from PlayStation. But then they try to get Sony to sign a 10 year deal just to show to a court that they aren't keeping games away. Sony saw this as a tactic to make their acquisitions look like good faith but in reality they don't need to sign that 10 year contract. They just gotta keep developing games for the console. Then they still excluded games from Sony anyways which is what they wanted while saying they didn't. They are only now going third party because they couldn't monopolize the hardware side of things and they ruined their software sales by trying to make everything a service and now we see them continuously bumping the price and changing policies to stop losing money.
Yes they did. I mean I was worried about Elder Scrolls series leaving playstation those days, but now I can play Forza horizon and Gears of War on ps5… this is a crazy turn of events
@Reaper22
You are 💯 correct however we also have to consider these companies lie all the time. Or make plans and change them
Microsoft and Activision have denied a recent report regarding the financial performance since the acquisition.
Representatives from both companies said The Information’s report wasn’t accurate
Well, MS often hide real numbers from their Xbox division such as profit, don't give out console numbers for almost a decade, and no longer give out gamepass numbers even after supposedly having one of the most popular CoD games ever released recently, so what are people supposed to think?
Completely fair. If you don't provide the data, it forces people to speculate. The fact that they came out and denied the report makes me think it wasn't accurate. We will find out at the next quarterly report for the stakeholders. Can't fudge stakeholder reporting.
they haven't given stakeholders profit numbers for xbox in a long time, but you're right, they'll have to post revenue at least. And now that the adjustments due to the acquisition are a year behind us, we should get more of an apples to apples view of what direction Xbox is heading in terms of overall sales - did the COD on GamePass gambit pay off?
I miss the times where they were proudly telling how many headshots made by players and miles driven 🤣
Yeah that is true, but they still mislead and hide important metrics such as profits from their xbox division. They said Hifi Rush was a success by some mysterious metric and then proceeded to close the studio anyway, luckily it was rescued by a buyer, but my point is you can't really take what MS say at face value with all the context included, they've been doing this with their xbox business for nearly a decade.
mislead and hide? how are they misleading anyone when they don't say anything, about information they don't owe you at all. you cant take anything a for profit company says, this is not exclusive to ms....is it also misleading that sony didnt tell you exactly how many dollars they lost on concord? no its not, its their business, their money and they can say or not say whatever they want about their financial status to the public. Is sony telling how much money they torched by letting bluepoint make a failed live service game? is nintendo telling us how much money they lost with wii u? to even think you are entitled to that information is mindblowing to me.
@michael
*Big long MS apologist paragraph*
Despite all of that Sony and Nintendo provide profit numbers for their gaming divisions, MS do not, maybe mislead is the wrong word, but hiding the numbers is true, and some could definitely consider that misleading.
The fact that MS don't share this, console sales or gamepass numbers especially in wake of Black Ops 6 tells me most of what I need to know tbh.
If the xbox division was profitable MS would be shouting it from the rafters.
That's what shareholders want to see.
They're not.
Misleading is one thing but there's a limit to what they can hide as a public trading company they also never denied this report but tried to downplay it as it was missing data
@michael actually we would expect to learn how much is hidden directly via a investors report
What are you talking about? Honest Phill is going to come out soon and tell us how many combined minutes have been played on the new COD, that's a completely fair and accurate representation of how well the game is financially doing
If it's not the exact number down to the very cent, then they can claim... "The information's report wasn't accurate."
