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[Column] General: How Might Tencent's Investment Affect Activision?
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Last week, Activision-Blizzard bought itself out from under Vivendi Universal. One of its heavier investors is Asian games publisher TenCent. In our latest Free Zone, we take a look at the potential changes that might come along as a result. Read on and then leave your thoughts in the comments.
On Friday, we learned that CEO Bobby Kotick figured out a way. Vivendi will sell 49 percent of its current 61 percent holding, receiving $8.2 billion. Most of this amount will be from Activision itself, roughly $1.2 billion from the $4.5 billion it has in cash and investments plus $4.75 billion to be raised by issuing new debt (the company has none right now). The rest, another $2.34 billion, will come from an investment group pulled together by Kotick and Co-Chairman Brian Kelly. Those two are apparently “only” kicking in $50 million each, which means the other partners are funding almost 96% of the latter sub-total.
Read more of Richard Aihoshi's The Free Zone: How Might Tencent's Investment Affect Activision?
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Comments
Oh, Silly Rabbit. WoW hasn't lost 4.3 Million in Subscribers, MMO gaming has lost 4.3 Million gamers. When the economy turns around they will all be back, and playing WoW again. Listen, our Great Grand Children will be subscribers to WoW, before it goes fully free to play. A/B might even listen to the player base and eliminate the extended free trial from all servers, except for a few remaining free trial only servers.
My question is, does this buy back kill the parasite? Does Vivendi still have a right to dividends? Can they still ask for that 4+ Billion? If Vivendi can't or won't, the World of Halo (aka Titan) is back on track. I know, "but A/B doesn't own the rights to Halo." They are just publishing Bungie's next project. But guess who is shaking in their boots to get an IP Tap into the Cash Cow A/B? Microsoft, would do anything to turn the Halo IP into a 4+ Million subscriber a month money stream. The only worry I have, is it will be a Win 8+ & Xbox One only application.
Boy: Why can't I talk to Him?
Mom: We don't talk to Priests.
As if it could exist, without being payed for.
F2P means you get what you paid for. Pay nothing, get nothing.
Even telemarketers wouldn't think that.
It costs money to play. Therefore P2W.
well that is the big *if* as in if you were Fidelity would you risk 5 million sub income versus an unknown number of F2P tourists / possible spenders ? I'm sure Fidelity only care about the bottom line and as I have no stake here I'm interested to see how this plays out as well
I sometimes make spelling and grammar errors but I don't pretend it's because I'm using a phone
The economy has very little to do with people not playing MMOs. It has everything to do with people bored of the same stuff. The current trend is this: If you've played WoW, you have pretty much experienced every MMO created post-WoW.
People get bored and quit. I quit playing MMOs years ago. I think a lot of people are in my boat, where they want to experience something new within the MMO realm, yet become bored of "the new game" after the first week.
In every sub game that has gone free to play the reports coming from those studios in investor calls and such is that income rose post transation, and even once it leveled off it still was higher than sub only.
Tencent already have an investment in Riot IIRC to the sum of $400 million and now have a much bigger investment in Actiblizz giving them leverage and interest in the two biggest online games in the west.
This is a win win scenario in my opinion for both Tencent and Actiblizz, firstly Tencent get massive insight into how to run a western based mmo, maximised monetization of players, western marketing and such. In return Actiblizz gets a company with great insight into esports (Which is something wow has long chased with the arenas) and F2P models.
Wow may be declining, but its hard to ignore the fact that it shrugged off the loss of more subscribers than all but 2 of its western competitors have. We all know winter brings players back to MMOs and summer sees them leave so its hard to listen to the latest clarion call of wow is dying.
I predicted about 18 months ago that over the next 4 years we would see wow decline to a position of 3-4 million stable subscribers maintaining its market lead in the west but seeing its share eroded by newer games with interesting USP's and I stick by that, but even that many if you include an ingame cash shop ontop of the subs is a license to print money.
If they go much lower then and only then will they go free to play, but why go f2p when wows players are happy to pay a sub AND pay for "Cosmetic and convenience" cash shop items ontop of the sub.
