本文選自經(jīng)濟學人，和學長一起來看本次震驚全球的收購事件。

學長建議

1. 在語境中學習表達用法；

2. 著重把握學長標注的內(nèi)容；

3. 帶著問題去閱讀文章。

Reading Comprehension

1. Why Microsoft is splashing $69bn on video games?

2. What is effect of this deal to Sony in the short term?

3. What is influence of this deal in the longer term？

4. What is Microsoft's strength？

5. Why are Microsoft’s competitors eager to snap up franchises?

Why Microsoft is splashing $69bn on video games

The tech giant’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard is its biggest-ever deal

這家科技巨頭對動視暴雪的收購是其有史以來最大的交易。

Even for Microsoft, which boasts a market capitalisation of around 69bn is a lot of money. On January 18th the firm said it would pay that sum—all of it in cash—for Activision Blizzard, a video-game developer. It is both the biggest acquisition ever made in the video-game industry and the biggest ever made by Microsoft, more than twice the size of the firm’s purchase in 2016 of LinkedIn, a social network, for $26bn. The move, which caught industry-watchers by surprise and propelled Activision Blizzard’s share price up by 25%, represents a huge bet on the future of entertainment. But not, perhaps, a crazy one.

即使對于擁有約23萬億美元市值的微軟來說，690億美元也是一筆巨款。1月18日，該公司表示它將為游戲開發(fā)商動視暴雪支付這筆錢--全部為現(xiàn)金。這既是視頻游戲行業(yè)有史以來最大的收購案，也是微軟有史以來最大的收購案，是該公司2016年以260億美元收購社交網(wǎng)絡LinkedIn的兩倍以上。這一舉動讓行業(yè)觀察家們大吃一驚，并推動動視暴雪的股價上漲25%，代表了對娛樂業(yè)未來的巨大賭注。但是，也許不是一個瘋狂的賭注。

The gaming industry was growing apace before the pandemic. Covid-19 lockdowns bolstered its appeal—to hardened gamers with more time on their hands and bored neophytes alike. Worldwide revenues shot up by 23% in 2020. NewZoo, an analysis firm, puts them at nearly $180bn. Microsoft is already a big player in the business, thanks to its Xbox games console. It has made a string of gaming acquisitions since 2014, when Satya Nadella, its chief executive, took the reins. The Activision Blizzard deal would** cement its position**. Once completed in 2023, it will make Microsoft the third-largest video-gaming firm by revenue, behind only Tencent, a Chinese giant, and Sony, Microsoft’s perennial rival in consoles.

在疫情之前，游戲業(yè)正在快速增長。Covid-19的封鎖增強了它對有更多時間的鐵桿游戲玩家和無聊的新手們的吸引力。2020年，全球收入猛增23%。分析公司NewZoo認為其收入接近1800億美元。由于其Xbox游戲機，微軟已經(jīng)是這個行業(yè)的一個大玩家。自2014年其首席執(zhí)行官薩蒂亞-納德拉(Satya Nadella)掌權以來，它已經(jīng)進行了一系列的游戲收購。動視暴雪的交易將鞏固其地位。一旦在2023年完成，它將使微軟成為按收入計算的第三大游戲公司，僅次于中國巨頭騰訊，以及微軟在游戲機方面的長期競爭對手索尼。

Activision Blizzard’s share price had slid by around 40% between a peak last February and the deal’s announcement, as the company was embroiled in a sexual-harassment scandal and some of its games underwhelmed. That may have made it look cheap in relative terms, given the benefits it brings to Microsoft. It boasts annual revenues of around $8bn and net profit margins of 30%. Most important, Activision Blizzard offers plenty of content——and in video games, as in the rest of the media industry, content is king, says Piers Harding-Rolls of Ampere analysis, another research firm. Like the film business, where “Star Wars” films, even bad ones, are reliable money-spinners, video games rely increasingly on “franchises”——popular settings or brands that can be squeezed for regular new games. Activision Blizzard boasts, among others, “Call of Duty”, a best-selling series of military-themed shoot-em-ups, “Candy Crush”, a popular pattern-matching mobile game, and “Warcraft”, a light-hearted fantasy setting.

動視暴雪的股價在去年2月的峰值和交易宣布之間下滑了約40%，因為該公司陷入了性騷擾丑聞，其一些游戲也令人失望?？紤]到它給微軟帶來的好處，這可能使它看起來相對便宜。它擁有約80億美元的年收入，凈利潤率為30%。最重要的是，動視暴雪提供了大量的內(nèi)容--在視頻游戲中，就像在其他媒體行業(yè)一樣，內(nèi)容是王道，另一家研究公司Ampere analysis的Piers Harding-Rolls說。就像電影業(yè)一樣，“星球大戰(zhàn)"電影，即使是爛片，也是可靠的搖錢樹，電子游戲越來越依賴 "特許經(jīng)營權"——受歡迎的設定或品牌，可以被擠壓成常規(guī)的新游戲。動視暴雪公司擁有 "使命召喚"，這是一個最暢銷的軍事主題射擊游戲系列；"糖果粉碎"，這是一個流行的圖案匹配手機游戲；以及 "魔獸"，這是一個輕松的幻想背景。

In the short term, the deal gives Microsoft more of a foothold in the smartphone-gaming market, to which it has had little exposure. King, a mobile-focused subsidiary of Activision Blizzard, boasts around 245m monthly players of its smartphone games, most of whom tap away at “Candy Crush”. It is also a strike against Sony. If Microsoft controls the rights to “Call of Duty”, it can decide whether or not to allow the games to appear on Sony’s rival PlayStation machine. When Microsoft bought ZeniMax Media, another games developer, for $7.5bn in 2020, it said it would honour the terms of ZeniMax’s existing publishing agreements with Sony, but that Sony’s access to new games would be considered “on a case-by-case basis”.

