this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2023
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In the latest unredacted document oopsie stemming from the US Federal Trade Commission's efforts to stop Microsoft acqu…

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[–] heliumlake@lemmy.world 171 points 1 year ago (7 children)

Bring back anti-trust regulations. Microsoft has been trying to acquire anything they can get their hands on, and really should be dismantled on principle.

[–] Haui@discuss.tchncs.de 46 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Yes, indeed. This is so obvious and my frustration is immeasurable when hearing that people are too ignorant to understand why this is really bad.

[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

No it's good! It'll give them twice the power to make games and it'll be better! They totally won't just sit there with their monopoly, monopolies are good! Plus we still have Sony. Wait they want to buy Sony too? Even better!

[–] radiated@lemm.ee 10 points 1 year ago

Yayay, all my games on Microsoft©️ GamePass™️, wait what do you mean they increased the prices? I’m sure one of the competitors…oh

[–] TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I've been repeatedly downvoted on here and on Reddit for pointing out that Microsoft clearly just wants to capture the market and wield their disproportionate amount of power (their money, pretty much monopolistic OS position, ever-growing IP, and strength to push DirectX over other standards, etc) as a weapon.

People really love Microsoft and won't hear criticism of them.

People look at gamepass and think ooooh that's great, such a good price. I'm sure they won't ever jack up prices once they capture the market!

I'm sure it's fine that MS has sole control over the graphics API pretty much all games use!

It's fine that MS is spending dozens to hundreds of billions on buying publishers, because Sony bought one too (that's a 15th the size)! And it's fine that they're making that stuff exclusive to their platforms!

It's fine that Microsoft hurts open standards!

Etc.

I'm so damn tired of people carrying water for multi ~~billion~~ trillion dollar companies with immense history of anticompetitive and illegal behaviour.

[–] Haui@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 1 year ago

I get your point. You‘re not the only one schooling peeps on this. It’s highly frustrating.

Make sure to not repeat yourself a lot but make a blog, youtube channel, etc. Make your statements, put sources together to make it easy and logical and then just link to it.

The big problem democracy has is efficiency. People who actually know stuff burn out because they don’t accept that they might be right but not efficient. Don’t be that guy.

I‘m currently trying to build stuff up with mastodon but it’s still a wip.

Good luck to you.

[–] stopthatgirl7@kbin.social 6 points 1 year ago

I was watching this video this morning, and he points out how these leaks show a pattern of Microsoft basically wanting to buy up all of gaming (I also liked how he called Microsoft’s whole way of think about buying Nintendo as a bit of American imperialism). Folks like their Game Pass and don’t like Nintendo not giving a damn about trends or multiplayer or whatever and just going along doing their own thing, and think it would be a great idea for Microsoft to own them, and…no. Just, no.

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[–] sturmblast@lemmy.world 81 points 1 year ago (3 children)

if Microsoft buys Nintendo, Nintendo dies

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[–] radiated@lemm.ee 69 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Microsoft needs to fuck off.

[–] ieightpi@lemmy.world 36 points 1 year ago (2 children)

im getting really tired of all of these MS acquisitions. I know the nintendo one is very unlikely, but i would be pissed as fuck to see valve swallowed up by this terrifying beast.

[–] mememuseum@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It would never happen as long as Gabe is still at the helm.

[–] ieightpi@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

For sure. I hope he's found a good successor that will keep Valve's core values alive for years to come.

[–] RisingSwell@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

Valve isn't any more likely than Nintendo, given you can't buy shares because there are none, and it's a money printing machine that would have a truly absurd value.

[–] dandroid@dandroid.app 66 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'd like to think the Japanese government wouldn't approve that.

[–] mayonaise_met@feddit.nl 36 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] Da_Boom@iusearchlinux.fyi 7 points 1 year ago

Neither should the US, Australia or any other country that Nintendo or Microsoft trade in.

[–] Dasnap@lemmy.world 50 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Didn't they want to do this 2 decades ago also? The offer was laughed at.

Looks like the lads took it personally.

