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Everything Everywhere Once A Week (4/28/2023)

Added 2023-04-29 00:28:51 +0000 UTC

Hello and welcome to Everything Everywhere Once A Week, a weekly newsletter about the goings on in the video game industry over the last week. Happy end of April, so we’re one-third through 2023. Did you know you perceive time differently as an adult versus when you were younger, so things felt like they took longer back then and eventually it speeds up to where nothing feels like any amount of time at all? So not only does it feel like time is passing you by, it’s literally a symptom of aging! Have fun with that knowledge.

Activision, Acquisitions, Ack

This week, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has formally issued a ruling on Microsoft’s nearly-$70 billion acquisition of Activision-Blizzard. Rumors, largely coming from Microsoft sources themselves, had been spinning for weeks that the CMA was more than ready to approve the deal and remove one of the biggest obstacles to this now-15-month process.Those rumors were incorrect.

Citing the cloud gaming market as their chief concern, the CMA has blocked Microsoft’s potential acquisition in the UK, a major blow to the possibility of completing the deal. With this ruling from the CMA and the upcoming Federal Trade Commission (FTC) lawsuit, two of Microsoft’s biggest worries have now been made manifest. The acquisition has genuinely never been in more danger than it is right now sandwiched between these two events.

Now, you might be sitting there and scoffing at the idea of cloud gaming, a small medium that failed to achieve liftoff with Stadia and is currently only a small part of Microsoft’s gaming strategy. The key word there, though, is “currently.” Throughout the CMA’s report, the authority makes mention of redacted future plans for Microsoft that don’t necessarily seem tied to hardware and are generally referred to as services. The CMA knows what these things are, but for business interests redacts them from the final public report. What we can read, however, indicates that they have big future expansion plans for these services within Microsoft.

Moreover, the CMA specifically cites the death of Stadia as a major consideration when it comes to future monopoly concerns. That leaves the two competitors in the arena as Microsoft and Nvidia, to whom Microsoft has offered some streaming concessions but nothing compared to the concessions offered to other hardware manufacturers. When people point out that cloud gaming is not so notable that it is worth blocking this deal over because there’s only really two competitors, I have to reply, that’s the point.

Throw in the fact that Windows presents an ever-present and looming danger for keeping everyone on one track and it becomes pretty sticky.

The CMA, either based on supposition or based on the information presented to them, believe that Microsoft presents a monopoly threat within cloud gaming and that the company will attempt to grow this market from the front rather than be king of an anthill. Putting Activision-Blizzard in their control would essentially seal the deal, especially with Call of Duty as the crown jewel of this portfolio. It is exceedingly difficult to break up a monopoly after it forms, so maybe you could argue the CMA is being over-cautious, but it’s not without reason.

Considering that and with the looming threat of the FTC on the horizon, Microsoft is not quite backed into a corner but they’re quickly running out of options. They offered numerous concessions to Sony and Nintendo (a relative non-factor in a lot of these decisions) around Call of Duty, but they don’t really have a lot of space to offer more concessions to cloud competitors because, like, there aren’t many. They’ve signed deals with streaming companies like Ubitus to sing their praises to the CMA but there’s not that many left to keep doing that with.

The poison pill that would likely do it but they absolutely don’t want to try is divesting from Blizzard and spinning them back off into their own entity. This would probably squeak them through both the CMA and the FTC even with Call of Duty still in their armory because it takes things like World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Diablo, etc. off the board. I don’t think they want to do this, but is it possible they one day might be forced to that point? I don’t think it’s out of the realm of possibility, no.

There’s also the chance they just abandon the whole deal, but I consider that less likely. They will have to pay out a few billion dollars to Activison for not completing the acquisition, which is more or less throwing money away for the Tacoma-based company. It also sets a pretty nasty precedent for any other big acquisitions if they fail to bring this one to completion, so to speak. If they do whiff on this and then try to pick up, I don’t know, Ubisoft, I doubt it will fare any better.

It’s becoming a war on two fronts when they were very much expecting it to be bumpy but doable.

