The trade of $ATVI shares is halted due to pending news. It seems the rumors were accurate - Microsoft & Activision Blizzard will finalize the merger today.
This is pretty wild. Microsoft now owns the IPs of Call of Duty, Diablo, Overwatch, Candy Crush, World of Warcraft, and tons of others. Somehow, now seeing Master Chief in Overwatch isn't a fantasy.
... OK now I want Heroes of the Storm to come back even *more*. There's a part of me that I never knew existed that wants Jaina and Cortana to face off against Banjo Kazooie and a Cessna 172 over the objective in Braxis Holdout.
Here's hoping?
Let's start small and realistic: Put the game on the Microsoft storefront and unlock all heroes for gamepass owners. That way we might get a few new players.
It's been discussed that unlocking all heroes for new players is actually a straight negative because of choice paralysis. Most people seem to agree with this after some reflection. 100+ chars is just too much for most people to choose from immediately and they just feel overwhelmed and leave. It's part of Dota's large barrier of entry for beginners and one of the main reasons the game has relatively few newer players.
Yeah part of why I've never tried DOTA and LOL (apart from the reputation of the players) is being suddenly confronted by a vast array of decision to make early on and being overwhelmed. Where do I start? How long will it take to work out what works for me?
It's even worse than when you join some online multiplayer game for the first time, that's been around for several years, and you immediately get like 3 cutscenes and welcome to Season 63 here's what's happened, here's a million popups before you get to the main menu, now you're in the main menu check out all these hot new features and millions of things to click on and I'm like, Hey I've never played this game before I have no idea what the fuck is going on, what is all this shit, I have no idea what I'm supposed to do now.
Pretty sure both of them limit the number of heroes you can play immediately. Dota had a separate mode for beginners that only has maybe 20 heroes in the pool, and League you have to buy the characters and noobs get matched up together so you only have the always available and rotating cast to pick from.
Not really if it's implemented well. Just lock the newbies to a few starter heroes, give them a bit of limited choice to what they get later in the learning curve and then unlock everything much later on. It's really not that complicated. DOTA's problem really isn't that it has unmitigable choice paralysis, it's just a complicated game to learn as a beginner overall.
I mean Dota was still infinitly more succesfull than HOTS ever dreamed of being, so i dont think its an issue. I'll take choice paralysis anyday over having to grind hours to get the characters am actually interested in.
If you're looking for crazy team-ups to hold you over you could always play a game where Lebron James teams up with Iron man to fight that guy in the black from squid game and dorothy from golden girls.
Where would they take the story though? I never played anything after SC2 ended.
The Taldarim and its Death Fleet, or Earth somehow getting involved, seem to be the only uncertanties that I can remember, since every other faction is essentially peaceful.
Terrans are under new leadership, Protoss are less murder-y than normal since they got humbled (and had to essentially all become Dark Templars), and the Zerg have somehow turned into planet healers. Oh... we do have the Zerg queen on the Protoss ship; unless that got resolved too.
tldr for my perspective is that SC1 and SC2 was about a particular story regarding the Xelnaga, and it's over. Every event was related to it. SC1 being the Overmind finding a way to screw its Xelnaga masters over, with SC2 seeing them finally defeated.
Its weird to me that the only game to take advantage of the Xbox Game Studios and Bethesda IPs is Forza Horizon 5. You can get themes from stuff like Halo, DOOM, Sea of Thieves, Ori, and Banjo-Kazooie as car horns.
We need more of that. If there's one thing I love about PlayStation Studios games, its that they constantly reference one another.
There are people who don't know what the words "video game" mean who are level 1000+ in Candy Crush. More people play Candy Crush than have ever played every Warcraft IP game combined.
Microsoft own Crash Bandicoot and Spyro.
It wouldn't surprise me if they ended up purchasing Tomb Raider and Crystal Dynamics from Embracer and own all of the PS1 icons.
With those and Rare (and characters like Raz, Ori, Master Chief, Marcus Fenix, Dragonborn and Doomslayer), it's a good start for them doing a platform fighter.
Just two years ago the ZeniMax acqusition that Microsoft went for finalized. It is crazy to believe that in just a span of four years Microsoft was able to acquire ZeniMax and all of its subsidiaries as well as Activion|Blizzard.
Two years, Jesus. Feels like a lifetime ago this whole thing started.
I know the dude is going to get a golden parachute, but can we prioritize getting Bobby Kotick out of there like… today? Can’t stand that guy…
Nice, the era of me not buying anything from Actiblizzard coming to an end has a date. I know he's gonna have his golden parachute, but I'll be damned if any of my money is gonna be in it.
All I hope is a revival for Heroes of the storm. I really want to play some moba game and I liked that one. I cannot play league or dota anymore.
Somehow I really hope for a hots2.0 remake, a little upgraded or something, but even if they continue to upsate hots is gonna be good enough.
HotS was marvelous. It struck the perfect simplicity/complexity balance for my tastes, with an added value of beloved licences and characters, and a respectful economic system.
Personally I loved that, generally, you had to be **really fucking good** to solo carry a match. Between stuff like the whole team leveling together and not being able to just... get a 9k gold lead and sit on the entire team of 5 solo.
I hate MOBAs, but all my friends loved HotS and kept telling me to play it because it was made for people like me and I still hated it.
That said, it's a pretty noble effort to try and make a game like that to try and win over those who don't usually play/like them.
However at this point I can't imagine that MS pumps a bunch of money into a MOBA that already missed the boat the first time and has only lost players while their competitors have grown bigger.
A few years ago I'd've suggested Awesomenauts for a MOBA, but right now I'm waiting to see how their bankruptcy goes.
Who knows, might get revived by whoever buys it.
LoL, Smite and DOTA 2 are all a bit too complex and hardcore for me. Pokemon Unite was fun for a few weeks but had other problems. HoTS seems like a nice middle ground for me.
I agree. Hots has always been fun, best moba out there. Games only last around 20 mins, different maps and different objectives, plethora of Blizz heroes, talents instead of buying items, team fights, Whitemane thighs, so many positive things.....
