The reason it's apparently already happening isn't Sony's fault.
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The reason it's apparently already happening isn't Sony's fault.
lol that seems like an excessive ask. I doubt any of that is unearthed, would like to hear the justification for requesting it though.
Yup, why does MS need Sony's user data including birthdates and such? Completley irrelevant.
A motion to compel, then a subsequent motion to suppress. Then the judge will review the documents and determine if they need to be delivered to the requesting party. There's a standard the judge will use to determine their "disclose-ability."
Doesn't seem excessive at all. This is a $70bn acquisition Sony are trying to stop. $2m is nothing. They are claiming all this harm to their business so their whole gaming business needs to be examined in detail to see if that's the case, can't just take their word for it.
This is for the FTC so if I'm not mistaken it's all public knowledge. Maybe someone else knows for sure
But we have to remember that Sony has made a pretty emphatic claim that can't survive without cod so at minimum they're going to have to provide documentation to back up that claim. It definitely becomes relevant to show post merger effects on competition.
That seems like one of the easiest ones to defend? Understanding the demographics of consoles can help build an argument like Nintendo has a similar demographic to Sony so why would you exclude Nintendo from the market?
Understood, probably just a reflex to respond those arguments. I don't think my take is unreasonable either cuz that's the question that the regulators are actually considering - is this acquisition prevents Sony's ability to compete? But fair enough, you were indeed not making those arguments. My bad.
But respectfully (for real), what you told me to do was to look for your last response to TruP1aya for more info (without a link). And that comment was almost 2 pages back lol. And then THAT comment doesn't make sense because it responds to TruP1aya by explaining that you were referencing a previous comment. And then I clicked on 5 more links to go back to the original comment. I just wanted to respond to what you were saying. This is too much work T_T And ultimately, I don't think it says anything about MS needing this deal to challenge Sony either. "But if they [the regulators] see them [Sony's talking points] as valid? Well then there is no hope for anyone to challenge Sony in the "high end market". They are entrenched and basically untouchable."
Maybe I misunderstood EZMode, but I interpreted it as them making a tongue in cheek comment that if the regulators fully take Sony at their (obviously biased) word, such as only looking only at this invented "high end console market", then good luck to anyone ever being allowed to challenge Sony at all at the levels that will be necessary to take on an entrenched competitor with all of the advantages - ie: exactly what I was saying.
If I'm wrong, then I'll take the L, but I think we were maybe all in a bit of a misunderstanding spiral.
If it is, Sony can ask the judge to exclude those documents. Microsoft's lawyers, as well as anyone in any court case, will ask for as much as they can during discovery.
Age is not irrelevant if you want to start looking at user demographics. It's like that chart of Nintendo user's ages last year. People think they're a "kiddie" company until you look at the actual user age demographics.
Investors couldn't give a shit about console market share. That's whatever. They're looking at the division's total revenue growth.
Xbox is so much more than console now. I thought this much was obvious for some time. Game Pass isn't limited to console, it is seeing fastest growth on PC, and apps on TV and mobile. MS had a strong presence on Steam these days with games constantly in the top sellers. They own the biggest selling game of all time in Minecraft.
Xbox had a revenue decline YoY last quarter because obviously they didn't release the likes of AoE, Halo and FH5 like they did the year prior, all of which generated a significant chunk of revenue. That's not going to be the case going forward with the amount of content they have in development. The revenue will soon be back on the growth path again, with or without ABK.
Phil has gone on record saying that the main driver for the ABK purchase was mobile, where they have no presence currently. And no doubt the Blizzard side is very interesting for their growth Initiative on PC. But the main piece of the console pie in CoD they're keeping multiplat anyway. So whether it goes through or not is not going to have much impact on their console plans, but will force them to find a plan B for mobile.
I just want corporate messaging to sound like a teen who doesn't care for like, a week.
I was involved in a major discovery process like this for a big financial firm I worked for once.
We were redacting documents in Adobe for weeks. I still have nightmares about those PDF files I was combining and sending.
We were redacting documents in Adobe for weeks. I still have nightmares about those PDF files I was combining and sending.
