The Great Video Game Business and Financial (In)Stability Thread

garion333 wrote:

They think they can make Fortnite money on mobile.

I don't think they're looking at numbers that big. A quick Google suggests that Zynga as a whole has revenues of roughly $2 billion a year. That's not nothing, but Fortnite brings in more than double that.

In the immediate term, what an acquisition like this does is allow an executive board to justify their salaries. Taking GTA V Online into the barn once a year and squeezing a few more shekels out of its teats doesn't do that. This purchase allows the C-Suite them to bandy around words like 'scale', 'synergies' and 'accelerate growth' and 'intellectual property portfolios', 'diversification', 'technology acquisition', etc.

In the longer term, I wonder whether this will mean the end of offline, single-player games from the rest of Take 2 Interactive's developers. After all, that's all (I think) that Zynga do. And Rockstar, at least, appear to have no plans to release another big offline, single-player game. GTA V is now 8 years' old!

I wonder whether we'll see the creation of companion games/apps for the existing Take 2 Interactive titles. I remember dimly that there was one for the GTA V on release. It was pretty modest stuff at the time, but I can imagine that Take 2 Interactive are really keen to keep their GTA & Red Dead Redemption Online players within the eco-system through mobile. The longer they play, the more they spend, right?

detroit20 wrote:

In the longer term, I wonder whether this will mean the end of offline, single-player games from the rest of Take 2 Interactive's developers.

When I read this, I thought: "Like who?" I had to go remind myself

Not a ton of 2k games come out but its worth noting the few big splashers
Civilization (Firaxis) - if online/mobile was the directive maybe that'd get them to look into continuing the Civilization Revolution series, though Civ VI itself is on mobile and I did enjoy playing that during a boring family vacation a few years back. The slowness with which it lags behind PC is irritating though.

XCOM (Also Firaxis, wow) - Also on mobile but I've never had a device good enough to run it with any satisfaction. I'd be here for a CivRev style branch of Xcom games.

All of the 2k sports as mentioned. Some already have their mobile versions too.

Reading down their wikipedia page, I saw that when Microsoft acquired Bungie oh so many years ago, Take 2 had a stake in the company and in exchange Take 2 got Myth and Oni! Why did they do nothing with these?!

GTA Online is a huge cash cow and moving it to mobile, somehow, is the Fortnite money I'm talking about. And Zynga ​has the mobile experience they're looking for plus a stable of revenue generating products to make the valuation appropriate.

PUBG Mobile: Success
Fortnite Mobile: Success
CoD Mobile: Success

GTA V/Online: Still a top selling game, year in, year out, so likely a success on mobile.

GTA VI is on the TESVI path of being ready when it's ready because RDR2 and GTA V Online are what they've been focusing on in the interim. Rockstar games take huge teams and a huge amount of time and it's only been three years since RDR2 launched. These huge games take longer and longer to make, but they have longer lifespans, so that's OK.

2K Also publishes Borderlands which has a new game coming out in March and a movie sometime this year.

Hardly a premium when you consider that Zynga went public at $10/share and had multiple acquisitions yet is selling for less than $10/share.

Overall, it is a decent price for their revenue and overall IP portfolio. If they can achieve the "$100M in costs savings", the deal should be slightly accretive to TTWO's immediate fiscal year.

There are still 44 days for another buyer to outbid TTWO.... In this case, however, I think it likely that TTWO successfully closes the deal.

garion333 wrote:

GTA VI is on the TESVI path of being ready when it's ready because RDR2 and GTA V Online are what they've been focusing on in the interim. Rockstar games take huge teams and a huge amount of time and it's only been three years since RDR2 launched. These huge games take longer and longer to make, but they have longer lifespans, so that's OK.

As I understand it, Rockstar haven't even announced a GTA 6 yet. We can't actually be sure that there is a going to be a GTA 6, or what form it will take.

You're right that its only been 3 years since Red Dead Redemption 2, but I'm not sure this is the most helpful data point. Rockstar's release rate for its biggest games has been slowing noticeably even as its resources increase.

2008 - GTA IV
2010 - Red Dead Redemption
2011 - LA Noire
2013 - GTA V
2018 - Red Dead Redemption 2
2021 - GTA Trilogy
?? - GTA 6

LA Noire and GTA Trilogy aren't really Rockstar-developed games. LA Noire was led by Team Bondi with assistance from other Rockstar studios while the Trilogy game was farmed out 100%. And you left off Mac Payne 3. Anyway, Rockstar is slow. Always was, but more so since GTA Online became so popular.

Regardless, GTAVI was always in the works like TESVI was always in the works. How many people are on the project and how far into production or pre-production they are is something we won't know for a while.

Either way, it appears Rockstar North hasn't led on anything since GTAV so they've gotta be working on something behind the scenes other than GTA Online.