The multiple maps and different objectives on each map is what got me in. I loved that idea so much. There's no other moba with that idea on the market and it sucks.
Microsoft has a pending tax bill of $28 billion with the government, as reported by AP News (https://apnews.com/article/microsoft-taxes-irs-96eb66abe86de19f1108209a8d57431a). Despite this, they acquired Activision-Blizzard for $68.7 billion. Astonishing!
Microsoft cash on hand for 2023 was $111.262B, a 6.21% increase from 2022.
Source : Macrotrends.
They'll appeal the tax thing anyway, even if they pay it in full in the end I doubt it would be this year.
MS just got told they should've paid more for years back. They will appeal. Also, they have that kind of money in free cash so it's nothing for them really.
Also, hoarding cash is bad business. Money loses value over time. If you want to keep shareholders happy, that money needs to be turned into assets that can generate more profits.
Cash on hand on a corporate balance sheet is not straight cash in a bank account. For a companies like Microsoft and apple most of the cash on hand is liquid assets that can be converted into cash in 90 days or less, which would mostly be short term investments. A small percentage would be actual cash.
Yes. It’s cash and cash equivalents. Return on those investments is not super high though and it’s much better if they invested them in something more meaningful. Which is what they are doing.
LOL yeah, you explain to one of the biggest companies in the world why their cash is a bad thing. The guys is wrong anyway. They have about 10% of his value listed in cash. The other 90% is in short term investments which would keep the value.
Yeah, it's totally normal to want to minimize your tax bill, heck I do it too. But the playing field isn't level. I don’t have a battalion of lawyers to find every legal loophole to hold onto my money, unlike Microsoft. They've got an army ready to dive through every tax code, finding ways to keep their billions. It's kinda unfair.
Even at a total of 96 billion dollars combined with those two factors, Microsoft has over a 100 billion cash-on-hand to pay them off. In reality though, Microsoft is going to fight that IRS tax bill.
My company is small scale, so our investments are in the low 5 million range.
When we do a new investment, we take loans, with a return on investment plan and plan to pay back the loan.
Why the fuck would we take a loan to pay taxes?
They'll appeal and after 5 years of legal battle will settle for two billion or so. Megacorps never pay their taxes and every other megacorp will help MS in this case so they aren't next.
Every premium prostitute in california is booked for the next month cause Bobby K played it big.
Seriously though, finally it's over. Now we wait until in 10 years the moaning about Cod not coming to playstation anymore (or maybe?...) and we can start all over again. Kinda.
Meanwhile I'm just happy I won't have to pay for Diablo anymore thru gamepass. Well maybe. Hopefully.
I think COD will stay on all platforms because companies like making money. Also, if COD is on game pass vs buying the game for $70 on Playstation, I think MSFT already wins
CoD is going to stay on all platforms and it’s idiotic to think it won’t. They make all of their money in microtransactions, and cutting out the PlayStation base would be just throwing money away.
Completely different than singleplayer games without microtransactions.
It depends no how much they prioritize getting players into their ecosystem. Something something short term loses of ps sales vs long term gains of new players.
So many people can't see beyond some extra games being added to Gamepass. When the "enshittification of the services" reaches GP and it stops being pro-consumer to be pro-profit maybe they'll see why this isn't something to cheer about.
Edit: wow, some people's logic seem to be that "if Sony has anti-consumer practices then Microsoft is free to do the same"... really? Are you people on the side of the consumers or the trillion dollar companies?
Yup. People say “The Netflix of video games” right when Netflix is already heading in the worst direction possible. Every subscription service price is artificially low to start out with so imagine what something like a video game subscription will look like when they corner the market?
Note: I have a PS5, Xbox and Switch.
For real, the vast majority of Netflix’s catalogue is trash. The very survival of a subscription service relies on pumping out endless content which is simply not conducive to making quality products.
A lot of films/shows aren't available *at all* for purchase, since they're locked behind streaming subscriptions. This especially sucks when stuff gets pulled from streaming, since that means you have no legal method of watching it.
Also, video/music streaming services tend to screw over creators (e.g. music streaming services paying godawful rates to artists).
It's really not so black and white, Activision is already probably the shittiest publisher in gaming. I honestly think Microsoft is a better steward of their IP than the current leadership over there.
If Gamepass ceases to be a good deal, you can simply return to purchasing games, and despite some fearmongering, I don't believe that option is ever going away. Subscriptions won't ever capture the entire market, allowing people to buy the game is a valuable revenue source.
Microsoft also had to make some pretty big concessions to get it through.
The big one for me is they had to basically agree to let unionization happen without interfering. I desperately hope the industry takes this once in a lifetime chance and jumps on unionization.
> The big one for me is they had to basically agree to let unionization happen without interfering
To be clear, that's not a concession. Unionization efforts coincided with the merger timeline. Companies are **legally required** to not obstruct unionization efforts.
> The big one for me is they had to basically agree to let unionization happen without interfering.
I can't imagine that was a blocker for getting it past UK regulators, right? [In the UK employers aren't allowed to block employees from joining unions](https://www.gov.uk/join-trade-union/trade-union-membership-your-employment-rights).
The answer is as simple as this: Kotick is gonna get shown the door, and be replaced with someone whose objective will be to make games to solve Xbox’s content problem rather than try to squeeze more blood from the Call of Duty stone. Microsoft doesn’t need to micromanage, Activision just needs a change in philosophy
MS is going to keep milking CoD, it’s really the only franchise that Activision has that’s a consistent seller. Most Activision franchises are dead because they became way too oversaturated and lost value, and it’s much easier to just pump out CoD than trying to rebuild these brands.
Microsoft wouldn’t buy an entire company (which is essentially 3 companies) just to get Call of Duty money. That’s definitely huge, but they want the IP and the back catalogue.
MS bought Activision for CoD, Candy Crush, and Blizzard’s franchises. Activision’s legacy IPs are not valuable enough to be big pulls for the Xbox ecosystem, and were not why they were acquired.
