On one hand I feel that consolidation is bad for gaming when a platform is buying IP for exclusivity but on the other hand this was a great decision by Microsoft. Activation Blizzard has been is a slump and has been stuck in releasing or should I say re-releasing the same games for a while now but they could have done it much better. Any half decent version of World of Warcraft 2 will be worth more than 70 billion by itself. Seems to me Activision Blizzard did not realize just how much value in IP they had in their games and are selling based on their current cash flow only.
Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard
471–480 of 1001 posts
Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard
#472The 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…
Complaining about a bizarre world view and then dropping an equally bizarre and hyperbolic statement. I think this will be good, just as I think Microsoft's previous gaming acquisitions have been good.
Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard
#473Damn, Zenimax and Blizzard under the same roof.
Might as well try to sell your PS(whatever) now before there are no games.
However with the DOJ taking more shots at large companies, MS should be worried about this one.
Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard
#474Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I agree with your view point - however it’s hard to see any other outcome for the AAA franchises. Player expectations of a modern title are increasing - as are the time, human, and fiscal capital required to ship a modern title - years of engineering, hundreds of people, hundreds of millions of dollars. The risks are huge - missing your date, or game experience can sink a company - consider what Cyberpunk almost did…
>Player expectations of a modern title are increasing
Unfortunately this is not true. Modern AAA franchises do not innovate. They are just shinier. You can find the same systems, and often more complex or creative ones, in games from the nineties and 2000's as you can today. Modern gamers either become jaded, seek out indie games, or, more often, simply buy what is offered.
Remember when the big question used to be "are video games art? CAN they ever be art?" I remember publications like PC Gamer spending a lot of time and energy wrestling with these questions. It wasn't lip service; it was a real goal that game creators at the time pushed towards, because gaming was trying to find acceptance and respect alongside other forms of media. I think that has mostly been lost, now. There is and will always be indie creators pushing their own creations that are inspired, but the AAA market is totally lost, imo, if you are interested in games as more than just a mindless bit of fun. That overarching sense of progressing towards something that could be considered true "art", is gone, for the time being.
edit: didn't mean to sound like I wasn't giving credit to all the fine indie games and game creators out there. There's still artistic and interesting things being created, just not by AAA studios :)
Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard
#475> Mobile is the largest segment in gaming, with nearly 95% of all players globally enjoying games on mobile. Through great teams and great technology, Microsoft and Activision Blizzard will empower players to enjoy the most-immersive franchises, like “Halo” and “Warcraft,” virtually anywhere they want. So long for immersive PC and console games.
That's probably a reference to Xbox Cloud Gaming, though.
Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard
#476If anyone has a chance at a legit “metaverse experience” it’s a tech giant who develops video games.
I don't think so. Microsoft development is too entrenched to pull off something that requires so much synergy. Currently I'd say Fortnite and Roblox are serious metaverse contenders, but one that takes the cake will probably be some new viral product made by fresh blood. Microsoft might buy them, though.
If VR/AR is believed to be the forefront of the Metaverse than Microsoft is in the best position to do so with Work into HoloLens (AR) + kinect , numerous IP’s to use to build meta worlds, and the capital to burn.
What’s left to really show they’re going this direction is to release a VR that works on Xbox.
Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard
#477It'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
That is a really interesting thought. Now they got much more of everything both in terms of technology (cloud, mobile apps, hardware experience) and developers trust.
Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard
#478The 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…
This is the world we live in now. People rage against capitalism but at the same they'll hang their hat on corporation x and defend them to the death.
Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard
#479Earlier 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…
It's already a race to the bottom. It has been for a while.
Don't blame mobile games - they got those exploitative ideas from PC market.
The upside of a PC market, is the lack of a centralized authority to tell you what games are good - a.k.a the app stores. (App stores are horrible for games or any creative content discovery, as they use purely utilitarian categorization) That doesn't mean that PC, or web, games are any less exploitative than mobile counterparts. (remember mafia wars or farmville?)
Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard
#480Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Thankfully, Proton exists, which is what makes Linux gaming something other than a pipedream.