Take-Two CEO: Microsoft's Activision Blizzard Acquisition is Good for the Industry - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 11 October 2022 / 5,031 Views
Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick in an interview with TheWrap CEO Sharon Waxman and reported by Yahoo! said he is in favor of Microsoft's proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard.
He doesn't view competition as a threat and sees Microsoft as an ally. Zelnick sees the acquisition as a good move for the gaming industry.
"Ultimately the consumer votes, and if we create great hits, which is our business, then consumers will show up, and no one can take that away from us," he said.
"The entertainment business is the antithesis of a fungible commoditized business. Every title stands alone. So it sort of doesn’t compete with anything else and yet, it’s highly competitive in a way. In other words, we compete with everything and we compete with nothing. You can’t replace one of our titles with another title."
Zelnick says Take-Two is focused on itself during the current landscape with the potential of a recession and consumers having less money to spend.
"Now and then, you have a bad year in the entertainment business," Zelnick said. "You have to be capitalized well enough to withstand that and give your teams confidence that they’re gonna live to play another bet."
Brazil's Administrative Council for Economic Defense (CADE) last week voted to approve Microsoft's Activision Blizzard acquisition with no restrictions. Brazil's CADE is the second regulatory body confirmed to have approved the acquisition following Saudi Arabia's competition authority in August.
Microsoft's proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard was announced in January of this year and still needs approval from several regulators around the world.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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This is to be expected, and it does not mean he is necessarily right or wrong. He’s a big executive that doesn’t want a precedent set of government involvement in the industry. Take two also stands to lose nothing
Pretty much, it's not like their games will sell less units to begin with unlike games from studios with less influence. Who will down the road lose a lot of sales potential if Gamepass grows to let's say 75 million subs. It's not like MS will give every dev money to release their game on gamepass.
That... Or they may be eying off mergers in the future and may not wish to have a precedent set in the market that could potentially work against them.
Or... They could be just blatantly honest and it won't be the worst thing in the world... Because let's face it, Activision Blizzard has not been consumer-focused for many years, they are focused on profits primarily... And thus their interests aren't aligned with the consumer.
Microsoft has the potential (Just like anyone who buys Activision) to change that corporate behavior around.
He said a whole lot of nothing
Good for Microsoft, yes, but his reasoning for how it's good for anyone else is nonsensical.
I'm having a deja-vu here. Didn't he already say something like that or was that another CEO?
Ceo of EA was excited also.
He also said this that makes no sense putting triple A games day one on a subscription service.
Why does a trillion dollar company need to spend 100 billion dollars on publishers to compete? What has MS been doing all these years with all the money they have? They’ve been underwhelming for the last seven years or so. They are terrible at running studios!!!
I know a lot of people just want to stick it to Sony or whatever, but I think we should all be concerned about a company with pockets as deep as Microsoft's going on a buying spree for gaming studios. Do we really want the entire industry to be controlled by Bill Gates?
If it all goes to gamepass then why not ?. But then I am greedy for that stuff haha
That exact mentality is what worries me. No physical games, no incentive to compete with other major players in the console market which is what arguably pushes the quality of Sony and Nintendo's exclusives, and the concept of buying games outright becoming more and more obscure is exactly what worries me about it.
I don't understand you. Gamepass doesn't prevent games from being sold elsewhere and actually I cannot think of one game that is on Gamepass only. The indies are mostly digital (which they are without Gamepass as well), but all big publisher games also have physical games. And Gamepass also competes with others, same as the exclusives from Sony and Nintendo. For instance you won't get Tears of the Kingdom on Gamepass, only on Switch. So competition is also at work here.
What do you mean. Gamepass allows developers to take risk in a new ip that's different to what they are known for instead of relying on the sameness. That's because there's at least 25 million people on gamepass alone that will try not counting physical. That will only grow in future. How many new ip will have 12 to 25 million people playing? Gamepass doesn't stop u from buying physical. If u like the game on gamepass then buy it physical. Its giving people more access to play games not limit them.
With easier access to games via ganepass franchises won't have to be killed cause its not meeting sales expectations. Its good thing for both consumers and developers alike ke
Unlikely. Unlike for example the movie industry the investment for entry is laughably low. You can create games as a single person with a computer. You can publish easily without hurdle of entry on multiple shops (Steam, itch.io, Gog). So it is nigh impossible for a single company to control the market. Furthermore... MS isn't even the biggest, even after the acquisition. It may cement it's position as third in the gaming market. So I am not concerned about MS controlling the market.
It is impossible for a single company to have the entire market to themselves. But, even if they could get every video games company rolled up into MS (or any other company) they'd still be competing with all other entertainment options. Video games are big business, but they're just one part of the gigantic entertainment industry.
You mean to tell me MS doesn't have pockets deep enough to buy every prominent developer? They may not control EVERY single dev, but if they buy up the big ones, that's a huge issue.
Is it? I feel like all the innovation is in the indie scene anyways, so whatever. But no, MS will not be able buying all big publishers. Amazon and Apple will be faster.
Ms is likely to share the ips they own rather than keep it for themselves. More people will get a Chance to play the games which means much better exposure.
That's not going to happen. The fearmongering of MS or someone else owning the entire industry is not realistic at all. There are way too many variables for something like this to occur.
It's highly likely that, if and when this acquisition goes through, that Microsoft will have jumped through so many hoops that it will be very difficult for them to make any additional large acquisitions. So I don't think they'll be "on a buying spree" after this.
And Bill Gates wouldn't be controlling anything at Microsoft. After resigning as CEO a long time ago, he finally left his last (reduced) role at Microsoft about 2.5 years ago, if memory serves.
T2 is next
Thanks for not saying anything, and of course Take Two catalogue isn't impacted by ABK.
No idea why, but the dude just looks like a straight up uncanny valley robot.
Exactly, that's why regulators are here to prevent less competition based on rich companies buying others
