shinjiikarus

Not really surprising. All corporate social media follows an initial trend, which steeply drops off after the first few days/weeks. Doesn’t mean Threads is doomed or anything.

Twitter wasn’t really “popular”, especially outside the US (and Japan, if I remember correctly), no matter how much so called “journalists” amplified its content. Even the most favorable estimates (which will be completely wrong, considering how many sock puppets and bots there are on any given platform), put Twitter’s MAU at a quarter of Instagrams’, which itself isn’t even the biggest social network. This speaks volumes to how interested the general population is in a text-first social network, compared to an image centric one.

Instagram’s large user base and the exclusivity/scarcity narrative, which is customary for new social networks forever (Threads was touted as so evil, it was banned in the EU! This was definitely not meant as a cautionary tale but felt very gimmicky to me) will have helped Threads acquire a lot of curious Instagram users, who quickly lost interest in a wall of uninteresting text and returned to their algorithmically presented pictures.

I believe a lot of engagement on Twitter to be completely fake, crediting it in part to bots and in part to an outrage fueling algorithm. When a lot of famous Twitter users migrated to Mastodon a few months back, the first thing they noted has been the much lower engagement, partially due to the smaller user base, but also due to much less bots. A lot of them are still looking for a new home, but cannot get rid of the dopamine hits of a “viral” twitter post and Zucc might just have the stuff for them.

Threads will stay around and probably split or assimilate the negligible small user base of Twitter in time, while truly federated platforms like Mastodon or Lemmy will have trouble on boarding (and retaining) comparable user groups, since they are missing the outrage farming algorithm and the fake engagement.

The 14P (~200g, if I remember correctly, feels even heavier) is one of the heaviest phones I ever owned, especially compared to my 12 before it, but even compared to my Xs, which already felt heavy at the time. In the past I always agreed with statements of „just make the phone thicker“ for more battery, or to hide the bump. But with the 14P I cannot agree: just make the bump smaller an reduce weight.

My TV hasn’t been connected to the internet except for very specific updates I preemptively researched what they included. Otherwise it’s a „dumb TV“.

I had the crappiest of PCs in 2006 or 2007 with 768MBs of RAM running Windows XP. Funnily enough the reason I switched to Chrome back then was the immense RAM usage of Firefox compared to Chrome back then. With the big rebranding an rerelease of Firefox in 2017? 2018? I came back and haven’t looked back since.

Got me in the first half ngl

Only after a second run through a hand-network (same with facial reconstruction and inverted faces)

I differentiate between Microsoft and Xbox tbh. Everybody in the video game industry is scummy af. Microsoft - in context of the video game industry - is not better or worse than SONY and Nintendo and such. But I obviously agree with you for Microsoft the software company.

When mouthing this opinion back on Reddit I got swamped with downvotes and crypto apologists immediately. But in my opinion brave is shady af and I don’t see their value over Firefox and a reasonable ad blocker, maybe a pi-hole and anti tracking.

I feel like a Microsoft shill, since the fediverse (and Reddit before this) feels so much of one mind and I am not. I know consolidation is generally bad for the consumer, while competition is generally good, but is the Activision deal bad for the consumer or the industry?

ABK doesn’t have a steady output, doesn’t have reliable IPs and doesn’t produce guaranteed hits. What they have is some cash and some overvalued IP from the past (aka “assets”). Let’s look at this one by one:

We are in the “Blizzard can do no wrong”-part of the eternal Blizzard-is-trash-cycle, since Diablo 4 is generally well received at the moment. But their last two games have been Overwatch 2 and Diablo Immortal. Before that Overwatch in 2016, which - while liked by many - didn’t really catch up to other hero shooters popularity-wise (even though the IP stayed in the zeitgeist for other, unmonetarized reasons). So what is Blizzard living off of? WoW, obviously, which had that much decline due to their decisions, they needed to relaunch their old game again to retain players and WoW is still shrinking (though more slowly than before). Their last memorable IPs are the Starcraft and Warcraft RTS, which did not translate into the current landscape very well. RTS have always been niche as a consumer product, but considerably less so in the times of Age of Empires and Command & Conquer. Their biggest appeal has been in eSports where they have been leapfrogged heavily by LoL and - adding insult to injury - DotA. It looks like Diablo 4 will be a venerable hit, which is great (I personally like Diablo), but it needs to replace a lot of revenue lost from other revenue streams alone.

