May 2023
Uk Blocks
Microsoft’s aquisition of Activision Blizzard
Interview with Bobby Kotick Star Wars Jedi: Survivor not living up to standards?
Video Games are helping psychologists?
“We are committed to fixing these issues as soon as possible,”
“This is far from the final word”
5 - UK blocks Microsoft’s $69 billion aquisition of Activision Blizzard
8 - Bobby Kotick Interview: why Activision Blizzard did the deal
12 - How to gift games on Steam
14 - Star Wars Jedi: Survivor has major problems
16 - How Cities: Skylines is Helping Psychologists Understand Complex Personality Disorders
18 - The Best Video Game Deals for PC in April 2023
20 - Sony reports strong PS5 hardware sales as it closes in on 40 million units sold
The measure marks a major blow for the U.S. tech giant, as it seeks to convince authorities that the deal will benefit competition.
Microsoft announced its intention to acquire Activision Blizzard in January 2022 for $69 billion, in one of the biggest deals the video game industry has seen to date.
Executives at the Redmond, Washington-based technology giant believe the acquisition will boost its efforts in gaming by adding lucrative franchises like Call of Duty and Candy Crush Saga to its content offerings.
However, some of Microsoft’s competitors contested the deal, concerned it may give Microsoft a tight grip on the $200 billion games market. Of particular concern was the prospect that Microsoft may shut off distribution access to Activision’s popular Call of Duty franchise for certain platforms.
Sony, in particular, has voiced concern with Microsoft’s Activision purchase. The Japanese gaming giant fears that Microsoft could make Call of Duty exclusive to its Xbox consoles in the long run.
Microsoft sought to allay those concerns by offering Sony, Nintendo, Nvidia and other firms 10-year agreements to continue bringing Call of Duty to their respective gaming platforms.
Microsoft argues it wouldn’t be financially beneficial to withhold Call of Duty from PlayStation, Nintendo and other rivals given the licensing income it generates from keeping the game available on their platforms.
Microsoft President Brad Smith told CNBC last month that the company is offering Sony the same agreement as it did Nintendo — to make Call of Duty available on PlayStation at the same time as on Xbox, with the same features. Sony still opposes the deal.
The CMA had raised concerns with the potential for Microsoft to hinder competition in the nascent cloud gaming market via its Xbox Game Pass subscription service, which offers cloud gaming among its perks. Microsoft has committed to bring new Call of Duty titles to Xbox Game Pass on day one of its release.
Cloud gaming, or the ability to access games via PC or mobile devices over the internet, is still in its infancy and requires a strong broadband connection to work well. According to network intelligence firm Sandvine, cloud gaming made up less than 1% of global internet traffic in 2022.
Even with the CMA’s blessing, Microsoft will still need to convince other regulators not to block the deal. The EU continues to probe the merger to assess whether it hurts competition, while the U.S. Federal Trade
Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick has reacted to Wednesday’s news that the UK’s regulator has prevented its sale to Microsoft, and insisted “it is far from the final word on this deal”.
After months of investigation, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) became the first of the three major global regulators to publish its final report on the $69 billion deal on Wednesday.
It said it had prevented the deal over concerns it would “alter the future of the fast-growing cloud gaming market, leading to reduced innovation and less choice for UK gamers over the years to come.”
Microsoft has confirmed it will appeal the CMA’s decision.
In a statement published shortly after the decision, Bobby Kotick said work on an appeal had already begun and claimed the company was confident in its case “because the facts are on our side”.
“Alongside Microsoft, we can and will contest this decision, and we’ve already begun the work to appeal to the UK Competition Appeals Tribunal. We’re confident in our case because the facts are on our side: this deal is good for competition.”
“Alongside Microsoft, we can and will contest this decision, and we’ve already begun the work to appeal to the UK Competition Appeals Tribunal. We’re confident in our case because the facts are on our side: this deal is good for competition.”
He continued: “The UK hopes to grow its leadership position in technology, and a combined Microsoft-Activision would accomplish exactly that. At a time when the fields of machine learning and artificial intelligence are thriving, we know the UK market would benefit from Microsoft’s bench strength in both domains, as well as our ability to put those technologies to use immediately.
“By contrast, if the CMA’s decision holds, it would stifle investment, competition, and job creation throughout the UK gaming industry.
“Today, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), a regulatory agency in the UK, decided not to approve our merger with Microsoft. This isn’t the news we wanted – but it is far from the final word on this deal,”
“This merger is a complex process, and I know I’m not the only one frustrated by the hurdles and delays. We’re accustomed to a company culture that moves quickly to accomplish big goals, so it’s tough when we can’t close things out at our usual energetic pace.
