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Microsoft completes $69B deal to buy Activision Blizzard

theguardian.com

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Re: Microsoft completes $69B deal to buy Activision Blizzard

#541

Post by stubish »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #280
w0m wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well, assuming there's actually a cloud gaming market. A fact that's still up for debate I think.

I think the fact Steam / Valve has not jumped into that bandwagon speaks for itself. Its fine when Microsoft does like Xbox Game Pass because they have nothing to lose with it, and they gain people who may want to own some of those games, or who want it for the Microsoft games on the subscription.

I'd thought Steam not offering a subscription service points more to Valve being ossified, or Valve having enough insight to know it is a terrible business move and will lose money in the long term. It would not be much effort at all to allow publishers to opt-in their titles, and they already have all the playtime metrics to share out revenue and DRM to control access. The biggest headache would be picking a price point and the revenue sharing algorithm, much like Amazon with its ebook library subscription.

Re: Microsoft completes $69B deal to buy Activision Blizzard

#542

Post by nebula8804 »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #442
nebula8804 wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What were you going to do on that thing anyway? Run a Mandelbrot set? The thing has like no ram! Its just an embedded device to run games.

At that time (before GPGPU become big for such purposes) scientists used PS3s to build cheap (much cheaper than IBM's server offerings containing a Cell processors) computing cluster for HPC. These PS3 computation clusters are were hard to program, but if you managed it, they were really fast (for their time).

Yeah I hear ya. Think the air force also used it.

Lets put aside the fact that Sony was probably unhappy that their loss leader console was being used in this manner(they did release the feature so maybe they could justify the PR bonus of supporting our troops or something).

All these researchers probably had no need to upgrade their firmware once they got set up since (correct me if im wrong) no firmware update actually improved the OtherOS functionality in any way so they lost nothing when a new firmware took it away. Only people really complaining about it were using it as a games (or piracy) machine and a Linux box to do...something?

Re: Microsoft completes $69B deal to buy Activision Blizzard

#543

Post by vel0city »

mcpackieh wrote: post #516
vel0city wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do game a good bit, and I like cloud gaming. I find myself away from my gaming desktop often, which makes cloud gaming pretty enticing. And overall it's currently incredibly cheap, a good value.

I get this use case, but I don't think it's very common. Most gamers are near their gaming hardware most of the time. Gamers who travel often usually have some mobile gaming hardware already. The number of people who would game but can't because they travel often and aren't satisfied with existing mobile gaming hardware is minimal. Not zero, but not a huge untapped market either. Personally, I game almost exclusively…

It's not even that I'm traveling often (as in hotel stay or something equivalent), it's that I'm often out of the house for a bit. Gaps of time where it doesn't make sense to go all the way home to play a game, but enough time to get like a half hour or more of gaming in.

Kids want to go bounce around at the trampoline park? Cool, I'll hop on the wifi there and game. Had to go into the office and am taking a lunch break? Cool, I can hop on the game for an hour. Meeting up with people later but have an hour downtime? Cool, I can go to any cafe or bar and play for a bit instead of heading all the way home.

Just today I was far on the other side of town (over an hour away) as my wife was meeting up with her sister to do some stuff after some big family things. Cool, bring my cheap laptop with me or just use my phone with a controller, I can game for a couple of hours while she does her thing. But then now tonight that exact same game saves are synced to play on my desktop at the house, or on my cheap laptop while on the patio, or wherever. Maybe I'll even spend an hour in the hot tub tonight with the cheap laptop on a towel nearby. Good luck getting that flexible of an experience with a full console or desktop.

And then this even continues to something like the Steam Deck or the other streaming focused handhelds, which I'm now pretty interested in. It doesn't need to have high end gear on it if it's got a decent network connection. And as I've mentioned here, at least where I'm at I'm almost always with some kind of low latency network. It's so ubiquitous around me these days.

Re: Microsoft completes $69B deal to buy Activision Blizzard

#544

Post by jemmyw »

mcpackieh wrote: post #516
vel0city wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do game a good bit, and I like cloud gaming. I find myself away from my gaming desktop often, which makes cloud gaming pretty enticing. And overall it's currently incredibly cheap, a good value.

I get this use case, but I don't think it's very common. Most gamers are near their gaming hardware most of the time. Gamers who travel often usually have some mobile gaming hardware already. The number of people who would game but can't because they travel often and aren't satisfied with existing mobile gaming hardware is minimal. Not zero, but not a huge untapped market either. Personally, I game almost exclusively…

I sold my laptop that was capable of gaming and now I only use geforce now from my macbook. The fidelity is better. The latency isn't noticeable to me in single player games. And then price wise, for the amount I sold my old laptop I'd get 7 years of cloud gaming at current prices, maybe more as gaming is something I dip in and out of, although my kids are also using it at the moment so I can't dip out.

I've never used it while travelling. So I'm definitely a different demographic to the one you're describing.