Total unemployed______________________________4.9% Sept 1999
Total unemployed_____________________________13.4% May 2013
"As a result, the labor force is now at its smallest size since the 1980s"
There are 4 lights. Ok, I will correct my math for those that quit, because they got board (weren't allowed to grief) WoW hasn't lost 4 Million in Subscribers, MMO gaming has lost 4 Million gamers. When the economy turns around they will all be back, and playing WoW again.
That correction now accounts for every gamer out there playing any other MMO right now.. 300k have left WoW and are now spread out to form the entire MMO gaming population not subscribed to WoW.
Boy: Why can't I talk to Him?
Mom: We don't talk to Priests.
As if it could exist, without being payed for.
F2P means you get what you paid for. Pay nothing, get nothing.
Even telemarketers wouldn't think that.
It costs money to play. Therefore P2W.
This is one of worst manipulation try i ever seen . Why do you post 1999 numbers ? Than how wow made that numbers before decline ( with that small labor size ) ? Be honest if you want to play with numbers.
they are passive buyers and their payment worth 12% but the owner of this 12% will be kelly and boby as far as i have read in another website. tencent will be given some services by activision-blizzard which obviously are not disclosed to the press. but i am thinking from now on all of the A-B products in east will be handled by tencent.
Boobs are LIFE, Boobs are LOVE, Boobs are JUSTICE, Boobs are mankind's HOPES and DREAMS. People who complain about boobs have lost their humanity.
For the first time ever I'm actually pretty skeptical of Blizzard's future success. While their separating from Vivendi has provided them with current net gains the reality is Vivendi has been trying to get rid of them for about 2 years now and no one wanted to buy. Also every one of their titles is struggling with expected performance (I'm not saying they're unsuccessful but they did not meet expectations especailly with long term player retention):
WoW: Losing subs
SC2: Dead esports game (you can argue this if you want but it's definitely not meeting expectations and struggles; there's also signs like LoL not running LCS at the same time as large DotA2 stuff while they have no prob running right over top of SC2)
D3: Sold well but failed to retain players long term.
Titan: Back to the drawing board.
Hearthstone: Who knows how this will turn out, but I really don't hold any high hopes. This game seems like a targeted cash grab with the ability to sell packs of random cards.
Blizzard All Stars (MOBA): Haven't heard anything in ages and at last report was designed around being easily accessible to casual players and leaving a lot lacking for any sort of competitive scene. More of an Battle.net game than a stand alone.
I don't think this is the same Blizzard of the past and I don't have a lot of hope for their long term future.
Steam: Neph
When I read the press release about the buyout, the presence of Tencent in the consortium immediately caught my eye. Very intriguing.
Allowing a direct competitor to buy a chunk of your stock is an interesting tactic. But then again, if that is what it took to get away from Vivendi, it may have been worth it in the long run.
Is it a very low profile maneuver, the "thin end of the wedge", so to speak ?
Or just a "good investment" in an industry they are very familiar with ? Time will tell...
NEWS FLASH! PAYING THE SUB IN F2P = NO DIFFERENCE THAN P2P GAMES!
Why the hell can't the whiners comprehend this?
Play with numbers? Those are real numbers and government source material. Why did I go back to 1999. I went back to before the shyt hit the fan is why. My mistake was discussing Economics with an audience not up to the challenge.
Boy: Why can't I talk to Him?
Mom: We don't talk to Priests.
As if it could exist, without being payed for.
F2P means you get what you paid for. Pay nothing, get nothing.
Even telemarketers wouldn't think that.
It costs money to play. Therefore P2W.
What other games? The next subscription game to break 1 Million is predicted / expected to take 11 years to do so. Only self deluded businessmen, think they can tap into that missing 4.3 million. The gaming industry has looked around, and those gamers have not show up on any other games roster. As far as the game industry can tell, 4 Million gamers aren't playing anything.
Boy: Why can't I talk to Him?
Mom: We don't talk to Priests.
As if it could exist, without being payed for.
F2P means you get what you paid for. Pay nothing, get nothing.
Even telemarketers wouldn't think that.
It costs money to play. Therefore P2W.
In China, WoW, SC2 and Hearthstone are handled by NetEase, Tencent's biggest competitor for online games.
Much like Samsung, Tencent excels in both competing and collaborating with rivals at the same time.
"A game is fun if it is learnable but not trivial" -- Togelius & Schmidhuber