“We’ll keep pressing our case, because we know that this merger will benefit our employees, the broader UK tech workforce, and players around the world.
“I’m going to do everything I personally can to advocate for us and help regulators understand the competitive dynamics in our industry. What gives me confidence is that, whether on our own or united with another company, we are one of the strongest companies in our industry, poised for continued growth, and building on our incredible IP.
“I appreciate your continued hard work and focus, and for continuing to connect and engage our players around the world. This is the best time to be in our field, and you all represent the best of our industry. We’ll be sure to keep you updated on next steps as they happen.”
Initially, it had appeared that the UK regulator was moving towards approving the deal before today’s announcement.
While the CMA provisionally found in February that the merger could reduce competition and “result in higher prices, fewer choices, or less innovation for UK gamers,” it partially reversed its decision a month later.
In a bid to address regulatory concerns, earlier this year Microsoft struck game distribution deals with several cloud gaming services including GeForce Now, Boosteroid and Ubitus.
In its verdict published on Wednesday, the regulator said its final decision came after Microsoft’s proposed solution
“failed to effectively address the concerns in the cloud gaming sector”.
Jan 18, 2022
Microsoft and Activision Blizzard announced the biggest deal in gaming history today with Microsoft’s $68.7 billion cash offer to buy the decades-old independent game publisher.
I wonder is there anything that you think will benefit Call of Duty from this? I’m sure it’s the number one thing Call of Duty fans and people like me, who are Warzone players, are worried about. Kotick: I would say probably the biggest thing is the AI and machine learning, and ultimate access to that talent. And that that’s one of our big needs. For the long term, we could have a real streaming Call of Duty experience that’s going to be critically important.
Why do the deal? Why is this a good time to sell? And why is it a good price as well?
Bobby Kotick: The most important is — it’s funny, you and I were talking about AI last time — as you look at the increased competition between Tencent, and NetEase, and Sony, and now you have Google and Amazon, and Apple, and Facebook, and Microsoft and Netflix. We were looking at over the course of the next couple of years, and starting to realize that we need thousands of people to be able to execute against our production plans. We need them in disciplines like AI and machine learning, or in data analytics, or in purpose-built cloud and cybersecurity — and that we just don’t have. And that competition for that talent is expensive, and really hard to come by.
And so, as we’re starting to think about all these skills that we need, that we don’t have and that were really necessary, we realized that we should be thinking about ways to get that talent. This was an acknowledgement and recognition. And then Satya [Nadella, CEO of Microsoft] and Phil [Spencer, head of gaming at Microsoft] and I have had conversations over many, many years of bigger things that we could do together.
And so when Phil called, it happened to be at a time where we were getting ready to start our long range planning process, and realizing that these were going to be issues and challenges. We had the discussion. Phil and I know each other well, and we have a great relationship, and the company has a great relationship. And when you start to think about all the skills we need, all the resources we need, and what they have, it made a lot of sense.
When they originally called, we said we would we think about it, and then they made this offer that was incredibly attractive at 45% premium over the stock price. And I think it just made a lot of sense. And so, the more we spent the time talking about how it would work, and what would happen, what resources were available, they clearly were the best partner.
I assume there are going to be antitrust questions here. How do you address that? And how is this good for consumers? And does your content stay on all the platforms?
Kotick: I think that was an important part of the discussions. With Microsoft, most of the content they create has nothing to do with gaming. They’re on every device with a microprocessor and a display. And I think that they have no mobile business. So for them King was a very complimentary thing. But we all realize that gaming over the next five years is going to be more on phones than on any other devices. And I think that they they have given us repeated assurances that our content will be available on as many devices as possible.
And I think that was really important for us. They’ll drive the bus, obviously, on the antitrust issues. I think the thing that is obvious to me is that when you look at the competition, whether it’s Tencent and NetEase, and Alibaba or Sony, or Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook, Netflix, then you start looking at like, the second part of competition and content, and you realize whether it’s Roblox or Minecraft, or the variety of other
sort of platforms that are becoming available for content creators, I think there’s more competition than we’ve ever seen for games.
It’s a reality that started to factor into our thinking. There is more competition from bigger companies with more resources. Facebook is spending [billions] a year on the metaverse. I’ve never seen as much competition, and we’re seeing it even in the wage inflation. Whether its Riot, Tencent, Epic, Sony, or Microsoft, EA, there are just so many different places that people are recruiting talent.
And then you look at the specialized skills, like AI and machine learning or computer graphics. You’ve got Nvidia and all of those big companies recruiting the best AI and computer graphics talent. And so we realized the pipeline for talent — we just didn’t have it. And we needed to have access to somebody’s pipeline of talent. And that was a big consideration.
