Die Shrink 60: Corporate Consolidation – Good? Bad? Or just inevitable?
Added 2021-11-19 18:00:06 +0000 UTCWhen AMD merged with ATI, many said it was either a silly decision by AMD, or that it was a prude decision that would pay-off in a decade...not that many cared about the consolidation aspect.
Yet here we are in 2021 - Nvidia is trying to buy ARM, and Intel is gobbling up tons of smaller companies and groups of engineers. Meanwhile in gaming, Microsoft is buying up tons of developers as well to seemingly force their service into a success through monopoly. What do we think about it?
https://www.engadget.com/2006-07-24-amd-buying-ati-for-5-4-billion.html
https://www.cnet.com/news/nvidia-to-acquire-ageia-for-the-physx-chip/
https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/04/19/nvidia-mellanox-finally-okd-by-chinese-regulators.aspx
Comments
Gamepass is not making a full $15 a month per person. The amount of loopholes and piggybacking XBL gold with ultimate has people picking up YEARS of gamepass for ~60-80 bucks. Also if I'm not mistaken, recently a big brained guy number crunched Xboxs recent quarterly statement and found that MS had actually lost Gamepass subs compared to the quarter prior. Upcoming releases should rebound any lost subs but when heavy hitters are lined up, I have no doubt we'll see XBL Gold or Gamepass price changes Also speaking of your comments about Obsidian, back in January I was meeting a friend of mine who just came down from Maryland with her BF. We get to chatting and she shows me a bunch of signed Bethesda merch and photos of her and her BF with his friends who were devs at bethesdas Maryland studio. I asked them if they heard anything from their friends about MS acquiring them and they said "no one knew MS was acquiring them until the announcement was made and not everyone was happy about the news."
Travis Gooding
2021-11-30 21:58:06 +0000 UTCI think the future of APUs is to deprive the apu market from having compelling single threaded cpu performance. They will wait until single threaded performance is high enough that releasing a "console replacement" with a slower and smaller cpu(as compared to these full fat chips like ADL AM4 vcache etc) will allow for compelling apus that DO NOT take revenue away from the mainstream/cpu heavy production builds. These will be like a gpu with a cpu attached vs an apu.
Christopher Mullins
2021-11-24 12:56:58 +0000 UTCGet well soon Tom, you sound like you have a pretty hefty cold.
Kai-Uwe Markeli
2021-11-24 12:32:35 +0000 UTCSuch great discussion. It made me think about a lot of things and learned a lot about how companies behave. A lot of it seems really obvious in hindsight, but I haven't thought about these ideas before.
Laz
2021-11-21 21:20:05 +0000 UTCNice! Interesting bit about obsidian, I was always frustrated Sony never tried to get them. It’s funny, I hate Uber too but can’t say that I’ve any better regard for taxi industry. I guess it’s all relative. To me Gamepass is a dialectical struggle, the antithesis to Sonys thesis, each strengthening the other, and if it fails, it does on its own merits; an arms race for better quality games to get people on the platform. The only games last generation worth playing were Sony first party studios, and battlefield shows how atypical halos delay was. To me it seems a bit early to worry about an Xbox monopoly, since they’re still being dwarfed by Sony. Have a great thanksgiving!
Tick Dickler
2021-11-20 00:01:43 +0000 UTCAwesome to hear you guys discuss my question. I definitely thought about the fact Microsoft could raise prices, but i really do wonder how they would do it. If they don’t get any more users can they afford to raise game pass’s price? And if they have 80 million users do they really make more money raising prices and potentially losing a lot of customers. Its hard to predict we really have to wait and see.
j Steez
2021-11-19 21:51:10 +0000 UTC
