Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

news.microsoft.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

401–410 of 1001 posts

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#401

Post by seanhunter »

kmeisthax wrote: post #221
blibble wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if he realises what "fun" he's going to have over the next years cleaning out the cesspit that is Blizzard

Given that they plan to keep Bobby Kotick on, I don't think Microsoft understands the problem with ABK all that well.

It may well be that he has a job in name in the new structure but not actually a role and after some discreet period he will be put out to pasture. Kind of sucks if you wanted him to receive some sort of cathartic day of reckoning but maybe a pragmatic solution.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#402

Post by jpablo »

curiousllama wrote: post #315

It's wild how Microsoft has been able to vertically integrate gaming. They now own the distribution (Xbox Cloud Gaming, Xbox Game Pass), the games (Call of Duty, WoW, Starcraft + what they owned before), the OS (Windows, Xbox), the hardware (Xbox, many PCs), and the back end compute (Azure). The only thing they're missing, the network bandwidth, is mostly a commodity anyway. That's a heck of a moat.

Isn't that basically the same Nintendo and Sony? Save for the cloud platform.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#404

Post by bogwog »

MrJagil wrote: post #63

The old Blizzard always seemed much closer to Apple than Microsoft in culture. An incredible attention to detail and the onboarding experience, clean, fun and friendly design and a slightly rebellious attitude expressed through their willingness to enter new markets. The "new" Microsoft though, really is different than the old and might actually do quite well in stewarding this supposedly sinking ship into fairer wat…

What a bizarre view of the world. It’s like teenagers gossiping about celebrity relationships, but with corporations instead.

A Microsoft acquisition of this company is bad, and an Apple acquisition of this company would be bad.

When mega corporations like this consolidate, consumers always lose. Microsoft couldn’t win customers through product and service quality, so they bought one of the largest game publishers in the world so that their competition can’t sell those games anymore.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#405

Post by JAlexoid »

lvass wrote: post #116
bitwize wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft owns CoD, Doom, Quake, Minecraft, Fallout, Elder Scrolls, and soon Warcraft, Starcraft, and Overwatch. They're becoming the Disney of gaming, which is scary, but hey, Microsoft gonna Microsoft.

Haven't you heard? They <3 Linux now, they'll never use their position to lock people into their platforms again. They even promised they'll be good.

If they don't get an idealistic visionary, they will probably just follow the best course for doing business - serving as many people as possible.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#406

Post by smileybarry »

izacus wrote: post #150
999900000999 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a GamePass subscriber, I mildly disagree. Saw an indie game last night and felt like buying it. Steam Deck is Valve opening up an alternative to Microsoft land. Although I will admit I'm tempted to cancel my pre order since I'm worried it won't run well.

I don't quite understand what you're trying to say here? If Microsoft starts subsidizing Game Pass games from their other businesses (like Amazon, Google and Apple do for their other services), it'll make the business model of actually selling games unviable by pure race to the bottom. As a result, you'll lose independent development and market diversity because everyone will need to beg Microsoft (and maybe Sony and…

There's a large crowd of people who'd rather buy to own games even if they're on Game Pass, even after the entire Bethesda catalog was added. I'm personally one of them, if I like/want a game a lot, I prefer buying it on Steam so I'll always be able to replay it. (I've even bought some games I discovered on Game Pass)

Also -- EA (EA Play), Ubisoft (Uplay Plus), and Sony (PS Now) already went the way of subscription gaming. EA Play is included in Xbox/PC Game Pass, and PS Now isn't just Sony's catalog, either.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#407

Post by Graphguy »

aeortiz wrote: post #358
curiousllama wrote: post #315

It's wild how Microsoft has been able to vertically integrate gaming. They now own the distribution (Xbox Cloud Gaming, Xbox Game Pass), the games (Call of Duty, WoW, Starcraft + what they owned before), the OS (Windows, Xbox), the hardware (Xbox, many PCs), and the back end compute (Azure). The only thing they're missing, the network bandwidth, is mostly a commodity anyway. That's a heck of a moat.

They still don't own the graphics cards and displays (monitors &/or googles)

They do have HoloLens though.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#408

Post by WithinReason »

kungito wrote: post #365
curiousllama wrote: post #315

It's wild how Microsoft has been able to vertically integrate gaming. They now own the distribution (Xbox Cloud Gaming, Xbox Game Pass), the games (Call of Duty, WoW, Starcraft + what they owned before), the OS (Windows, Xbox), the hardware (Xbox, many PCs), and the back end compute (Azure). The only thing they're missing, the network bandwidth, is mostly a commodity anyway. That's a heck of a moat.

They are still missing a mobile platform and that's why I believe they will retry within the next few years

Wonder if Windows on ARM will be any help there

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#409

Post by awestroke »

nixass wrote: post #348

Microsoft continues brute force drive into gaming industry, with zero creativity but outright buying whole gaming companies, and probably locking out competitor out of IPs

This is a good thing. Fools run Activision Blizzard; let MS go in and take over.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#410

Post by vanilla_nut »

raxxorrax wrote: post #78
s3r3nity wrote: post #16

Congratulations to Phil Spencer, who started out leading an upstart team at Microsoft for a new game console called "Xbox" and is now "CEO of Microsoft Gaming" - a Microsoft Senior Leadership position. Oh, and he now leads the third biggest gaming company on the planet: > When the transaction closes, Microsoft will become the world’s third-largest gaming company by revenue, behind Tencent and Sony. It will be interes…

I think for gaming this is pretty negative that everything is consolidated under large developers. I also don't think that the atmosphere under Microsoft will be better than under Activision. I hope PC gaming can detach from Microsoft as soon as possible to be honest.

It’s annoying that MS will probably pull the same crap they did when they purchased Bethesda a couple of years ago: we won’t see releases of most Activision/Blizzard games on Sony consoles going forward.

This exclusivity game has to stop. I understand MS’s motivations — they want people to buy their console, after all. But it’s awful that you can make an educated console decision, and then two years later have a good chunk of games stolen from you because of a merger.

I concur that I’d really like to see Linux take the PC gaming space over. Personally I feel that we should focus on indie games and low-level platform compatibilty — if enough users switch to Linux, AAA studios will have to follow. Except the MS-owned studios who have a standing order to ignore Linux, of course…

Post reply on HN