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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

#521

Post by mbrumlow »

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.

LinkedIn is probably the only one that don’t belong on that list.

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

#522

Post by c0pium »

PeterStuer wrote: post #508
kridsdale3 wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MSFT as an employer and work environment has industry standard (very good) ESG / DEI stuff, and work life balance is apparently excellent. Contrast with Activision's stewardship of grinding their workers in to bloody dust, and sprinkling sexual abuse on top. Kotic has to go. Before this acquisition became a news story the news was full of employee lawsuits and California itself initiating action against the awful man…

Arguably their best and most succesfull games were produced by hard grinding devs that loved the game they were wotking on and the gamers that played them. You can feel about ESG/DEI however you wamt, but it has nothing to do with producing great games.

What if you feel that it’s integral to producing good games because it means people who care about it will come work there.

This fetishization of crunch as somehow unavoidable is disgusting.

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

#523

Post by pphysch »

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.

Who made/makes VSCode?

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

#524

Post by nobodyandproud »

twiceaday wrote: post #317
nobodyandproud wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's one usecase where I see cloud gaming adding value: esports. With cloud gaming it's possible to playing field far more, because competitions can now force the same latency by introducing artificial latency. Cloud gaming also eliminates cheats like wall hacks (or fog of war removal), which is currently possible because the game client and rendering engine all run on a local machine.

Reasonable but irrelevant arguments. Esport games are essentially defined by their demand for low network latency which is precisely the main difficulty with cloud gaming.

I disagree with this as a given: > Esport games are essentially defined by their demand for low network latency

It’s only a given because circumstances force and/or allow this.

Also, how do leagues and competitions account for a 30 ms vs 70 ms latency difference?

I ask this as someone middle-aged who immediately notices this difference, when playing ladder PvP games.

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

#525

Post by PeterStuer »

c0pium wrote: post #522
PeterStuer wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arguably their best and most succesfull games were produced by hard grinding devs that loved the game they were wotking on and the gamers that played them. You can feel about ESG/DEI however you wamt, but it has nothing to do with producing great games.

What if you feel that it’s integral to producing good games because it means people who care about it will come work there. This fetishization of crunch as somehow unavoidable is disgusting.

Or maybe people that don't care about games nor gamers will prefer to work there and spend their time on other things, who's to say?

The 'modern' output is what it is and it was disliked by the majority of the player-base, so much that if it wasn't for re-releases of the old content some of their franchises would be near dead.

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

#526

Post by imbnwa »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #473
imbnwa wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you imagine a Leisure Suit Larry in 2023

I regret to inform you that the most recent original Leisure Suit Larry game, "Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Dry Twice," came out in 2020 (2021 on console, 2022 on mobile).

Wow

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

#527

Post by amourgh »

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.

Linkedin is used by every recruiter.Most of the recruiters pay. It has captured most of employment traffic

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

#528

Post by biomcgary »

EstesPark wrote: post #470
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…

Wow, I completely forgot about Red Alert. That game was a blast!

I recently found an open source version that has been fun (https://www.openra.net/).

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

#529

Post by biomcgary »

fphhotchips wrote: post #450
tonyhart7 wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Age of Empire is thriving under microsoft, its not biggest esports out there but the game is pretty stable and receiving seemingly endless content updates I expect starcraft would be the same, maybe cant go back to it former glory but atleast it would be alive especially if make it to gamepass

Not only is AoEII doing really well under Microsoft, it's doing so despite taking a couple of goes to get it right in the modern era. Most other companies would have given up when HD edition got a bit of a middling response.

I really wish they would update Rise of Nations, which MS also published. Obviously not as popular, but I loved the tech tree and the territory system.

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

#530

Post by Spivak »

WorldMaker wrote: post #253
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.

Right. Microsoft is just about the only player left in cloud gaming because Sony, Amazon and Google all tried and gave up in different ways, in part because none of them really found a market nor an audience. I heard Sony is trying again but leasing some cloud servers from Microsoft Azure's white box version of xCloud, ironically. That last part is also why I think the Ubisoft deal is probably funny. Rumors are Ubi i…

Sony's PS+ is really good, I was really impressed at how smooth the whole experience was. The ability to play titles all the way back to PS2 in an officially supported manner is really nice!
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