在短期內(nèi)，這筆交易使微軟在智能手機游戲市場上有了更多的立足點，而它在這個市場上幾乎沒有接觸過。動視暴雪旗下專注于手機的子公司King擁有約2.45億智能手機游戲的月度玩家，其中大部分人都在玩 "糖果粉碎"。這也是對索尼的一次打擊。如果微軟控制了 "使命召喚 "的權利，它就可以決定是否允許這些游戲出現(xiàn)在索尼的競爭對手PlayStation機器上。當微軟在2020年以75億美元收購另一家游戲開發(fā)商ZeniMax Media時，它說它將履行ZeniMax與索尼的現(xiàn)有出版協(xié)議的條款，但索尼獲得新游戲的機會將被 "逐案 "考慮。

In the longer term, says Mr Harding-Rolls, the deal should help Microsoft achieve its ambition to make gaming cheaper and more accessible (including, if hype is to be believed, in the virtual-reality “metaverse”). Its “Game Pass” product already offers console and PC gamers access to a rotating library of video games, which usually cost 10 a month. Adding Activision Blizzard’s catalogue to the service could boost its appeal. It could also strengthen Microsoft’s two-year-old game-streaming service, which aims to use the firm’s Azure cloud-computing division to do for video games what Netflix did for video. Microsoft hopes to stream games across the internet to a phone, television or PC, removing the need to own a powerful, dedicated console or PC. That could lower the cost of the hobby and draw in more players, especially in middle-income countries where smartphones are common but consoles are rare. And that, in turn, would make exclusive content even more valuable.

哈丁羅爾斯先生說，從長遠來看，這筆交易應該有助于微軟實現(xiàn)其使游戲更便宜、更容易獲得的雄心壯志（包括，如果炒作是可信的，在虛擬現(xiàn)實 "metaverse"）。它的 "游戲通行證 "產(chǎn)品已經(jīng)為游戲機和PC玩家提供了一個輪換的視頻游戲庫，每個游戲通常需要40-60美元，每月只需10美元。將動視暴雪的目錄添加到該服務中，可以提高其吸引力。它還可以加強微軟兩年來的游戲流服務，其目的是利用該公司的Azure云計算部門為視頻游戲做Netflix的視頻。微軟希望通過互聯(lián)網(wǎng)將游戲流傳到手機、電視或個人電腦上，從而不再需要擁有強大的專用控制臺或個人電腦。這可以降低愛好的成本，吸引更多的玩家，特別是在中等收入國家，智能手機很普遍，但游戲機卻很少。反過來，這將使獨家內(nèi)容更加有價值。

Other firms—both games-industry veterans and arriviste tech titans attracted by the sector’s growth—have streaming ambitions of their own. Sony runs its own service, called “PlayStation Now”. Amazon launched an early version of its own “Luna” service in 2020. “GeForce Now”, a streaming offering from Nvidia, a maker of gaming-focused microchips, launched the same year. But none is as well-placed as Microsoft, which has decades of experience in the games business and boasts the world’s second-largest cloud-computing operation after Amazon. And the more content Microsoft owns, the more attractive it can make its service compared with its rivals.

其他公司——既有游戲行業(yè)的老手，也有被該行業(yè)的增長所吸引的新晉科技巨頭——都有自己的流媒體野心。索尼運營著自己的服務，名為 "PlayStation Now"。亞馬遜在2020年推出了自己的 "Luna "服務的早期版本。"GeForce Now "是Nvidia的流媒體服務，該公司是一家以游戲為重點的微芯片制造商，在同一年推出。但是，沒有哪家公司像微軟那樣有優(yōu)勢，它在游戲業(yè)務方面有幾十年的經(jīng)驗，并擁有僅次于亞馬遜的世界第二大云計算業(yè)務。而且，微軟擁有的內(nèi)容越多，它的服務與對手相比就越有吸引力。

Such thinking may provoke more deals by Microsoft’s competitors, eager to snap up franchises of their own while they can. The gaming industry was already seeing plenty of merger activity.Last year saw five deals worth 1bn or more.On January 10th Take-Two Interactive, a game developer and publisher, spent $13bn to buy Zynga, a maker of mobile-phone games. Besides Amazon, both apple and Netflix have dipped their toes into the video-game business in recent years; an acquisition by either one could help boost their presence. Consolidation is the name of the game.

這種想法可能會引發(fā)微軟的競爭對手進行更多的交易，他們渴望趁機搶奪自己的專營權。1月10日，游戲開發(fā)商和發(fā)行商Take-Two Interactive花費130億美元收購了手機游戲制造商Zynga。除了亞馬遜，蘋果和Netflix近年來都涉足了視頻游戲業(yè)務；其中任何一家的收購都有助于提高其影響力。整合是游戲的名稱。