Activision is the CoD machine it looks to be: They drove all their original IP into the ground or simply fell out of the zeitgeist, like Tony Hawk’s, Guitar Hero, Spyro, and Crash (I know, the last two hurt, but they simply couldn’t acquire a new and younger audience like Mario, Zelda and even Sonic could). Movie adaptations, which have been most of the output Activision had in the 2000’s have fallen out of style heavily and movie adjacent IP like PlayStation’s Spider-Man aren’t developed nor published by Activision anymore. Which essentially leaves CoD. Modern Warfare 2 2022 is comparably successful again but Vanguard was such a shitshow it single handedly tanked Activision’s revenue for the 2022 fiscal year. Activision simply cannot continue to pump these things out yearly and expect a steady return each year, which is nice, don’t get me wrong, but is a problem for Activision’s bottom line.

One of the largest contributors of ABK is the dreaded King, which paradoxically struggles from all the same problems as Blizzard and Activision Even though a lot younger. They have one IP bringing in all the money, which is shrinking in player count and revenue contribution: Candy Crush. If boomers start to die en masse, or another Candy Crush is able to capture the “mindless smartphone puzzle market”, King is effectively over.

In this situation ABK makes a little bit more revenue than Take2 (their most comparable competition), with more than double Take2’s employees. While EA makes close to the same revenue, still with less employees and with more “hot irons” in the fire (love or hate EA, but they have Sims, FIFA, Madden, Apex and make decently well received single player games like Jedi and Dead Space on the side regularly, while not really being propped up by a mobile division as massive as King).

I’m not saying ABK cannot compete or is already bankrupt, but their pipeline dried up and they’d need a lot of restructuring (read: fire thousands of people), to justify their revenue and output. Additionally they’d need to diversify and get more IPs back on track or even create new ones (preposterous idea, I know!), to get back to acceptable risk levels.

Microsoft is in a comparable situation currently (let’s wait on Starfield for final judgement of Microsoft’s “situation”): They drove a lot of IP into the ground and didn’t replace it with new one, while losing a console war at the same time (I dispise Don Mattrick’s decisions as much as everyone else and I like Phil Spencer’s public persona a lot, but Phil wasn’t able to turn the tide until now, so I’m not aware that he is a better manager of Xbox’s course than Don). They are not trying to buy ABK the publisher, they are buying CoD to replace Halo specifically and they will bring in Blizzard’s IP into their group of “double A” developers like obsidian, where it fits right in (and some mobile footing doesn’t hurt nobody) and Microsoft needs to pay for Activision’s cash and “assets”, which makes this deal look so big, even though I’d argue it’s not really that big.

I don’t see this as consolidation, really. I think there are two path’s forward: either Microsoft buys Activision, gets rid of a lot of employees, which will be disliked by everybody. Then giving Blizzard the creative leeway they need to produce games for GamePass (probably with smaller budgets and shorter development time like Obsidian). And getting CoD back on track as the live service game it should have been. Or Microsoft doesn’t buy Activision and Bobby Kottick being the visionless uncreative manager he currently is, gets rid of a lot of employees, does put more pressure on Blizzard to create the next WoW (which they can’t), puts more pressure on those poor CoD-farms like Sledgehammer and Raven to produce more CoDs faster. Then the decline won’t be as visible for a few years (due to less payroll) until it becomes visible again since nothing relevant changed and Bobby sells off King for cash and after a few years the rest of Activision gets sold off one by one. I fail to see how this scenario is better than the Microsoft acquisition.