There are some credible rumours that Bully 2 is in the works and was supposed to be announced last year.

Vector wrote:

There are some credible rumours that Bully 2 is in the works and was supposed to be announced last year.

Those credible rumors seem to pop up again every three or four years

Was the original Bully just a game about bullying? Or was there some kind of ironic plot inversion that made it non-evil somehow?

Oh, it's got the expected satirical edge. You fight different cliques, but you aren't really A bully. There's plenty of bullies in the game whose asses you kick. You're more of a juvenile delinquent in a school filled with cliche cliques and awful teachers.

You're basically Bart Simpson at a boarding school. Complete with skateboard and slingshot.

WSJ has another article, but this time it's that Activision has let at least 30 people go over the investigation into their culture along with disciplining 40 or so. Reportedly the report detailing this was ready to go in December, but Mr. Kotick had it held until after the holiday season (aka 4th quarter).

Someone remind me how Kotick is being paid? I want to say he isn't taking a salary, basically, but that he's still being paid by bonuses and the like.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/activis...

garion333 wrote:

Someone remind me how Kotick is being paid?

Very, very, very well.

His base salary is low, but he gets about $150m a year in stock.

Tasty Pudding wrote:

His base salary is low, but he gets about $150m a year in stock.

Ding ding ding

So, if you hold back bad news during the end of a quarter because it might tank your stock value further...

Ah, the aristocrats of The Meritocracy.

Microsoft buys Activision/Blizzard:

https://news.microsoft.com/features/...

That's insane

Bobby Kotick will remain CEO of videogame maker after acquisition

Why, Phil, why?

I can only assume that Sony and Microsoft are now in a bidding war for Take Two and Ubisoft. Soon, there will only be Taco Bell.

garion333 wrote:

That's insane

Bobby Kotick will remain CEO of videogame maker after acquisition

Why, Phil, why?

Bloomberg says he stays. Polygon says Spencer is CEO (?) and that all AB employees report up through him (which could still be true if Kotick stays).

What have other firms that get acquired in similar circumstances gone through? Troubled asset with toxic leadership gets acquired...how long before old guys are axed?

Deal isn’t complete and probably won’t be until next year. Until then they’re separate companies and Kotick is CEO of ABK.

After the deal is complete, if it isn’t blocked, ABK will report to Spencer as CEO of Microsoft Gaming.

steinkrug wrote:

Deal isn’t complete so any changes would occur after that which probably won’t be for a while. I doubt Kotick stays once they are reporting to Spencer.

They'll be watching over him with a careful eye, and I suspect there will be a number of changes that Kotick refused to do that MS will force him to do.

Phil Spencer said:

"As a company, Microsoft is committed to our journey for inclusion in every aspect of gaming, among both employees and players," Spencer continued. "We deeply value individual studio cultures. We also believe that creative success and autonomy go hand-in-hand with treating every person with dignity and respect. We hold all teams, and all leaders, to this commitment. We're looking forward to extending our culture of proactive inclusion to the great teams across Activision Blizzard."

I don't know what to think about that. On one hand, it's specifically associating toxic workplaces with ABK and reiterating it's fundamental to their philosophy, but it's also pretty buzzwordy, and culture always wins against policy (unless you change the culture with lots of layoffs)

I have feelings, but I am not quite sure what they are...

Kotick will be retire very shortly after the actual takeover is implemented (or maybe even in next year's interregnum). You can safely disregard all public statements on the matter. No way Microsoft or the Xbox management team is keeping him around.

Wow, did not expect this on Tuesday morning.

I guess the major effect of the scandals was to put AB in a weak enough position that the board was open to accepting an offer when Microsoft came by with the moneyhoard.

That is exactly what I thought. The scandal lowered the stock price enough that actiblizz was too good to pass up.

Kotick does need to go though and pronto.

On a personal level, this doesn't really affect me much. My interest in Activision-Blizzard for over a decade has basically been "I'll buy a used copy of an older COD for $20 to play the campaign for a nice mindless rollercoaster break from something more significant".

But on an industry level, one can't deny how big a shakeup it is that the Call of Duty playerbase who haven't joined the next generation have basically been told that the PS5 is no longer an option.

polq37 wrote:

I guess the major effect of the scandals was to put AB in a weak enough position that the board was open to accepting an offer when Microsoft came by with the moneyhoard.

This certainly must be the case - especially with the lawsuit with the state of California still looming. This is probably the first period of time since 2007 that major stakeholders are dying to be bought out.

I agree - Kotick probably stays because something in his contract says he has to, but I would be shocked if he doesn't resign after an appropriate amount of time to save a tiny bit of face.

Nobody is talking about the most important development out of this whole deal.

Microsoft now owns Crash Bandicoot.