Microsoft - Could Acquire EA or Valve

In terms of MS acquiring EA, I'd be interested to know if the FTC would be ok with that. After all, EA is an extremely large publisher, and Microsoft already has had issues with trying to be labeled a monopoly.

ChaosTheory said:

1) The motion sickness thing goes away.

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Its not necessarily that simple. Essentially, you can be glad if it is true for you, but it does not go away for everyone (or at least takes considerably longer).

It is still affecting me. And I have a rift, so I have at least somewhat frequent exposure.

Cacheperl said:

Its not necessarily that simple. Essentially, you can be glad if it is true for you, but it does not go away for everyone (or at least takes considerably longer).

It is still affecting me. And I have a rift, so I have at least somewhat frequent exposure.

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What games make you nauseous? All of them or just some? How often do you use it, for how long each session and what was the longest stretch of continued use?

While I realize 'motion sickness' is often used to describe the effect with VR when it's actually a slightly different mechanism, for simplicity sake I'll keep using it… Do you get motion sickness doing other activities (boating, driving, etc?)

I have no interest in VR. Instead, it's one of the labels and "trigger words" that I look for on Steam to weed out games. If I see a game tagged with VR, that means it goes on my "must avoid" list, similar to some other ones, such as "multi-player" and "co-op". Even if the game can also be ported and is made available for the pc, you know it will be tainted by having VR as a focus, and that will be reflected in its gameplay.

I've also noticed that Steam on its steam store doesn't seem to be promoting VR like they used to, and I'm thinking it has become a dud in terms of sales. I did a google search and found an article from last year basically saying that, that the oculus rift isn't selling in the numbers that were expected. https://hardware.slashdot.org/story...-still-isnt-selling-in-a-worrying-sign-for-vr

It's because most current VR games are shit. They were quick-hit cash machines for lazy game developers who wanted to push something out the door to try and "catch the wave".

It's expensive and a lot of work to make a VR game-- and even worse to make a current game VR-compatible, which is why it took well over a year to release Fallout 4 VR, etc. And on the user end, those who could afford to spend $500 for the VR set and have a cutting edge gaming computer to run it wasn't a very big market. Finally, twin 1080p resolution and 15 degrees fov can be limiting for many games, like shooters, where fov is critical to success.

All of these issues will be addressed as game hardware continues to advance while prices come down. The next gen of VR equipment is around the corner, and with a fairly strong economy, it will allow some of the future, currently in-development games to incorporate VR from the ground up. I get it though, the 3-D craze was short lived, so I understand the skepticism.

As a side note about Fallout 4 VR... Those who would even use VR for gaming would have purchased FO4 when it was released, and played the hell out of it. It was a moderately-entertaining game, but I had major complaints with it, so I have zero interest in the VR version. Had they been released together, I'd have gone with the VR version in a heartbeat. Could you imagine what The Witcher 3 would have looked like in VR?

ChaosTheory said:

What games make you nauseous? All of them or just some? How often do you use it, for how long each session and what was the longest stretch of continued use?

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Games where you are more or less static are fine. Straight movements are usually fine, even if fast. Turns and curves are the problem. Depending on these factors, I can do hours, or else have to stop after as little as a few minutes.

ChaosTheory said:

While I realize 'motion sickness' is often used to describe the effect with VR when it's actually a slightly different mechanism, for simplicity sake I'll keep using it… Do you get motion sickness doing other activities (boating, driving, etc?)

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I think the term is fine, it is a mismatch of perceived and actual motion afterall. But yeah. Driving may cause it, too (in the right circumstances).
Not too much boat experience.

Mustawd said:

In terms of MS acquiring EA, I'd be interested to know if the FTC would be ok with that. After all, EA is an extremely large publisher, and Microsoft already has had issues with trying to be labeled a monopoly.

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A monopoly? Microsoft? That ship is gone since at least 10-15 years. Today MS is helping Linux with agreements with RedHat, Suse and some others. They also returned Office on the MacOS so it could develop in the enterprise.
It does not impact the revenue significantly and it makes all those issue disappear.

As for the game editors, nope. MS is third in size, EA is 6. Sony is as big than the 2 together.

ChatMiauleur said:

A monopoly? Microsoft? That ship is gone since at least 10-15 years. Today MS is helping Linux with agreements with RedHat, Suse and some others. They also returned Office on the MacOS so it could develop in the enterprise.
It does not impact the revenue significantly and it makes all those issue disappear.