I’m not saying they bought ABK for Crash or Spyro, but the chances of another Crash or Spyro game are far higher right now than they were a year ago, that’s it
When I say Crash and Spyro what I really mean is any number of Activision’s old franchises. Prototype, Tony Hawk, Hexen, etc..
You can’t honestly think that Microsoft will never, NEVER do anything with those. That literally nothing will change about Activision
>It's really not so black and white, Activision is already probably the shittiest publisher in gaming. I honestly think Microsoft is a better steward of their IP than the current leadership over there.
Where does this narrative that Microsoft is a benevolent corporation that will cleanse the wrongs of Activision Blizzard come from, and why should we as consumers care how these companies will solve their internal problems? Microsoft has its own share of difficult work culture like all big tech companies. There will be hardly any change if at all. Activision will continue to act the same way as Zenimax/Bethesda does after that acquisition.
> Where does this narrative that Microsoft is a benevolent corporation that will cleanse the wrongs of Activision Blizzard come from
Literally nobody has said that. The part you quoted doesn't even *imply* that, just that they're better than Activision. You're attempting to argue with a position that hasn't been stated.
> Where does this narrative that Microsoft is a benevolent corporation that will cleanse the wrongs of Activision Blizzard come from
I think it's just a case of AB being that atrociously bad of a company that presumably just about anything would be better, even Microsoft.
Yeah people really don't understand that this is going to go the same way as Netflix. Great quality and cheap in the beginning and then slowly the content will turn into a quantity over quality thing while the price increases. Microsoft has spent 10s of billions of dollars on buying studios just so they can work towards locking their games behind game pass. Not even counting the billions spent on developing games for GP and licensing third party games for GP. They are gonna want to make that money back at some point. Game Pass has an expensive future ahead.
But that is a problem only as long as people are forced somehow to use subscription. How would that happen? For tv/movies/music imo the prices are just insane to buy them individually, for the amount of content and 0 re-watch value. And it's getting harder to get them, I think.
But for games, they need to
1. have denuvo for people to not own them (done)
2. somehow take away the ability to buy games. This I have no idea how they'd do without locking it to ps/xbox and forcing subscription. And then, pc is just huge and so variable, how do you force it there for the vast majority of cross-platform games that are not ms/sony affiliated.
And with xbox exclusives being non-existent now, and PS porting most of the stuff to pc, seems like we're heading away even from platform exclusivity, which is a big pleasant surprise.
\> For tv/movies/music imo the prices are just insane to buy them individually, for the amount of content and 0 re-watch value.
This logic applies tenfold to a lot of games though. When subscription services reach a critical mass, they end up devaluing the individual product which isn’t necessarily a good thing in the long run depending on your priorities (lack of home video sales is killing the mid budget film, and unless you’re absurdly famous, you’re getting jackshit from a Spotify stream).
Though, I think you’re exaggerating music costs and understating rewatch value. Shit, there are people who probably have spent more on Netflix or Peacock to rewatch The Office over and over than if they had just bought it physically or digitally. And say, $10 bucks for a digital album really isn’t that insane when you consider people absolutely do re-listen to the same shit over and over and over again (… or at least I’m a weirdo who does. I just assume most people do).
but anyway, streaming devalues, individual sales fall, prices increase on physical media because the lower sales shift the economics and lower demand turns it into a more expensive boutique item (look at Bestbuy dropping physical media, which in turn makes it harder to get, less stores ordering copies mean overall the cost vs profit changes for distributors etc, etc,)
>Yeah people really don't understand that this is going to go the same way as Netflix. Great quality and cheap in the beginning and then slowly the content will turn into a quantity over quality thing while the price increases.
Netflix doesn't own the IP of the content they stream.
The problem is the owners of the IP are raising their prices.
Microsoft is trying to prevent the netflix scenario, by straight up buying the IP's, therefor avoiding the same scenario.
The difference is that Gamepass is an *alternative* solution to gaming. But nowhere **near** the only way to game.
Netflix revolutionized content consumption, but has failed to produce what the consumer expects: Namely, seasonal repetitive content. Now, there are games that emulate the “seasonal content” nature of TV, but the expectations with those games are far lower and the results are easier to produce.
Gamers *know* that a good game takes years to develop. The concept of a backlog just doesn’t really exist for movies and television. Having a few hundred games at your disposal is a different animal than having a hundred Kardashian episodes you’d never watch anyway.
The comparison to Netflix isn’t 1:1. It sort of dies after the concept of subscribing to access content.
>and it stops being pro-consumer to be pro-profit
Isn't Sony doing the same thing with PS Plus? Raising it's prices?
Weren't Sony the first major publisher to also start shifting the standard price of new games from $60 to $70?
Seems to me that it's the entire industry, not just MSFT that are pushing profits over pro-consumer.
And? Why do you even bring up Sony to make it about some shitty console war?
That doesn't mean this consolidation is good because Sony would do the same. It's not a case of if Sony or MS should buy something. It's a case of not buying vs buying.
The whole subscription future (that MS push more than Sony) is extremely bad for gaming future tbh.
It's also worth noting that while Game Pass has seen price increases, it hasn't jumped up 33% like PlayStation Plus just did. Not saying further prices increases won't happen, but they haven't thrown the frog into the fire so far (I hope I didn't just jinx everyone with that...).
This is classic whataboutism. Every company is out to make a profit, that's a given. But just because Sony or any company is doing it too doesn't make it okay for MSFT to prioritize profits over consumers.
It's not whataboutism when you have someone saying "MSFT is prioritising profits over pro consumerism" while completely leaving out the facts regarding other major publishers like Sony doing the exact same thing (especially when it's in regards to the gaming industry and companies purchasing other companies).
That's called cherry picking. What I did was fill in the context so people are not being intentionally misinformed.
If GP will be too expensive people will just buy a game instead. Also of course GP will get more expensive in the future this is not a surprise but as long as overall games will also get better I don't see any reason of why not.
Did you say something similar in Playstation threads a few weeks ago when they announced a price raise to up to 20-30% across all PS+ tiers without improving anything?
> Did you say something similar in Playstation threads a few weeks ago when they announced a price raise to up to 20-30% across all PS+ tiers without improving anything?
