本文选自经济学人，和学长一起来看本次震惊全球的收购事件。

学长建议

1. 在语境中学习表达用法；

2. 着重把握学长标注的内容；

3. 带着问题去阅读文章。

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

这家科技巨头对动视暴雪的收购是其有史以来最大的交易。

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.

即使对于拥有约23万亿美元市值的微软来说，690亿美元也是一笔巨款。1月18日，该公司表示它将为游戏开发商动视暴雪支付这笔钱--全部为现金。这既是视频游戏行业有史以来最大的收购案，也是微软有史以来最大的收购案，是该公司2016年以260亿美元收购社交网络LinkedIn的两倍以上。这一举动让行业观察家们大吃一惊，并推动动视暴雪的股价上涨25%，代表了对娱乐业未来的巨大赌注。但是，也许不是一个疯狂的赌注。

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，游戏业正在快速增长。Covid-19的封锁增强了它对有更多时间的铁杆游戏玩家和无聊的新手们的吸引力。2020年，全球收入猛增23%。分析公司NewZoo认为其收入接近1800亿美元。由于其Xbox游戏机，微软已经是这个行业的一个大玩家。自2014年其首席执行官萨蒂亚-纳德拉(Satya Nadella)掌权以来，它已经进行了一系列的游戏收购。动视暴雪的交易将巩固其地位。一旦在2023年完成，它将使微软成为按收入计算的第三大游戏公司，仅次于中国巨头腾讯，以及微软在游戏机方面的长期竞争对手索尼。

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.

动视暴雪的股价在去年2月的峰值和交易宣布之间下滑了约40%，因为该公司陷入了性骚扰丑闻，其一些游戏也令人失望。考虑到它给微软带来的好处，这可能使它看起来相对便宜。它拥有约80亿美元的年收入，净利润率为30%。最重要的是，动视暴雪提供了大量的内容--在视频游戏中，就像在其他媒体行业一样，内容是王道，另一家研究公司Ampere analysis的Piers Harding-Rolls说。就像电影业一样，“星球大战"电影，即使是烂片，也是可靠的摇钱树，电子游戏越来越依赖 "特许经营权"——受欢迎的设定或品牌，可以被挤压成常规的新游戏。动视暴雪公司拥有 "使命召唤"，这是一个最畅销的军事主题射击游戏系列；"糖果粉碎"，这是一个流行的图案匹配手机游戏；以及 "魔兽"，这是一个轻松的幻想背景。

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”.

在短期内，这笔交易使微软在智能手机游戏市场上有了更多的立足点，而它在这个市场上几乎没有接触过。动视暴雪旗下专注于手机的子公司King拥有约2.45亿智能手机游戏的月度玩家，其中大部分人都在玩 "糖果粉碎"。这也是对索尼的一次打击。如果微软控制了 "使命召唤 "的权利，它就可以决定是否允许这些游戏出现在索尼的竞争对手PlayStation机器上。当微软在2020年以75亿美元收购另一家游戏开发商ZeniMax Media时，它说它将履行ZeniMax与索尼的现有出版协议的条款，但索尼获得新游戏的机会将被 "逐案 "考虑。

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.

哈丁罗尔斯先生说，从长远来看，这笔交易应该有助于微软实现其使游戏更便宜、更容易获得的雄心壮志（包括，如果炒作是可信的，在虚拟现实 "metaverse"）。它的 "游戏通行证 "产品已经为游戏机和PC玩家提供了一个轮换的视频游戏库，每个游戏通常需要40-60美元，每月只需10美元。将动视暴雪的目录添加到该服务中，可以提高其吸引力。它还可以加强微软两年来的游戏流服务，其目的是利用该公司的Azure云计算部门为视频游戏做Netflix的视频。微软希望通过互联网将游戏流传到手机、电视或个人电脑上，从而不再需要拥有强大的专用控制台或个人电脑。这可以降低爱好的成本，吸引更多的玩家，特别是在中等收入国家，智能手机很普遍，但游戏机却很少。反过来，这将使独家内容更加有价值。

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——既有游戏行业的老手，也有被该行业的增长所吸引的新晋科技巨头——都有自己的流媒体野心。索尼运营着自己的服务，名为 "PlayStation Now"。亚马逊在2020年推出了自己的 "Luna "服务的早期版本。"GeForce Now "是Nvidia的流媒体服务，该公司是一家以游戏为重点的微芯片制造商，在同一年推出。但是，没有哪家公司像微软那样有优势，它在游戏业务方面有几十年的经验，并拥有仅次于亚马逊的世界第二大云计算业务。而且，微软拥有的内容越多，它的服务与对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.

这种想法可能会引发微软的竞争对手进行更多的交易，他们渴望趁机抢夺自己的专营权。1月10日，游戏开发商和发行商Take-Two Interactive花费130亿美元收购了手机游戏制造商Zynga。除了亚马逊，苹果和Netflix近年来都涉足了视频游戏业务；其中任何一家的收购都有助于提高其影响力。整合是游戏的名称。