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Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

news.microsoft.com

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Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#491

Post by lunfard000 »

vanilla_nut wrote: post #410
raxxorrax wrote: post #78

Earlier 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…

MS dont care you buying their console, barely make a dollar out of it. It is all about gamepass

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#492

Post by JAlexoid »

bogwog wrote: post #404
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…

Consumers loose literally nothing from Microsoft's acquisition of Activision/Blizzard.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#493

Post by t3rabytes »

goldfeld wrote: post #490
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.

It is quite wild. The only thing missing is good will.

I think Game Pass has built up a helluva goodwill bucket, from talking with friends of mine.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#494

Post by spiderice »

ecf wrote: post #423
sbarre wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even after this purchase, Microsoft's gaming division is still smaller than Sony by revenue.. There are still lots of other large publishers out there.. EA, Take Two, Embracer, Tencent, Epic, etc... I'm sure I'm forgetting some big obvious ones even. They are definitely not "buying all their competitors" as you put it.

> Microsoft’s gaming division Isn’t that the point? Why can something as large as MS have a “division” that can go into mergers and acquisitions as if they were a separate entity? > There are stills lots of other large publishers …goes on to name 5. > They are definitely not “buying all their competit Sure, you can be as pedantic as you want and jump through hoops to come to that rationalization.

> Why can something as large as MS have a “division” that can go into mergers and acquisitions as if they were a separate entity?

Especially when Microsoft is using the rest of Microsoft to subsidize said "division"

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#495

Post by joaodlf »

bogwog wrote: post #404
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…

This sounds a bit like "ms should just make better games". Games are hard. Extremely hard. If Microsoft managed to incorporate the Battle net portfolio into their gamepass, there is some argument to be made about how much better that service would become.

I see your point, I really do, this stinks in all sorts of ways, but there could be a benefit here for a lot of players.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#497

Post by baby »

madeofpalk wrote: post #36
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 there should be more (gaming) companies, and (gaming) companies should not be owned by the platforms, so I see this as a pretty big negative for the industry and customers. Congrats to Phil on his resume bump I guess.

Have you seen all the indie companies?

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#498

Post by hydrok9 »

ethbr0 wrote: post #430
ekianjo wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 You forgot to mention he started with billions of dollars backing him up. It was not like a small startup or something.

> billions of dollars How big were Sony and Nintendo at the time? Even with Microsoft's war chest, it was an uphill battle.

Not really. It was clear that there was space for another large player in the console market. Sega was done or dying, Sony and Nintendo couldn't keep the entire playerbases to themselves (and PC and Mac are barely worth mentioning im sorry to say).

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#499

Post by smileybarry »

sofixa wrote: post #319
fourseventy wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This acquisition makes Microsoft the third biggest gaming company in the world... Not even the biggest, and far from a monopoly...

Don't get hung up on "monopoly". Their games are only available on their own vertically integrated platforms. They're abusing their dominant market position and should be slapped hard ( full break up and multi billion fines).

Their games are available on PC, sold on Steam, and can run on Linux via Steam Proton. Just because they aren't available on one console doesn't make it that bad.

Re: Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard

#500

Post by pradn »

phgn wrote: post #379

> 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.

There's still plenty of money in PC and console games, especially AAA ones. It's a good thing that games expand to mobile. My little cousins in India have no consoles or PCs to play on, but they happily play PUBG or Minecraft with their friends on their parents' phones. Of course, for every wholesome mobile game, there's a 100 slot machine games with no merit.
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