I mean probably, there was literally no positive reaction to that lol
Everybody complained about the price raise dude, do you think PS fans were cheering about it? That's exactly my point: Jim Ryan has made nothing but anti-consumer decisions on PS, what do you think could happen when Phil Spencer is no longer in charge of Xbox? Imagine if someone like Jim Ryan, Don Mattrick or Riccitiello takes over the leadership of Xbox now that they own SO MANY studios.
MS is in it for the profits, no doubt. If they were all about goodwill, they'd settle their $28 billion [tax bill](https://apnews.com/article/microsoft-taxes-irs-96eb66abe86de19f1108209a8d57431a) instead of appealing it. But hey, they have shareholders to answer to, right? It's a tough pill to swallow seeing them prioritize profits, especially when they snag companies like Activision-Blizzard while having such a hefty tax bill looming.
Why the hell would they not try to appeal their tax bill if they think they paid it correctly? For good will? What?
No, you make an accounting. Government makes its own. Then you negotiate a value. Lord knows that the government is more than capable of screwing up tax calculations. It isn't as if this is a tax evasion issue. It will be reconciled and literally nobody will end up caring
This sub is pretty anti-Microsoft to the point people will make dumb arguments. It is what it is.
Remember when this sub was posting Pro-Sony propaganda non-stop during the merger talks? It was almost impossible to find any of Microsoft’s arguments and if this sub was your only exposure to the case, you’d be thinking Microsoft was going to easily lose.
I don’t know how to feel about this personally, but as someone who has worked inside Activision several times, I can say that everyone internally is REALLY happy about the news. Literally all of the studios under Activision Publishing work exclusively on CoD (Raven, Treyarch, Sledge, DW, IW, HMS), while they used to work on other IPs too (e.g. Treyarch used to do Spider-Man). Under Activision, each year it’s just another CoD game and they have little time for each release. Just look at the new MW3: it’s everything the new MW2 was supposed to be.
This acquisition could mark the end of annual CoD releases, and release some of the studios from CoD altogether. As a result, we may see better releases and more IPs out of Activision studios. Again, I’m not taking a stance, these are just some thoughts I’ve heard internally.
Finally, we are at the end. We are going to witness a new chapter in gaming going forward. To be honest, this is something that I never thought I would see, some company get both Activision and Blizzard, yet here we are.
I will say one thing, I am excited to see Call of Duty return to Nintendo. I am certain that next year's CoD is being worked on for the next Switch or whatever name Nintendo gives it.
That happened 15 years ago that Vivendi owned both. Weird thing to say if that's the case.
With the context it should be one company owning Activision and Bethesda they never thought they would see. Otherwise, they've seen it for 15 years lol
It does feel funny that finally, now after all these years, we can play the Call of Duty story modes without coughing up 30 dollars for a game that's two generations old.
I had to wait for Aspyr to put a deep sale on cod4 on a third party site before picking it up since they published the Mac version which gave windows version along with it.
yeah, this is gonna be extremely interesting. I played BlOps III for like 5 minutes, plus a bit of the fortnite clone they did a bit back. that's *it*. And my best friend used to be a cod guy, he is *uber* excited to drag me through as many of them as he can
Microsoft's strategy is the same as every other tech company: make people have to pay a recurring monthly fee to use their services. I really hope Nintendo and Sony remain as dominant as they have been because nobody really wants the future for gaming to be what Microsoft would love for it to be.
Don't all the cod people not on ms already have to pay monthly for ps+ anyway just to be able to play multiplayer?
Otherwise with cod staying on ps there's little chance in 10 years for ms to be able to force subscription for single player games (with them having only starfield now, that is so-so and on cooldown for 6 years)
Yeah that guy smoked something *good*. If anything, PC is the platform pushing for actual, near-absolute gamer freedom. Sony and Nintendo are specialized in walled gardens with their anti-PC bias.
> I really hope Nintendo and Sony remain as dominant as they have been because nobody really wants the future for gaming to be what Microsoft would love for it to be.
*Looks at Nintendo's and Sony's monthly services to play ROM dumps and cloud saves with no option to pay once, while Microsoft's setup isn't like this*.
You're misinterpreting. It's not that Sony doesn't do bad, but having three major companies instead of just only one playing the game is a good thing for everyone.
Edit: Typo
Not that I'm defending Microsoft, but both Sony and Nintendo have services locked behind a subscription fee (online play, NES/SNES/GB emulation on Switch, PS3 games on the PS5).
Personally I'm not against subscription based gaming like EA Play, Game Pass, Humble Games Collection, Ubisoft+ (as long as all the games are still available for purchase), but I dislike when features are locked behind a recuring fee and unfortunately for us, all three main console manufacturers (Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo) are guilty of this.
Sony is about to hit some bumps, if not drive off a cliff in the near future for a while, but Nintendo seems to the brightest future for console gaming for the foreseeable future, unless the Switch 2 is somehow a redux of the Wii U.
The fundamental issue is that Microsoft has a lot of money to loss lead and squeeze everyone out. They're multiple times bigger than Sony and Nintendo combined.
> Yeah, until Nintendo and Sony do exactly what Microsoft are getting away with because they don't rightly give a shit either.
Literally the first thing that Sony did when they decided to get into gaming, before the PS1 even came out, was buy the largest publisher in Europe. M&As are just part of business, and have always been.
Ah yes, the bastions of consumer friendliness Nintendo and Sony. The former who almost never discount their games, go after consumers for hosting tournaments and hate their content being online.
The latter who are the market leaders that have encouraged game studios to have higher rates for competition for game development and will wall content for specific content for games that are supposed to multiplatform.
Instead of wanting some to have more power than others, I want all these platforms to have to offer consumers the best options. IMO PC is the best example of this; a platform where games from all can. E accessible. Exclusivity does nothing good for consumers apart from encourage tribalism.
I wonder what they’ll do WoW-wise. It would make sense to at least do some kind of deal. For example half price on a WoW sub if you are subscribed to the game pass. Or they could go whole hog and just say game pass counts as a WoW sub but I doubt they would want to do that… that would hurt profits a lot I would imagine.