Video games aren’t essential goods and services or commodities. The consumer doesn’t profit from competition as much, if all the competition are bad and run down video game IPs. Creative works are not really substitutable. One liter of clean water from one company is the same as a liter from another. But 100 bad games you play for 1 hour each is not the same as one good game you play for 100 hours. The consumer profits, if there is a climate allowing for creative freedom and the nurturing of existing and new IP, instead. And this climate does not exist at ABK at the moment, while I see a chance it could exist at Microsoft.

Not OP, but most famous recent example: Alicia Vikander’s neck for Tomb Raider poster. Everything recent with Brad Pitt (more like “The Chin” on the poster of “Once Upon … in Hollywood”). Nobody can convince me all the actors on the Justice League (Whedon’s JL) poster to be real, these are Madame Tussaud’s figures. Ocean’s 8 had a lot of waxy posters as well. The list goes on, I noticed this trend as well.

Destiny 2’s migration from battle.net to Steam on the other hand …

I know this mantra and I agree for most utilities and consumer goods.

But Activision is barely functional anymore. We don’t tend to look ahead, but Activision’s pipeline is all dried up. They’ve driven a lot of their cash cows into the ground or fell out of the zeitgeist, like Tony Hawk’s, Crash Bandicoot (yeah, some 30- to 40-somethings may have fond memories, but the series has no pull factor anymore like Mario and even Sonic still do), Spyro (same thing) and Guitar Hero. Movie adaptations have fallen out of style, which have been most of Activision’s output in the 2000s and the movie-adjacent IPs, that are still pulling numbers like Spider-Man aren’t licensed to them anymore.

Blizzard has more or less (paradoxically more and less) the same problem: Yes, they are currently remembered for their Diablo 4 launch and lauded again as if they could never do anything wrong, but their last two games in the 2020s have been Overwatch 2 and Diablo Immortal. Before that Overwatch in 2016. There is just not a Diablo 5 in the books for the next few years. RTS have always been niche, but considerably less so in the eras of Age of Empire and Command & Conquer, when StarCraft and WarCraft have been major hits. I don’t know if a StarCraft III would bring in billions. WoW is an entirely different beast, which fails to acquire a younger audience, while comparable phenomena like Fortnite don’t really struggle with this. WoW and Classic are bankable money hoses, but they are not getting bigger.

Even King has kind of run its course: Sure you have heard of Candy Crush, but its time has passed the moment smartphones became good enough for Fortnite (again). I just don’t see school kids in 2030 playing Candy Crush 2, while I can imagine they are still playing Fortnite. The same goes for Angry Birds. King failed to adapt to the new age after smartphones moved beyond the iPod-touch-era.

ABK has 17K employees and USD 7 billion of revenue, which sounds impressive, until you look into their annual report: nearly half their revenue comes from mobile vs. consoles and PC and it is the only segment not shrinking. According to their last annual, mainly due to the contributions of Diablo Immortal next to the shrinking King-franchises. More than 75% of ABK’s revenue are in-game purchases and subscriptions, which leaves less than 25% for game sales. Additionally Vanguard is credited multiple times in the report as selling so bad it ripped a hole in Activision’s 2022 financial year.

All in all I feel like Activision is the CoD-machine first and lives off of the last people still playing WoW and - more importantly - still playing Candy Crush. With the only exception of CoD (Warzone) they have difficulties acquiring a new audience and are visibly not growing any more. A streak of badly received CoDs can tank their company.

I still remember the heydays of both Blizzard and Activision and have fond memories of a lot of their franchises, but these times are gone and an acquisition now when the times are okay (Diablo 4, CoD MW2 selling much better than Vanguard) is much more sensible, than a sell off in a few years, when Candy Crush dries up and the then-current CoD sucks.