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Microsoft to Buy Vivendi Games Division?
Unknown Relic writes "While far from confirmed, it is reported that Microsoft is seriously looking into buying, or
may have already bought, Vivendi's Games Division. For those who aren't aware, Vivendi owns several prominent gaming companies, including Valve and Blizzard! While no official announcements have been made, one is apparently expected soon. While this would doubtlessly be a great boon to Xbox's library, it could be a shock to other consoles as titles which were originally planned for a diverse release become Xbox exclusives."
Vivendi does not own Valve, Sierra published Half-Life and it stands to reason they'll publish whatever else Valve does, but they don't own them.
Schnapple
Despite everyone's assumptions, nothing called "Half-Life 2" has ever been announced or talked about by anyone connected with Valve. Team Fortress 2 has been shown publicly, however.
Ever consider thinking before posting? Microsoft has owned www.zone.com for YEARS now and they only charge for 'premium' games, like Asheron's Call. For online retail game matching (ala Battle.net), NO CHARGE! Never has been.
Sega is gone and nintendo might be next
Nintendo Isn't going anywhere. They have a lock on the portable market, and we know how many hundreds of games come out on those systems per day/month/year, all of which nintendo gets royalties on.
Sony will take a long time to kill but its possible ms can majorily harm it.
Nothing can kill The Sony, or the playstation, least of all Microsoft. Microsoft needs to prove it can sell more that 12 machines in Japan to get developer support, and it has not shown that in any way. Microsoft is an American company, and it's simply not going to make headway in Japan, when competing with your Sony and your Nintendos.
Don't be so dire. Sega dropping out of hardware was probably a long time in coming. Nintendo has had only one real system which could be called a failure (Excluding Virtual Boy).
"Inattention makes clowns of us all" -Bean
Again it relates to Microsoft using money obtained from one monopoly and using it to crush competition in another which is illegal under the sherman anti trust act.
Umm.. No. That is NOT illegal. It is only illegal to leverage a monopoly in one area to crush competition in another area. As long as you are not leveraging the monopoly itself, you are free to use the money from the monopoly to do pretty much as you please.
On the other hand, it would be illegal if they were to use the money (regardless of source) to buy up all the gaming companies and thus choke out the competition.
Please educate yourself about what you are talking about before posting again.
Mmmm.. Donuts
Doesn't Microsoft still produce the MS Office suite for Mac? And IE/OE? And a load of other products?
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
What I'm worried about in terms of Blizzard is the prospect of Microsoft trying to force them into releasing games before they're done, or perhaps cutting the fantastic support Blizzard gives it's games. I'm also worried that this may see an exclusive deal for Starcraft:Ghost, which I'm really looking forward to playing on my GameCube.
Looks can be deceiving. Or CAN they?
I'm sure everyone here has seen how much revenue
the gaming industry boasts. It's phenomenal! If MS would
invest so much of its coffers into the X-Box even if it loses
money, then it stands to reason that they would absorb whatever
talent they could to grapple a hold in the market. Common
practice that we have seen over the years.
I'm not pro-MS and I'm not anti-MS but I do develop an opinion
while observing so many business purchases of MS over the
past few years. If they cannot beat the competition, they buy the
competition and brand it. It's not innovation they are offering
me, it's their ability to buy out competition and then sell it
to me again.
There was a URL posted several months back but I
cannot seem to find it. It listed several companies/corporations
and the subsidiaries they owned. Anyone mind posting
if they recall it?
This is actually quite good as this will force Sony to put a lot of money into seeding/ development support for smaller players and start-ups.
Sorry, no. It takes 4-10 million dollars to develop a triple-A title, and 4 million is more like a figure from several years ago. If a "smaller player" has 4-10 million dollars, then by definition they're not a smaller player.
This means that new idea can make money with a low penetration PS2, something that is not possible for Xbox. Say, 1% equates to half a million titles sold for the Sony camp or 80K for MS. Where would you put your bet?
Ah, now this is a classic myth that has been the death of many a game development studio. The truth is that (roughly) 5% of the available games make up 90% of all games sold. If you're not in that 5%, then you're not going to see sales anywhere near 500,000. Even when there were 75 million PS1s out there, it was still common to see a decently reveiwed game sell 15 *thousand* copies or less. There are many PS2 games that are nowhere near the 50,000 mark.
The big mistake is seeing that GTA3 sold 4 million copies, and thinking that your well-designed game can easily sell 10% of that. It isn't true.