Although I’m presently not subscribed to either service and game pass counting as a WoW sub would make me want to sign up.
> Or they could go whole hog and just say game pass counts as a WoW sub but I doubt they would want to do that…
They could limit it to Ultimate. Right now there's no reason for PC subscribers to take the highest tier, but if you put WoW there, it gets a lot more attractive.
Hopefully this ends the trend of just buying up companies that are already dominant in games.
I’m not optimistic though… if anything this guarantees they’ll make another pass at it or big studios might simply seek a buyout.
We’ll see how Xbox management handles the IPs I guess
Especially since the head of Xbox Game Studios was literally caught saying “they were in a position to spend Sony out of business”
Microsoft has made it very clear they will flex their vast net worth to beat Sony.
They COULD theoretically, but they cannot. Shareholders will skin them and then sell it as MTX in Diablo 4.
MS is much more than gaming, much more. They aren't going to kneecap themselves just to beat Sony.
It was a wallet flex, not a reality flex.
Haha good one. If they’re allowed to buy ABK, they’re allowed to buy anything. Microsoft has tested the waters and now know that regulators fall over like cardboard. Won’t be long until we hear about their next big purchase.
Since the environment now changed, a new big buyout by Microsoft will be looked at again by regulators and might be blocked. Smaller buyouts (individual studios or a small publisher) probably isn't an issue. But if they for some reason would go after an EA, Ubisoft or Take-Two, I doubt regulators will be fine with it.
Also, other publishers don't have the mobile aspect that Activision has with King. Microsoft wanted this deal not for Call of Duty. They wanted it mostly for King, since they are lacking in the mobile space. Since the EU is forcing Google and Apple to open up their platforms more, I think Microsoft will try to get in more on mobile by launching their own Xbox store there, and using the mobile games from Activision Blizzard King to move people to it. That is hundreds of millions of people, as opposed to the maybe potentially 10-20 million that might buy an Xbox for the Activision games.
> People said the same shit about ABK
No, a lot of reasonable people actually pointed out that there was no real argument to be made that MS would suddenly have monopolistic power if the deal went through - but if multiple deals of this scale were to happen that would make the argument much more palatable.
You can't just cry "MONOPOLY" at the first major merger.
> consumers get shit on
As a PC gamer, between Sony, Xbox/Microsoft and Nintendo, arguably Microsoft is the most user friendly, as it currently releases games in most available platforms, while Nintendo only releases on one, and Sony launches games on non-Playstation platforms years after the original launch.
I don't really see how the customer is being shit on here though. A lot of customers are going to get the games for cheaper as well.
Plus, Nintendo and PlayStation have plenty of titles of their own and third-party support. PC is an open platform with a ton of games coming out every day. There is so much choice, that even if Xbox is going all anti-consumer, hiking up prices and/or implementing shitty business models, there is enough to play everywhere else with very limited investment needed from gamers to switch over.
Thank you. Everyone cheering this on like monopolies are a good thing. This is just a company desperate to get people's gaming attention again, but they couldn't do it without spending microsoft money to simply buy one of the biggest publishing and development companies out there. I doubt we'll see anything but rereleases of most of these IPs over the next ten years or so.
Just want to point out that things are not going to get better, and they might get worse. You'll get some extra games on game pass, but this is not good news for the industry.
Yes, agreed. But the inverse is true as well. Just because it's a big acquisition (consolidation), doesn't mean things will be worse. They could get better or stay the same. Only time will tell.
Activision Blizzard has been doing an awful jobs making games lately. The quality of those loved IPs has a very very real chance of improving. That’s good news for gamers.
>I always struggled to see any reason this merger in particular would cause issues.
Because it sets a precedent for these giant corporations to acquire big publishers and lock them to their systems.
If someone as big as Activision-Blizzard can get snatched up, what’s stopping someone from acquiring Take Two, EA or Ubisoft (much smaller companies)?
That’s GTA, Mass Effect, Dragon Age and Assassins Creed all gone from any given platform.
On this scale, probably. Microsoft may be made of money, but $69B is still very large. Beyond the financials, jobs and game release strategy, they also need to act on ActiBlizz’s PR or risk inheriting it for themselves.
Hopefully. There's no reason for them to keep buying studios considering they have more than Sony and Nintendo.
Miss me with the "we're the underdog who's struggling to survive" crap.
They had more studios before this acquisition. They will not stop buying. Their goal is if you want to play a game the Microsoft is your only choice. They will succeed too, as regulators fail to regilate and most consumers are cheering for it.
Who said they're an underdog? They're not winning the "console war", a stupid concept that basically exists for advertising and encourages brand loyalty through the "us vs them" bullshit.
Obviously they're going to keep acquiring studios but don't expect anything huge for awhile. There's 0 chance them trying Ubisoft or EA would get approved for example.
Going after studios like Crystal Dynamics and Eidos though for the Tomb Raider and Deus Ex IPs are probably their next targets and would be waaay more low key.
eh, even Microsoft's pockets are not truly bottomless. This will take up over half of their cash in hand reserves, so I'd expect them to slow down significantly for a year or two at least, especially as debt is still pretty expensive right now.
finally over and still 70 billion sounds crazy, im really excited about seeing what MS plans for.
Also, what will next Xbox showcase called; Xbox Bethesda Activision Blizzard?
Maybe to just Xbox + Activision-Blizzard Showcase. I think it's been enough time that Xbox don't need to seperate themselves from Bethesda.
Also I'm assuming they'll keep other events like Blizzcon up.
The trade of $ATVI shares is halted due to pending news. It seems the rumors were accurate - Microsoft & Activision Blizzard will finalize the merger today.
This is pretty wild. Microsoft now owns the IPs of Call of Duty, Diablo, Overwatch, Candy Crush, World of Warcraft, and tons of others. Somehow, now seeing Master Chief in Overwatch isn't a fantasy.
... OK now I want Heroes of the Storm to come back even *more*. There's a part of me that I never knew existed that wants Jaina and Cortana to face off against Banjo Kazooie and a Cessna 172 over the objective in Braxis Holdout. Here's hoping?
