The Morning After: Did Microsoft just neg Blizzard Activision?

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In a recent filing, Microsoft told New Zealand’s Commerce Commission that Blizzard Activision produces no “must-have” games. Weird thing to say when the company plans to spend $68.7 billion to buy the gaming giant behind Call of Duty, Overwatch, Diablo, World of Warcraft and plenty more.

In the document, Microsoft said: “There is nothing unique about the video games developed and published by Activision Blizzard that is a ‘must have’ for rival PC and console video game distributors that give rise to a foreclosure concern.”

Attempting to downplay the importance of Call of Duty is just one of the ways Microsoft has tried to placate regulators. In February, the company pledged it would continue to make the franchise available on PlayStation consoles beyond any existing agreements between Sony and Activision.

— Mat Smith

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It left its equipment in the streets in some cities.

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You’ll also see them on individual app pages.

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Whether you have Series X, Series S, One X or One S, there’s something here for you.

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Microsoft’s console strategy is unique. Someone with a nine-year-old Xbox One has access to an almost-identical library of games as the owner of a brand-new Xbox Series X. That makes it difficult to maintain meaningfully different lists for its various consoles — at least for now. But while next-gen exclusives may be few and far between, there are a lot of gamers who simply haven’t experienced much of what Microsoft has had to offer since the mid-’10s.

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The proposed class action suit accuses Musk of breaching his fiduciary duty to Twitter shareholders.

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It’s not only Twitter trying to force Elon Musk to buy the company for $44 billion. An investor filed a proposed class action lawsuit to try stopping Musk from backing out of the deal. Luigi Crispo’s suit accuses Musk of breach of contract and breach of fiduciary duty to Twitter’s shareholders. Musk last month claimed the company made “false and misleading representations,” and that it misrepresented the number of bots and fake accounts on its platform. Crispo concurred with Twitter’s claims that Musk is using false claims about bots and spam to wriggle out of the deal without a valid legal standing.

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Premium features.

It’s 2022 and Spotify is adding the most basic of functions to its iOS and Android apps: dedicated play and shuffle buttons on playlists and album pages. Until now, tapping the button on most playlists started playback, shuffled. This vanilla playback ‘feature,’ however, will only be available to Spotify Premium subscribers.

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There’s already a “TikTok Music” trademark application filed.

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