Honkai to the Stars

This week, Honkai Star Rail came out on PC and mobile with PlayStation versions planned down the line, the latest from Genshin Impact developer Hoyoverse. I like Genshin so– okay, well, let me rephrase. I play Genshin, I am not sure if I still like Genshin. But I figured, based on that, I would give Honkai Star Rail a try. I’m surprised to find out it’s..actually pretty good?

I won’t belabor this with impressions since I am sure we are going to cover it in next week’s Materia Possessions, but I kind of dig the game. The music especially really surprised me. Maybe give it a shot if you’re looking to burn a few hours until Zelda comes out or something.

The Mario Bros. Movie’s Effect Will Be Good and Bad

It’s very likely that The Super Mario Bros. Movie (which I thought was fun but not actually good) will cross a billion box office dollars this weekend, which will further the record it’s already set for being the most successful video game adaptation of all time. I don’t suspect this will immediately spark a gold rush for video game adaptations, but we’re going to see that dam wall crack more and more over the next year and it’s not all going to be great.

I suspect that the lesson Hollywood will take from this movie is that plotless entities — such as the newly-announced Vampire Survivors TV show — are ideal because they allow you to just make up whatever and fill the gaps with references. As much as the internet clamors for a Zelda movie, which is surely coming eventually, I suspect something like Donkey Kong or Splatoon which are considerably more story-lite are better options. We’ll probably see Portal before an Undertale or Hotline Miami before a Life is Strange.

These games aren’t bereft of stories, but they’re presented in a way that allows a screenwriter to go nuts and a producer to fall asleep dreaming about all the toy opportunities.

On the other hand, you have The Last of Us which was a mostly-straight adaptation of an exceedingly story-driven video game and that show took over the world for like six weeks so really who knows. The actual takeaway should be that different approaches work as long as they express a love for the source material in a relatable way and there’s always the loosest possible chance someone actually learns that lesson.

Goodbye, Waypoint

This week, VICE Games — known originally and always in spirit as Waypoint — was officially shuttered by its parent company, being given one more month left to create content. VICE had been hemorrhaging jobs and roles for months and eventually was going to move on to reaping Waypoint as well. The scuttlebutt I had always heard is that Waypoint+ acted as a shield to these layoffs, though, and the small team was not in imminent danger. I don’t know if that scuttlebutt was incorrect or VICE decided to mow them down, anyway, but I’m comfortable being upset with the executives either way.

I have several thoughts on this, but I’ll start with this one: losing Waypoint is a big blow, personally. The site was one of the last bastions — the proverbial Northern Wall — of games writing left on the internet. Your IGNs and Gamespots still exist and still produce their fair share of good writing, but the gaming essay is itself soon-to-be-lost art and people that know how to do it well are fleeing or being forced out of game journalism at an alarming pace. Waypoint was somewhere I wanted to work if I ever decided to come back to game journalism. It was an argument that labor reporting in the game industry was not simply a side project when big news happens, but a constant beat that needed to be poked and prodded often. It was a statement that good work still mattered.

I have not used this newsletter or this patreon to really soapbox about game journalism since more or less exiting it, though it’s pretty much a constantly simmering kettle in my mind. At some point, though, it kind of has to be pointed out that games criticism is dying and its murderers are wearing suits and ties and high-fiving each other in board rooms. There’s a segment of this audience, people who likely shoot steam out of their ears if you mention any handful of women in the game industry circa 2014, that would prefer it this way. But the slow evisceration of games crit and reporting is going to make video games worse and it’s wild that anyone would deny that.

I think we’re currently in a transitional period, one that will eventually bounce back to needing talented writers to think and analyze and provide the dissenting voices and unearth the buried stories that never get told. But this transitional period is going to wreck so many lives before it’s through, so an executive can buy another boat or catch a ride on the next bullshit dumb-as-balls scheme that will get them short-term gains and long-term harm.

Am I bitter? Yeah. As would be anyone that went to war and came home with holes in them. But at some point we have to recognize what’s happening and either take steps to stop it or figure out what the next phase of game journalism looks like. It’s not Patreon, as much as I enjoy it. It’s not influencers who aren’t held to any ethical guidelines beyond whatever makes the numbers go up. It’s entirely possible the change comes from destroying the venture-capital culture that is strangling the life out it in the first place.