And was the sexual harassment investigation factor in this, as it certainly seemed to affect the stock price?
Kotick: I think what affected the stock price more than that is pushing out Overwatch and Diablo. And then I think people started to see that this year’s Call of Duty wasn’t performing as well. So I think certainly the [California Department of Fair Employment and Housing] filing and the Wall Street Journal article contributed to that, but stocks go up and down for a variety of reasons. I think our view was that at $95 a share with all cash, that’s a really great deal for our shareholders. And so that was an easy and independent judgment. It’s a great deal.
What what do you think of reporting to Phil? What might you think about doing next once the deal is done? And is retirement one of your thoughts.
Kotick: Right now my focus is just staying CEO and running the business. And I think you probably could tell this from the stock price, there is still a long way between now and getting a deal approved, and all the regulatory issues. So I’m still going to be first focused on running the business. What I told Microsoft is that I care so much about this company, that whatever role they want me to have, in making sure that we integrate the business and we get a proper and smooth transition, I’m willing to do. However much time that takes, if it’s a month after the close, if it’s a year after that, I just care that the transition goes well.
Reporting to Phil is an easy thing to do. He’s a great guy, and we have a great relationship. And if I have to do that, I’m happy to do that. All I care about is making sure that the transition and the integration go well.
Kotick: I mean, like, I come to work every day, as excited as I was, I mean, we have a lot going on right now. I have a new set of responsibilities in my focus on the workplace. And that is my principal focus is making sure that when you think about and part of why I’m so committed to this welcoming, inclusive workplace is when you think about companies that have defining characteristics that are going to help attract talent. Having a really welcoming, inclusive workplace will be a defining characteristic of the culture of a company in an increasingly competitive talent environment that will ensure that we’ll have access to great talent, and so independent or not thought, that is an important part of what I think will allow us to attract talent, we have to do that. And that’s something I’m spending a lot of my time.
You got had a few months of tough coverage. A lot of tough words from the Wall Street Journal. What was some of the learning from this experience that you’ve had?
Kotick: From my perspective, if you have one single incident of harassment at your company, that’s one too many. And you don’t want to ever have an environment where people don’t feel safe and comfortable and respected. And so when the EEOC started their investigation, where it was like three years ago now, that was the catalyst for us to start thinking about, how do you change and transform the culture to making sure that you do have the most safe welcoming, inclusive culture. It’s a priority for me to make sure we have the very best workplaces.
It does sound like you still have enthusiasm for the job.
Dec 23, 2021
In the Search box in the top-right corner of the window, enter the name of the game you would like to gift. Select the game from the list (or press Enter and find the game on the next screen).
On the next page, you’ll see a lot of information about the selected game. Scroll down and click the green “Add to Cart” button.
You’ll now automatically be in your shopping cart. Here, click “Purchase as a Gift.”
Next, you’ll need to choose which friend you’d like to gift the game to. Select the recipient by clicking the bubble to the left of their name in the list and then click “Continue.”
From there, you can enter a personalized message, and then you’ll need to enter your payment details. Once the payment is submitted, the game will be gifted to your friend.
Once you’ve completed the purchase, the selected recipient will receive an email notifying them that they have received a gift. In the email, they’ll receive a link that they’ll need to access in order to redeem the gift.
The recipient has 30 days to redeem the gift. If the gift hasn’t been redeemed within the allotted amount of time, the purchaser will receive a full refund. You can check the status of the gift by visiting your Steam inventory page.
APR 28, 2023
“While there is no single comprehensive solution for PC performance, the team has been working on fixes we believe will improve performance across a spectrum of configurations,”
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor’s Windows PC version has numerous performance issues that publisher Electronic Arts and Respawn Entertainment acknowledged in a statement on Friday.
Worse yet, the problems seem particularly concentrated in PCs with high performance hardware. “Players using cutting-edge, multi-threaded chipsets designed for Windows 11 were encountering problems on Windows 10,” developers said in the statement, released on Twitter.
the statement added. “We are committed to fixing these issues as soon as possible, but each patch requires significant testing to ensure we don’t introduce new problems.”
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor launched April 28 for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X in addition to Windows PC.
Earlier this month Electronic Arts also published EA Sports PGA Tour for PC, and fans also reported problems with that version that were not present on console versions.
APR 28, 2023
Volunteers were given 120 minutes to complete a mission in the digital microworld.
Scientists have turned to the metropolitan managment game Cities: Skylines to shed light on the relationship between personality traits and complex problem solving.