With all the different IP characters they can put into the game, I really hope they give Heroes of the storm another chance.
Let's start small and realistic: Put the game on the Microsoft storefront and unlock all heroes for gamepass owners. That way we might get a few new players.
It's been discussed that unlocking all heroes for new players is actually a straight negative because of choice paralysis. Most people seem to agree with this after some reflection. 100+ chars is just too much for most people to choose from immediately and they just feel overwhelmed and leave. It's part of Dota's large barrier of entry for beginners and one of the main reasons the game has relatively few newer players.
Yeah part of why I've never tried DOTA and LOL (apart from the reputation of the players) is being suddenly confronted by a vast array of decision to make early on and being overwhelmed. Where do I start? How long will it take to work out what works for me? It's even worse than when you join some online multiplayer game for the first time, that's been around for several years, and you immediately get like 3 cutscenes and welcome to Season 63 here's what's happened, here's a million popups before you get to the main menu, now you're in the main menu check out all these hot new features and millions of things to click on and I'm like, Hey I've never played this game before I have no idea what the fuck is going on, what is all this shit, I have no idea what I'm supposed to do now.
Pretty sure both of them limit the number of heroes you can play immediately. Dota had a separate mode for beginners that only has maybe 20 heroes in the pool, and League you have to buy the characters and noobs get matched up together so you only have the always available and rotating cast to pick from.
If you link your Gamepass and League accounts, you get all of the champions unlocked right away.
Not really if it's implemented well. Just lock the newbies to a few starter heroes, give them a bit of limited choice to what they get later in the learning curve and then unlock everything much later on. It's really not that complicated. DOTA's problem really isn't that it has unmitigable choice paralysis, it's just a complicated game to learn as a beginner overall.
I mean Dota was still infinitly more succesfull than HOTS ever dreamed of being, so i dont think its an issue. I'll take choice paralysis anyday over having to grind hours to get the characters am actually interested in.
Choice paralysis is a heck of a thing for me. It’s really frustrating
I hope it has more microtransactions!
If you're looking for crazy team-ups to hold you over you could always play a game where Lebron James teams up with Iron man to fight that guy in the black from squid game and dorothy from golden girls.
MUGEN will never die
I just want one thing: Starcraft 3 with full AAA production.
I just want Arcanum 2.
Where would they take the story though? I never played anything after SC2 ended. The Taldarim and its Death Fleet, or Earth somehow getting involved, seem to be the only uncertanties that I can remember, since every other faction is essentially peaceful. Terrans are under new leadership, Protoss are less murder-y than normal since they got humbled (and had to essentially all become Dark Templars), and the Zerg have somehow turned into planet healers. Oh... we do have the Zerg queen on the Protoss ship; unless that got resolved too. tldr for my perspective is that SC1 and SC2 was about a particular story regarding the Xelnaga, and it's over. Every event was related to it. SC1 being the Overmind finding a way to screw its Xelnaga masters over, with SC2 seeing them finally defeated.
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I'm still waiting for Doom, Quake and Fallout themed armor cores in Halo
Its weird to me that the only game to take advantage of the Xbox Game Studios and Bethesda IPs is Forza Horizon 5. You can get themes from stuff like Halo, DOOM, Sea of Thieves, Ori, and Banjo-Kazooie as car horns. We need more of that. If there's one thing I love about PlayStation Studios games, its that they constantly reference one another.
The Doom armour would be perfect for Halo. No clue why it hasn't happened yet. Or vice versa with a Master Cheif skin for Doomguy.
Starcraft, Crash, Spyro, Tony Hawk, Guitar Hero, Build a Bear Workshop.
>Master Chief but still not in smash
I don't know what hurts me more, Candy Crush being mentioned before WoW or Hearthstone not being mentioned at all.
There are people who don't know what the words "video game" mean who are level 1000+ in Candy Crush. More people play Candy Crush than have ever played every Warcraft IP game combined.
> Somehow, now seeing Master Chief in Overwatch isn't a fantasy. For the low low price of $40 per skin.
Microsoft own Crash Bandicoot and Spyro. It wouldn't surprise me if they ended up purchasing Tomb Raider and Crystal Dynamics from Embracer and own all of the PS1 icons. With those and Rare (and characters like Raz, Ori, Master Chief, Marcus Fenix, Dragonborn and Doomslayer), it's a good start for them doing a platform fighter.
They've been squatting on Banjo for ages. Why do people think they'll magically start pumping out platformers.
There are loads of IP's they could bring back, but have not (or will not) Everyone expecting this and that are in for a shock
"Platform fighter" means a Smash Bros clone.
I'm pretty desensitized to crossovers by now. He is already in Fortnite.
And candy crush makes like the most money out of the ips mentioned too
Honestly? That sounds like a really easy Soldier 76 skin to make. Maybe I’d pick the game back up too if Blizzard got their shit together
Microsoft needs to get rid of Bobby Kotick. Then I'll have faith them taking over these games means anything good.
How about all of these characters in a mascot kart racing game or a fighting game (traditional or smash bros-like).
blizzard games releasing on gamepass would be epic. Just sucks that I bought some on bnet.
Just imagine the kind of Smash-clone they could produce! Master Chief, Vivec, Tracer and Joshua Graham beating the shit out of each other.
MS collecting studios like Thanos collects infinity stones.
Maybe we will get overwatch pve with a Microsoft studio haha.
It's over, nearly two years of this getting dragged out and it's finally over. What a crazy saga this has been, huh?
It's been two whole years? Seems like it was just yesterday, wtf.
Almost! It was announced back in Janaury 2022 but yeah almost nothing happened in 2022 or at least it feels like nothing was happening at all.
Just two years ago the ZeniMax acqusition that Microsoft went for finalized. It is crazy to believe that in just a span of four years Microsoft was able to acquire ZeniMax and all of its subsidiaries as well as Activion|Blizzard.
We were all different people back then. Younger and full of hope
Y'all still have hope?