Re: Microsoft completes $69B deal to buy Activision Blizzard

#545

Post by darepublic »

MobileVet wrote: post #441
rollcat wrote: post #369

I keep my fingers crossed for the revival of the StarCraft franchise. I grew up with the game, and it's kinda sad to see the current state of SC2: old bugs, new bugs, community trying to take over the processes but having a very bumpy ride, opaque decision making (de-facto spokespersons/community figures under muddy NDAs), and unfortunately all our 2010 fears (no local/LAN play!) coming true, when server outages are…

RTS is such a great genre. I know everyone loved StarCraft but I enjoyed Warcraft II and 3 more… along with C&C, Red Alert and Age of Empires. Not sure why. Warcraft 3 was a great balance between micro and macro management due to the Hero concept. SC always just felt like a game of numbers… but I am sure I just wasn’t as experienced. Regardless I would love it if the genre stayed alive and I am glad Age is continuall…

I too delusionally hope for warcraft 4 (a good one)

Re: Microsoft completes $69B deal to buy Activision Blizzard

#546

Post by chongli »

kungito wrote: post #536
chongli wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the GP but I’ll give my take: The long term value for an RTS is with the multiplayer. The problem is that the games are incredibly demanding to play. It takes a lot of practice and experience to get good enough to get off the “bottom rung” of the online ladder, just to be able to reach close to a 50% win rate. Many gamers find this too stressful to deal with. They end up quitting the game and moving on to somethi…

I'd say it's like this for any older game which still has a multiplayer community regardless of genre. There just isn't a big influx of new players and the bad ones give up.

That may be the case but other genres, such as shooters (first and third person), have found ways to get around it. Fortnite, for example, has nowhere near this issue whereas Quake 3 is plagued by it. The 100-player battle royale structure of Fortnite is one mechanism I think helps to mitigate the problem of overwhelming skill gap.

This kind of thing hasn't really been tested in RTS games, which usually focus on 1v1s.

Re: Microsoft completes $69B deal to buy Activision Blizzard

#547

Post by vissidarte_choi »

bigboy12 wrote: post #509
MobileVet wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RTS is such a great genre. I know everyone loved StarCraft but I enjoyed Warcraft II and 3 more… along with C&C, Red Alert and Age of Empires. Not sure why. Warcraft 3 was a great balance between micro and macro management due to the Hero concept. SC always just felt like a game of numbers… but I am sure I just wasn’t as experienced. Regardless I would love it if the genre stayed alive and I am glad Age is continuall…

Ms bought Nokia - out of business Ms bought Skype - useless as Zoom won the Covid era MS bought Lynda.com- who? MS bought LinkedIn- does anyone pay $90 a month to use it? MS bought Danger - the best tactical keyboard mobile phone. DEAD MS bought Halo vr system a $3509 pos that never got an update Ms buys stuff , never making stuff.

And then, MS bought GitHub, OpenAI...

Re: Microsoft completes $69B deal to buy Activision Blizzard

#548

Post by sitkack »

vissidarte_choi wrote: post #547
bigboy12 wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ms bought Nokia - out of business Ms bought Skype - useless as Zoom won the Covid era MS bought Lynda.com- who? MS bought LinkedIn- does anyone pay $90 a month to use it? MS bought Danger - the best tactical keyboard mobile phone. DEAD MS bought Halo vr system a $3509 pos that never got an update Ms buys stuff , never making stuff.

And then, MS bought GitHub, OpenAI...

Hotmail, DOS, Windows NT (Dave Cutler from DEC)

Re: Microsoft completes $69B deal to buy Activision Blizzard

#549

Post by ThatPlayer »

endorphine wrote: post #494
seabird wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love RTS games, but they're probably never going to achieve the level of success they have in the past. You can still make them, but like arena shooters, movement shooters, and fighting games, they really are from a different era that modern players struggle to come to terms with, and it's hard to justify risking putting a lot of money behind them. It's a shame, because I love all of these genres, but I wouldn't be…

> love RTS games, but they're probably never going to achieve the level of success they have in the past. You can still make them, but like arena shooters, movement shooters, and fighting games, they really are from a different era that modern players struggle to come to terms with Interesting take. Why do you think that is? They just fallen out of fashion or something else?

RTS games are just too stressful. They require 10+ minutes of full concentration. Whether you've just won or lost an engagement, you better keep up with scouting, building your army, gathering resources, expanding your base, preparing for the next engagement, etc. You get absolutely no downtime.

Every other game gives you downtime. Shorter round based games like fighting games give you time to catch your breath. Respawn time is a reprieve for both sides. Even just being on the queue screen for Starcraft II was enough to get my heartrate up in anticipation for the stressful games.

Re: Microsoft completes $69B deal to buy Activision Blizzard

#550

Post by ThatPlayer »

chongli wrote: post #546
kungito wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say it's like this for any older game which still has a multiplayer community regardless of genre. There just isn't a big influx of new players and the bad ones give up.

That may be the case but other genres, such as shooters (first and third person), have found ways to get around it. Fortnite, for example, has nowhere near this issue whereas Quake 3 is plagued by it. The 100-player battle royale structure of Fortnite is one mechanism I think helps to mitigate the problem of overwhelming skill gap. This kind of thing hasn't really been tested in RTS games, which usually focus on 1v1s…

Fortnite's solution has been bots, which is not very popular because plenty of people think they're above bots. Or think that bots cheat (which is true in Starcraft). Or in fighting games, they don't play like humans so you end up learning bad habits.
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