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Microsoft lays off 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox employees

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Re: Microsoft lays off 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox employees

#141
post #47

When this was announced my question was "is Microsoft buying Call of Duty or are they buying Activision-Blizzard?" CoD is a reliable cash cow and driver for consoles with an annual game release. It makes a lot of money. Activision-Blizzard owns a lot of valuble IP that they could absolutely further monetize. It remains to be seen if Microsoft has the vision or desire to capitalize on that. There is a huge gap with Bl…

You might be surprised what is the real money printer in ABK.

Re: Microsoft lays off 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox employees

#142
post #52

FAO: People who're claiming GenAi will replace artist jobs. It might happen but it's extremely difficult even using state of the art models like stable diffusion v6 to get consistent results. There's usually some part or the other of the picture that's broken and it takes a lot of work with prompting, blending, varying to get it to work. Buy the subscription for 30$ or whatever and give it a shot. First you'll be ama…

I know it won't replace human artists right off the bat but it will help them accelerate their development. Just like coding assistant, artists can use this to visualize their ideas/drafts and then build upon to tune the work.

Re: Microsoft lays off 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox employees

#143
post #87

Last time the stock market was surging, everyone was hiring. This time it's different

Interest rates and fear of recession.

Big tech fuels R&D via very low-interest loans. This is what everyone in the financial community has been saying for a long time.

Re: Microsoft lays off 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox employees

#144
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you already seen Zerospace?[1] I think it also looks great and there are some SC/SC2 pros involved in making it [1] https://store.steampowered.com/app/1605850/ZeroSpace/

Unfortunately, I'm not impressed at all. It looks and feels like a cartoonish bootleg of SC with AI generated Fortnite-looking artwork. What made SC interesting, like most Blizzard IP of the time, was also the well written story lines with amazing character arcs, that kept people invested, and not that it was a strategy game of space marines versus organic aliens versus energy aliens. They even made sure to give stor…

GiantGrantGames on Youtube made an interesting video about "The Next Major RTS Will Fail. This is Why"[0]. Turns out he got a lot of this information because he was one of the players that had a huge influence in the development, and this is what ZeroSpace focused their development efforts on. One of which, is targeting the casual audience, and their love for a good story.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XehNK7UpZsc

Re: Microsoft lays off 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox employees

#145
post #139
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting laid off shouldn't "Destroy the life and dreams" of anyone. It's a short term set-back, and in many countries there are protections in place to make sure that even in the short term people aren't dramatically affected. Don't tie your self identity or worth to the company you work for.

I assume you are not US. Health insurance is tied to your job. Without it, things can turn to ruin very quickly and not in your control - just takes one uninsured driver crashing into the family van.

Layoff may include continuation of health insurance and other "severance benefits" for some period of time, if not you would be eligible for CORBA, if not that you would be eligible for a healthcare.gov plan.

Re: Microsoft lays off 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox employees

#146
post #111
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's kind of weird how much of the gaming industry still caters to the teenage boy demographic.

Why it it strange to cater to a demographic and not stranger to shotgun everyone into liking something?

I don't think there's that kind of singleminded focus in other entertainment industries, is there? Only a few movies or streaming shows are that pigeon-holed; usually the broader the demographics, the better. I would say comic books are more teen-boy-focused, but oddly the majority of the enthusiasts I've met were women (a classic Marvel fan, someone who had artier stuff like Alan Moore, and my sister who collects Archie) so I'm not sure.

Re: Microsoft lays off 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox employees

#147
post #52

FAO: People who're claiming GenAi will replace artist jobs. It might happen but it's extremely difficult even using state of the art models like stable diffusion v6 to get consistent results. There's usually some part or the other of the picture that's broken and it takes a lot of work with prompting, blending, varying to get it to work. Buy the subscription for 30$ or whatever and give it a shot. First you'll be ama…

Tencent fired about 75% of their 3d bone animators last year. All because you could feed the bones to AI and type "it jumps", "it runs", "it crouches" etc.

Re: Microsoft lays off 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox employees

#148
post #52

FAO: People who're claiming GenAi will replace artist jobs. It might happen but it's extremely difficult even using state of the art models like stable diffusion v6 to get consistent results. There's usually some part or the other of the picture that's broken and it takes a lot of work with prompting, blending, varying to get it to work. Buy the subscription for 30$ or whatever and give it a shot. First you'll be ama…

WTF is Stable Diffusion v6? SDXL is latest and before that 2.1 lol

Re: Microsoft lays off 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox employees

#149
post #3

"primarily laying off roles at Activision Blizzard, some Xbox and ZeniMax employees will also be impacted / work out to roughly 8 percent of the overall Microsoft Gaming division that stands at around 22,000 employees in total." 2k employees look like a lot, 8% looks kinda better. I need Starcraft 3 badly :)

Be careful what you wish for, the soul of Blizzard is long dead. You can see this with Diablo 4, which is a completely soulless ARPG. With the latest season 3 launched yesterday, it's just not a fun game and it's clear that whatever processes and people they have at Activision Blizzard, they haven't got something in place that lets someone say, "Wait, shouldn't this be fun?". While D3 had it's fair criticism at launc…

It's just sad I guess this is an example of post consumerism. Maybe making games for the sake of profit and not fun it was just a matter of time.

I was an avid Overwatch player and just seeing how Kotick essentially destroyed that team from within at Blizzard because to some the price of the stock is the only thing that is a measure of value of a public company.

Re: Microsoft lays off 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox employees

#150
post #87

Last time the stock market was surging, everyone was hiring. This time it's different

Ya this time they realized instead they can just pocket even more profits, theres a reason inflation is 50+% due to corporate profits when normally inflation surges are ~11% from corporate profits.
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