As part of the study, spotted by Psypost, the researchers asked a pool of 242 volunteers with personality disorders such as schizotypal, histrionic, and dependent to play Cities: Skylines to see how these traits affected their performance at the management sim.
The overriding goal of Paradox’s Interactive’s Cities: Skylines is to steadily grow your settlement from a small town into a thriving megatropolis. This can only be done by ensuring that your city has the correct blend of commercial, industrial, and residential districts, all of which must be connected by a network of roads.
On top of that you’ll need to balance finances, and ensure access to essential resources and services like electricity, clean water, garbage disposal, and public transport,
while also paying heed to the myriad needs of the city’s population.
Assuming that you can successfully spin all those plates at once, more and more people will flock to your city, forcing you to adapt and reinvent the infrastructure on the fly to cope with the needs of the ever increasing citizenry.
However, mistakes in planning can lead to a cascade of issues that will see your city fall prey to rampant criminality and widespread dilapidation, as high
rise apartments catch fire, and entire industrial districts are left abandoned. If you’re really bad at the game (like me), then entire sections of your once proud city will be little more than a depopulated husk that Batman himself wouldn’t attempt to set right with a ten foot batarang.
This, is the complex digital playground that the researchers used to examine which personality traits were most strongly associated with a person’s complex problem solving capabilities. Each of the study participants were given an introduction to the game, and presented with an identical digital city of 2,600 residents with 50,000 in currency to spend and a satisfaction level of 90 percent.
They were then given 120 minutes to grow their cities to a population of 5,000 residents while keeping the satisfaction levels to at least 75 percent, and making sure that the bank balance remained positive. A volunteer would fail the task if the population
dropped below 1,000, the time elapsed, or if the city fell into debt.
The researchers discovered that participants with higher expressions of schizotypal, depressive and histrionic personality traits performed poorly at the task compared to others. Dependent and paranoid traits also seemed to have a negative effect on task performance, albeit to a lesser extent.
However, the findings were not cut and dry. The study also notes that individuals exhibiting
Psypost notes that the study, whilst useful in providing data links between personality traits and complex problem solving ability, is not without its flaws. For one it does not fully account for previous player experience of managment sims. It also only tests problem solving with a single game rather than a wider and more diverse range of tasks.
The full paper is available to view online via the journal Frontiers of Psychology.
IGN gave Cities Skylines an 8.5/10 at launch describing it as an “impressive and often beaufitul simulation” that is all “about the simple joy of building”. Paradox has since ported the management to the PlayStation VR2, and is currently working on a sequel, which is set to release on current gen consoles and PC later this year.
could still perform well if they had higher levels of resilience, action orientation, and a motivation for creation.
“high levels of usually negative personality traits”
APR 15, 2023
For those looking for something new to play, look no further than this article for some of the best PC game deals currently available on Amazon.
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APR 28, 2023
The company shipped 19.1 million PS5 consoles in its 2022 financial year, beating its earlier forecast of 18 million. But there are concerns games aren’t keeping up.
Sony says it shipped 6.3 million PlayStation 5 consoles in the three months ending March 31st 2022, bringing total sales of the console to 38.4 million, the company reported in its latest earnings release. That’s more than triple what the company shipped in the same quarter the previous year (2 million), and means the Japanese electronics giant shipped 19.1 million PS5 during fiscal 2022, beating its earlier forecast of 18 million.
On the software side things were more mixed, Bloomberg notes. Revenue from game software was up overall, but units shipped fell from 70.5 million in the fourth quarter of 2021 to 68 million in the same quarter of 2022. PlayStation Network monthly active users were up slightly from 106 million to 108 million, but the number of PlayStation Plus subscribers were flat at 47.4 million.
This disparity partly reflects the lack of major first-party games releases in the quarter. But there are also concerns that the PS5’s earlier hardware supply issues are having a knock on effect on software sales and subscriptions, which are important if the company wants to build a “virtuous cycle” of mutually reinforcing console and game sales.
CNBC notes that the company’s financials were strong overall, reporting an operating profit of a record 1.21 trillion yen (around $8.9 billion) for the year. Revenue in the quarter rose 35 percent to 3.06 trillion yen (around $22.5 billion). Sony hasn’t broken out sales of its PlayStation VR2 headset, which launched during the quarter.
Bloomberg calls Sony’s profit forecast for the current fiscal year “conservative,” noting that it may be hedging against a drop in consumer spending and expectations that it will sell fewer games from its in-house PlayStation Studios this year. The company expects operating profit to come in at 1.17 trillion yen (around $8.6 billion), which would represent a roughly 3 percent drop year-over-year.
“Sony’s