Sony must provide the info, they've under a subpoena. After that, it's a question on whether the judge thinks the information is relevant. Sony says that their business will be heavily impacted by the ABK acquisition, it's their job to provide proof of that.
^ yea. This is one that I actually didn't bat an eye at. Realistically, MS asks for this in raw form knowing that they may end up with aggregated summaries of users instead (which is inherently less useful because Sony gets to kind of choose how they present that data). But knowing demographics is pretty important when you're trying to figure out which portion of Sony's population might actually be affected by any such move. And part of that might be exploring how the demographics of players has changed (broadened) over time. Or at least it COULD be a reasonable argument, which is why MS is trying to get it.
Same with some of these other asks. They make sense if you go "ok what is the compromise version of this request?'
Did I just time travel 2017, are people really claiming Microsoft will cut off the Xbox brand. Xbox has rapidly grown over the past few years. I believe it's even bigger than the windows. Yes, Microsoft could cut off the Xbox tomorrow but it's going to hurt.
Based on revenue alone they're bigger than Windows but Windows is likely far more profitable, we can't really know because Microsoft doesn't report profit numbers. It's probably not that crazy to think that Xbox is not very profitable right now based on how many studios they're onboarding, games they're signing onto Game Pass, consoles they're selling for a loss, etc. I don't believe that Microsoft might cut off Xbox anytime soon, especially with Satya at the helm, but just looking at "sizes" (based on revenue) doesn't give you the full picture.
While the request is done in the US, some of that information is for users residing outside the US, some of them living in countries where that information is protected and can't be shared. Unless they're only asking for US users.
That's Sony's job to figure out. Either way, information that is protected and can't be shared is likely related to sharing with third party companies, a government subpoena isn't really the same thing.
Not at all? Why do they need personal user data or performance reviews for executives, and contracts for every deal they've ever made with a third party? I assume a judge has to rule on whether this is relevant, and without knowing their justification It sounds extremely excessive, especially when they asked for this originally they gave them only a handful of days to retrieve the information.
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Yeah, definitely understandable now. Like, there's no way they could have complied knowing the breadth of the subpoenas.
Think about the arguments that will ultimately be made down the line and the required evidence. User data to give better competitive comparison on demographics and location.. Contracts for third party to no doubt argue the main complainant is participating in anti-competitive activity, taking advantage of their market leader position etc. No idea about executive performance reviews etc.
Corporations don't have the power to subpoena. It is Microsoft requesting the documents but it's under the government's subpoena power, which anyone is given the ability to do during the discovery process in any lawsuit.
Age demographics. Executive bonuses based on performance/financial targets. Some of that stuff might get shut down by a judge, but Microsoft is asking for that information for whatever analysis or investigatory path they want to pursue. It's not unheard of. Remember Epic vs Apple? Sony wasn't even named in that one, but they got dragged in and we got all kinds of details for things we didn't really need, but were happy to get (i.e. cross-play tax).
If they can spend 70 billion dollars on Activision, they sure as hell can spend that amount on their own 1st party.
The amount of shit they could create with that money is just... Insane. But that process takes time and MS knows this.
That's why they're partially out to get guaranteed hits such as CoD. It'd be their Game Pass killerapp (but this isn't the only reason).
In the end, all you really need is one really great game to move the needle. MS proved that with Gears of War and basically the entire 360 generation (I'm not saying they didn't have more to to offer because of course they did, but Gears defined their success).
The Series X is an amazing console. They don't need CoD to succeed, they just need to start pumping out more 1st party titles and not rush things and good things will come. High-Fi Rush was a pleasant surprise, now imagine The Evil Within 3 or brand new IP's...!
As much as I've been against this deal, neither me nor anyone else want MS to shut anything down - That would be catastrophic for the industry.
Exactly.
It would take more than a few days for everything MS is asking for to see if anything needs to be redacted.
Performance reviews and evaluations is....something.
It seems overly broad.
I believe Sony has had a while for this and they've gotten the deadline extended a few times. This is just likely the final deadline they'll get.
I assume that user data can be compared against Activision's user data? Discrepancies can be leveraged.
I definitely think it is overly broad but I guess I don't know the reasoning for some of this stuff. I definitely get the DOBs, genders, regions, etcs. Those demos of their customers makes sense.