As for the game editors, nope. MS is third in size, EA is 6. Sony is as big than the 2 together.

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Microsoft having some cooperation and interoperability with the Unix world is nothing new, and goes back to the NT days. Even back then, MS was not a monopoly in the server room.

But their overwhelming dominance on the desktop remains, and Valve's dominance of PC game distribution is also clear. God knows what sort of buyouts MS could get away in the US these days, but I'd virtually guarantee that the EU would kick off about it.

Yes, you are right but we were talking about Monopoly. PC games are not a huge part of the market. Sony as a publisher, Service provider and hardware builder would probably weight much more than that and they even not port their games on PC.
EU while they have hit MS in the past are more concerned nowadays with Google and FB.

ChatMiauleur said:

Yes, you are right but we were talking about Monopoly. PC games are not a huge part of the market. Sony as a publisher, Service provider and hardware builder would probably weight much more than that and they even not port their games on PC.
EU while they have hit MS in the past are more concerned nowadays with Google and FB.

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When talking about monopolies in the legal sense though, it is almost never a true 100% monopoly - usually a high degree of dominance is enough to trigger the concern. I think what the trade commissions would be alarmed about is a company having dominance of the desktop market, then buying a dominant distributor, and then locking people into that distributor through their control of the user platform.

I'd be very surprised if this actually happens. I'd find a buyout of EA, mainly to get the IPs, much more plausible.

Ripper said:

When talking about monopolies in the legal sense though, it is almost never a true 100% monopoly - usually a high degree of dominance is enough to trigger the concern. I think what the trade commissions would be alarmed about is a company having dominance of the desktop market, then buying a dominant distributor, and then locking people into that distributor through their control of the user platform.

I'd be very surprised if this actually happens. I'd find a buyout of EA, mainly to get the IPs, much more plausible.

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This is what I had meant. Not a 100% monopoly. And MS has definitely run into legal issues in the past regarding anti-trust laws. Both in the US as well as the EU. Yes, it's been more than a decade since that happened, but I'm just pointing out that in the US, a merger/acquisition between MS and EA would definitely garner attention from the FTC.

"The Bureau of Competition is committed to preventing mergers and acquisitions that are likely to reduce competition and lead to higher prices, lower quality goods or services, or less innovation."

Gabe has dismissed talk that Microsoft will buy Valve saying he has not been approached.
https://www.pcgamesn.com/microsoft-acquiring-ea-valve-pubg-corp

Got to say it didn't seem likely but glad for the confirmation regardless.

Dilvish said:

Steam would turn into a steaming pile under MS. EA might actually improve under MS.

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How in the world could STEAM get any worse? Your statement doesn't make any sense.

It could be integrated in with MSN gaming of course.

ChatMiauleur said:

A monopoly? Microsoft? That ship is gone since at least 10-15 years. Today MS is helping Linux with agreements with RedHat, Suse and some others. They also returned Office on the MacOS so it could develop in the enterprise.
It does not impact the revenue significantly and it makes all those issue disappear.

As for the game editors, nope. MS is third in size, EA is 6. Sony is as big than the 2 together.

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There are no more Operating Systems for the PC that people use - other thabn Linux & Windows. It has become some sort of Duopoly.

And Office ? There are not enough competitive office packages out there right now - MS is able to put so much money into their office package - at will - so that they will ALWAYS be FAR FAR FAR ahead of ANY competor.
It's an indirect monopoly.

Me, I don't need anything more than Textmaker (of whoich you probably have never heard before - which just provres my "indirect monopoly" theory), but as an office package, it's not good enough to be able to really compete with MS.
Once, there was WordPerfect. Now THAT was the ONLY really good competor worldwide. Gone now, due to some shitty decisions (Novell, a networking firm, buying a whole office company ???).

Same with OSses. who actually knows of the eComStation ? Almost no-one. It's the successor of OS/2.

Sure, there are so much different flavours of Linux - and BSD isn't Linux at all, technically speaking - but in the end, they are all just Linux. And only few people use BSD.
And Solaris ? Who uses this thing still today anyway ? After Oracle's changings ?

MacOS.

Office is not a monopoly per se, Free and Open solutions exist.