581–590 of 1001 posts
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.
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They are still missing a mobile platform and that's why I believe they will retry within the next few years
I don't think they will. There's no point. There is a stable duopoly, where Microsoft can reap the benefits of competition between the two, without wasting any resources. May not be best for consumer - really great for business. (especially, if courts hold that Apple/Google cannot outright ban apps from their stores)
I am sure this will result in better games than if not, lol.
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Back in the day sure, but the blizzard of 20 years ago is long gone. Diablo 3 is an abysmal followup to D2, every CoD is just an annual rehash, hearthstone is an absolute moneygrab, and HotS is the most watered down moba I've ever played. Overwatch is cool though. edit: and oh my god, let's not forget the absolute dumpster fire of warcraft 3 reforged.
Diablo 2 Resurrected turned out awesome CoD was never Blizzard WoW (vanilla) was so good it had a second successful launch 10 years later Starcraft 2 remains immensely popular
WoW (retail) has had 3 of its last 4 expansions ultimately perceived as failures and is (justifiably, belatedly, finally) having its lunch eaten by the vastly superior Final Fantasy XIV.
Immensely is probably overstating Starcraft 2's popularity, but what popularity it still has is in spite of anything Blizzard has done for it recently rather than because of it. They've essentially abandoned the franchise to wither on the vine at this point.
This is the first acquisition, possibly ever, that I view as potentially a positive for the customers of the company being acquired, if only because Microsoft can't possibly mishandle Blizzard's IP and staff any worse than Activision and Blizzard already have.
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.
Creation layer of the stack: Unity or Unreal.
Really, I could see them launching their own engine. Think of all the studios and talent they have now. They have the engines behind Halo, CoD, WoW, Overwatch. Could build an Unreal competitor.
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…
Microsoft is not building the future of gaming, they're buying it. Seeing a bunch of excellent third-party cross-platform games become xbox-exclusive is really sad for gamers. Microsoft has not been making money on xbox. They're not investing money made with xbox. They're using Office/Windows/Azure funds to boost Xbox, and it's not a fair fight. Sony and Nintendo don't have that kind of money. I get Sony has acquired…
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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.
The answer to this conundrum for them should be, "Tough titties, learn to compete or die, but we will not allow you to bully your way into a market with money."
I hate to see a monopoly in the gaming industry. Controlling the content will prevent any competition both in gaming consoles and in PC gaming. Forget about gaming on Linux or any new platform. Forget about sony's PlayStation and Nintendo. We are going to see the real face of Microsoft. What do you think Microsoft will do next? Buy unreal engine and unity and have control over the content and the tools to make them?…
You can run gamepass on Linux, so when all these games hit gamepass (which they will) it’s a net positive for Linux gamers.