We had to give that stuff, too, and it was tough. We were redacting all SSNs, names, full addresses besides state. It was a nightmare. Combining docs, filing them in folders on clowd drives. Double checking. I even saw actual counsel doing the work with the rest of us.
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I don't think you really understand the types of documents they're going to get, they're going to get dates, amounts, times, what is included in agreements and how 3rd parties have been dealing with Sony. This isn't some document just stating the price and how long the deal is.
This is the shit I want out of this deal, no matter the outcome this would be cool to see if it "leaked" we don't often get to see the dirty deals these companies do so it would be cool to see them. Sony won't need to worry if they leak because I'm positive people wouldn't really care lol, I do feel like this was the big fuck around and find out scenario when Sony kept saying PlayStation could not survive the transaction if it were to happen.
Unless you know what redacted documents say nothing is completely irrelevant because Sony could be saying stuff that puts that information into question.
User banned (1 month): Console war rhetoric, extremely long history of similar behavior
Would it really be catastrophic? Industry seemed to be doing fine before Xbox and all the studios would find new buyers easily.
Eh.... at worst I could see Sony being more greedy since they'd lack a direct competitor but... it's not like that's not an issue already with their pricing strategies.
Sony needs a direct competitor to push them to innovate rather than iterate alone. Also to keep them in check. Given the extremely high barrier to entry, Microsoft exiting the hardware business is a net negative for the industry. Unless the sell Xbox no one is going to fill the void.
There were more players in the pool before Xbox came. All of them have dropped out of the console game.
Would Microsoft be that petty though?
Uh, there was Sega and that's it.
It would be, because it would leave Sony with no real competitors. Their only competition would be PC and Nintendo, and both largely appeal to different audiences. Sony basically wouldn't have any competition fighting for the same audience as them.
But I'm not sure why this is even being discussed, even if this deal is killed the chances of Microsoft pulling out of gaming as a result is negligible. They already have over 20 studios, great IPs and a subscription which shits all over Sony's, they'd be perfectly fine.
Sony: "I don't think a 30% cut is fair to us. Give us 40%. You disagree? Where else are you gonna go. Lol"
OR
Sony: "Hey customers. I don't think $70 is fair to us for all of this quality. Give us $80."
What a strange thing to say. I'm not saying definitively that Sony would do either, but it would be terrible for the entire industry. Much worse than Microsoft buying a large publisher because it would put almost every dev at the mercy of Sony.
No clue, but if Sony torpedoed my big deal, I don't know why I would make their life any easier.
I mean. Seems like an easy solve when MS also wants geographic information of the users. Exclude the ones that are protected. Or limit it to the US. MS is gonna make the request broad regardless and let it shake out where it will.
Yep, that's exactly what I was thinking. No Sony executive ever got a pay bonus based on COD's performance that year. But again, remember that MS is asking for the over broad version of all of these by design. That way they can negotiate down to a compromise. You know, exactly the same thing they've been doing with regulators in their concessions - and not dissimilar to what people here have been saying Sony has been doing with MS (extracting concessions).
There's always been multiple people putting out high spec machines. Nintendo, NEC, Sega then later Nintendo, Sega, SNK, Atari, 3DO then after that Nintedo, Sony, Sega. But now it's only Microsoft and Sony putting out for the high end market, If Microsoft dropped out it'd only be Sony with Nintendo doing their own thing like they have been since the Wii.
Maybe. The FTC doesn't plan to stop here. Winning against the FTC could be an important message that sets up their future moves too. There are non-petty reasons to consider this path (though I don't know that it's likely).
There was Neo Geo, Turbo Grax 16 and that's it, but they dropped out in the mid 90's. And Sega dropped out in 2001. I think if MS would drop out of thr hardware race hypothetically, maybe Apple or Google would take a stab at it. Don't think the big tech companies would just leave Nintendo and Sony alone and own the gaming marketshare
Isn't their ultimate goal with gamepass and xcloud to leave the dedicated hardware business? If gamepass and xcloud take off you don't need an Xbox to play anything. You just need a smart tv or a small dongle or your phone. I could see them dropping the high end Xbox in the future regardless of all this.