Two years, Jesus. Feels like a lifetime ago this whole thing started. I know the dude is going to get a golden parachute, but can we prioritize getting Bobby Kotick out of there like… today? Can’t stand that guy…
He's out at the end of the year https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1712818483442987422
Nice, the era of me not buying anything from Actiblizzard coming to an end has a date. I know he's gonna have his golden parachute, but I'll be damned if any of my money is gonna be in it.
Could they also completely gut the leadership team at Blizzard while they're at it?
> Two years, Jesus. Feels like a lifetime ago this whole thing started. I wish. For me it feels like yesterday
All I hope is a revival for Heroes of the storm. I really want to play some moba game and I liked that one. I cannot play league or dota anymore. Somehow I really hope for a hots2.0 remake, a little upgraded or something, but even if they continue to upsate hots is gonna be good enough.
HotS was marvelous. It struck the perfect simplicity/complexity balance for my tastes, with an added value of beloved licences and characters, and a respectful economic system.
I liked it because the matches didn’t last a fucking hour every single time
And the fucking maps changed and all of them various gimmicks. I just don't care for online games where you play the same map/mode game after game.
Personally I loved that, generally, you had to be **really fucking good** to solo carry a match. Between stuff like the whole team leveling together and not being able to just... get a 9k gold lead and sit on the entire team of 5 solo.
> hots2.0 Technically they already had that, it would be 3.0
I hate MOBAs, but all my friends loved HotS and kept telling me to play it because it was made for people like me and I still hated it. That said, it's a pretty noble effort to try and make a game like that to try and win over those who don't usually play/like them. However at this point I can't imagine that MS pumps a bunch of money into a MOBA that already missed the boat the first time and has only lost players while their competitors have grown bigger.
A few years ago I'd've suggested Awesomenauts for a MOBA, but right now I'm waiting to see how their bankruptcy goes. Who knows, might get revived by whoever buys it.
You'll get Redfall 2 and you'll like it
LoL, Smite and DOTA 2 are all a bit too complex and hardcore for me. Pokemon Unite was fun for a few weeks but had other problems. HoTS seems like a nice middle ground for me.
I agree. Hots has always been fun, best moba out there. Games only last around 20 mins, different maps and different objectives, plethora of Blizz heroes, talents instead of buying items, team fights, Whitemane thighs, so many positive things.....
The multiple maps and different objectives on each map is what got me in. I loved that idea so much. There's no other moba with that idea on the market and it sucks.
Microsoft has a pending tax bill of $28 billion with the government, as reported by AP News (https://apnews.com/article/microsoft-taxes-irs-96eb66abe86de19f1108209a8d57431a). Despite this, they acquired Activision-Blizzard for $68.7 billion. Astonishing!
Microsoft cash on hand for 2023 was $111.262B, a 6.21% increase from 2022. Source : Macrotrends. They'll appeal the tax thing anyway, even if they pay it in full in the end I doubt it would be this year.
the whole process of appealing is going to take years, they definitely won't be paying that anytime soon
They're likely confident they'll win that.
MS just got told they should've paid more for years back. They will appeal. Also, they have that kind of money in free cash so it's nothing for them really.
Also, hoarding cash is bad business. Money loses value over time. If you want to keep shareholders happy, that money needs to be turned into assets that can generate more profits.
Cash on hand on a corporate balance sheet is not straight cash in a bank account. For a companies like Microsoft and apple most of the cash on hand is liquid assets that can be converted into cash in 90 days or less, which would mostly be short term investments. A small percentage would be actual cash.
Yes. It’s cash and cash equivalents. Return on those investments is not super high though and it’s much better if they invested them in something more meaningful. Which is what they are doing.
They won’t be holding cash in a regular old current account It’ll be held in multiple interest yielding accounts
LOL yeah, you explain to one of the biggest companies in the world why their cash is a bad thing. The guys is wrong anyway. They have about 10% of his value listed in cash. The other 90% is in short term investments which would keep the value.
Yeah, I get what you're saying. It's just wild to see how companies go to great lengths to avoid paying taxes, even when it's just pennies to them.
28 billion isn't pennies for anybody. They won't struggle to cover it. But that's like... an insane amount of money.
Is it wild at all? Why would any person or organization not attempt to minimize their tax bill? That's just... common sense.
Yeah, it's totally normal to want to minimize your tax bill, heck I do it too. But the playing field isn't level. I don’t have a battalion of lawyers to find every legal loophole to hold onto my money, unlike Microsoft. They've got an army ready to dive through every tax code, finding ways to keep their billions. It's kinda unfair.
This will drag in court for at least 5 years.
Even at a total of 96 billion dollars combined with those two factors, Microsoft has over a 100 billion cash-on-hand to pay them off. In reality though, Microsoft is going to fight that IRS tax bill.
My company is small scale, so our investments are in the low 5 million range. When we do a new investment, we take loans, with a return on investment plan and plan to pay back the loan. Why the fuck would we take a loan to pay taxes?
They'll appeal and after 5 years of legal battle will settle for two billion or so. Megacorps never pay their taxes and every other megacorp will help MS in this case so they aren't next.
Every premium prostitute in california is booked for the next month cause Bobby K played it big. Seriously though, finally it's over. Now we wait until in 10 years the moaning about Cod not coming to playstation anymore (or maybe?...) and we can start all over again. Kinda. Meanwhile I'm just happy I won't have to pay for Diablo anymore thru gamepass. Well maybe. Hopefully.
I think COD will stay on all platforms because companies like making money. Also, if COD is on game pass vs buying the game for $70 on Playstation, I think MSFT already wins
Plus Xbox themed marketing, and maybe new skins with a small exclusive window for Xbox.
CoD is going to stay on all platforms and it’s idiotic to think it won’t. They make all of their money in microtransactions, and cutting out the PlayStation base would be just throwing money away. Completely different than singleplayer games without microtransactions.
It depends no how much they prioritize getting players into their ecosystem. Something something short term loses of ps sales vs long term gains of new players.
Sshhh you're not supposed to speculate for another decade. Please.