[–] Sunroc@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They misspelled Dwayne Johnson. Hah

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[–] Carighan@lemmy.world 45 points 1 year ago (6 children)

MS wanted to buy Nintendo. The company that has so much money on hand that they are a noticable thing to the japanese banking sector?

Of all possible companies they were looking at buying? Heck, Sony might be more realistic by comparison, at least their gaming/console parts!

[–] stopthatgirl7@kbin.social 29 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

And of all the hubris to want to rock up to a company that is over 125 years old and still going strong to tell them you would know better how to run their company than them.

[–] darreninthenet@sh.itjust.works 17 points 1 year ago

Market cap of Nintendo - 50 billion Market cap of Microsoft - 2.4 trillion

[–] dustyData@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago

It's really hard for humans to imagine things at that scale, but Microsoft is so many orders of magnitude larger than Nintendo that whatever Microsoft (and other mega tech companies like Apple and Google) does the entire global international finance system feels it.

[–] pulaskiwasright@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago

Sony is worth more than twice as much as Nintendo.

[–] Goronmon@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago

Heck, Sony might be more realistic by comparison, at least their gaming/console parts!

I mean, judging from the quotes, even MS considered it pretty unlikely back when the email is sent.

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[–] huginn@feddit.it 37 points 1 year ago

The email describes a hostile takeover: buy enough stock to own the board then pressure the company to sell.

[–] Aielman15@lemmy.world 33 points 1 year ago

Microsoft will buy my teapottery if anti-trust regulations don't keep them in check. And, in today's climate, I don't believe for a moment that anybody will make a reasonable attempt to do so.

[–] mojo@lemm.ee 24 points 1 year ago (2 children)

What the fuck, this will actually kill Nintendo. Aren't they way too big to buy?

[–] EnglishMobster@lemmy.world 28 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Microsoft is bigger.

Nintendo's market cap is about $56.7 billion.

Microsoft's market cap is $2.44 trillion, with $111 billion worth of cash (not equity, cash) in the bank.

Microsoft is 43 times bigger than Nintendo. They can pay for Nintendo with only cash, if they desire.

These trillion-dollar players are an order of magnitude larger than anyone around them. They can do what they want, same as how Apple ($2.8 trillion) can easily buy Disney ($150.5 billion) if they wished.

This isn't an exact science, but you can use market cap to ballpark these things and get an idea of how much an acquisition would cost. For example, Twitter had a market cap of $31 billion in August 2022, and Elon bought it a few months later for $44 billion. That's a 1.4x increase, so applying the same math buying all of Disney would "only" cost about $214 billion - which both Apple and Microsoft (and Google) could do. Nintendo would cost about $80 billion, which Microsoft could do without even taking out a loan.

The issue isn't necessarily the price; it's the regulators.

[–] tal@kbin.social 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

What is Microsoft even making money on these days?

googles

https://www.kamilfranek.com/microsoft-revenue-breakdown/

Azure, Office, and (still) Windows, apparently.

Only 8% of revenue is gaming. They sure do went to grow that.

[–] quams69@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

Yeah, also they probably have no interest in being bought. I wouldn't worry about what a greedy MS corpo wants in this regard

[–] dangblingus@lemmy.world 22 points 1 year ago (7 children)

Xbox games are on PC. Playstation games are on PC. Nintendo is Nintendo. If Microsoft ever bought out Nintendo, Nintendo would disappear, effectively making consoles obsolete. People will still buy consoles, but they would be pissing away their money.

[–] LastYearsPumpkin@feddit.ch 21 points 1 year ago (11 children)

There will always be a market for consoles. If you buy a game, know for a fact that it works. If you have a PC, it can start to be obsolete, or your graphics card might not be supported, or your OS might not be patched, or....

There will also always be a market for PCs, because you can do things cheaper, and/or better than consoles.

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[–] UnfortunateShort@lemmy.world 22 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Wasn't this a thing forever ago and didn't Nintendo just laugh at them? They just had a super successful console and now have more successful IPs than ever, they would be straight up insane to sell a business that runs this good.

[–] Squizzy@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

Nintendo is publicly traded, it may be the case that the board won't have that much of a say.

[–] Throwaway4669332255@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

Turned out well for Rareware...

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