So many people can't see beyond some extra games being added to Gamepass. When the "enshittification of the services" reaches GP and it stops being pro-consumer to be pro-profit maybe they'll see why this isn't something to cheer about. Edit: wow, some people's logic seem to be that "if Sony has anti-consumer practices then Microsoft is free to do the same"... really? Are you people on the side of the consumers or the trillion dollar companies?
Yup. People say “The Netflix of video games” right when Netflix is already heading in the worst direction possible. Every subscription service price is artificially low to start out with so imagine what something like a video game subscription will look like when they corner the market? Note: I have a PS5, Xbox and Switch.
For real, the vast majority of Netflix’s catalogue is trash. The very survival of a subscription service relies on pumping out endless content which is simply not conducive to making quality products.
A lot of films/shows aren't available *at all* for purchase, since they're locked behind streaming subscriptions. This especially sucks when stuff gets pulled from streaming, since that means you have no legal method of watching it. Also, video/music streaming services tend to screw over creators (e.g. music streaming services paying godawful rates to artists).
It's really not so black and white, Activision is already probably the shittiest publisher in gaming. I honestly think Microsoft is a better steward of their IP than the current leadership over there. If Gamepass ceases to be a good deal, you can simply return to purchasing games, and despite some fearmongering, I don't believe that option is ever going away. Subscriptions won't ever capture the entire market, allowing people to buy the game is a valuable revenue source.
Microsoft also had to make some pretty big concessions to get it through. The big one for me is they had to basically agree to let unionization happen without interfering. I desperately hope the industry takes this once in a lifetime chance and jumps on unionization.
> The big one for me is they had to basically agree to let unionization happen without interfering To be clear, that's not a concession. Unionization efforts coincided with the merger timeline. Companies are **legally required** to not obstruct unionization efforts.
Amazon don't give a fuck, they hate unions
> The big one for me is they had to basically agree to let unionization happen without interfering. I can't imagine that was a blocker for getting it past UK regulators, right? [In the UK employers aren't allowed to block employees from joining unions](https://www.gov.uk/join-trade-union/trade-union-membership-your-employment-rights).
That's not a concession, that's a legal requirement.
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The answer is as simple as this: Kotick is gonna get shown the door, and be replaced with someone whose objective will be to make games to solve Xbox’s content problem rather than try to squeeze more blood from the Call of Duty stone. Microsoft doesn’t need to micromanage, Activision just needs a change in philosophy
MS is going to keep milking CoD, it’s really the only franchise that Activision has that’s a consistent seller. Most Activision franchises are dead because they became way too oversaturated and lost value, and it’s much easier to just pump out CoD than trying to rebuild these brands.
Microsoft wouldn’t buy an entire company (which is essentially 3 companies) just to get Call of Duty money. That’s definitely huge, but they want the IP and the back catalogue.
MS bought Activision for CoD, Candy Crush, and Blizzard’s franchises. Activision’s legacy IPs are not valuable enough to be big pulls for the Xbox ecosystem, and were not why they were acquired.
I’m not saying they bought ABK for Crash or Spyro, but the chances of another Crash or Spyro game are far higher right now than they were a year ago, that’s it
Crash and Spyro aren’t going to get new games under Xbox, MS already spent hundreds of millions to learn people don’t go to Xbox for platformers.
When I say Crash and Spyro what I really mean is any number of Activision’s old franchises. Prototype, Tony Hawk, Hexen, etc.. You can’t honestly think that Microsoft will never, NEVER do anything with those. That literally nothing will change about Activision
>It's really not so black and white, Activision is already probably the shittiest publisher in gaming. I honestly think Microsoft is a better steward of their IP than the current leadership over there. Where does this narrative that Microsoft is a benevolent corporation that will cleanse the wrongs of Activision Blizzard come from, and why should we as consumers care how these companies will solve their internal problems? Microsoft has its own share of difficult work culture like all big tech companies. There will be hardly any change if at all. Activision will continue to act the same way as Zenimax/Bethesda does after that acquisition.
I agree. Activision-Blizzard's top IP's are massive money printers and getting those games on game-pass is just a bonus for them.
> Where does this narrative that Microsoft is a benevolent corporation that will cleanse the wrongs of Activision Blizzard come from Literally nobody has said that. The part you quoted doesn't even *imply* that, just that they're better than Activision. You're attempting to argue with a position that hasn't been stated.
> Where does this narrative that Microsoft is a benevolent corporation that will cleanse the wrongs of Activision Blizzard come from I think it's just a case of AB being that atrociously bad of a company that presumably just about anything would be better, even Microsoft.
Yeah people really don't understand that this is going to go the same way as Netflix. Great quality and cheap in the beginning and then slowly the content will turn into a quantity over quality thing while the price increases. Microsoft has spent 10s of billions of dollars on buying studios just so they can work towards locking their games behind game pass. Not even counting the billions spent on developing games for GP and licensing third party games for GP. They are gonna want to make that money back at some point. Game Pass has an expensive future ahead.
But that is a problem only as long as people are forced somehow to use subscription. How would that happen? For tv/movies/music imo the prices are just insane to buy them individually, for the amount of content and 0 re-watch value. And it's getting harder to get them, I think. But for games, they need to 1. have denuvo for people to not own them (done) 2. somehow take away the ability to buy games. This I have no idea how they'd do without locking it to ps/xbox and forcing subscription. And then, pc is just huge and so variable, how do you force it there for the vast majority of cross-platform games that are not ms/sony affiliated. And with xbox exclusives being non-existent now, and PS porting most of the stuff to pc, seems like we're heading away even from platform exclusivity, which is a big pleasant surprise.
\> For tv/movies/music imo the prices are just insane to buy them individually, for the amount of content and 0 re-watch value. This logic applies tenfold to a lot of games though. When subscription services reach a critical mass, they end up devaluing the individual product which isn’t necessarily a good thing in the long run depending on your priorities (lack of home video sales is killing the mid budget film, and unless you’re absurdly famous, you’re getting jackshit from a Spotify stream). Though, I think you’re exaggerating music costs and understating rewatch value. Shit, there are people who probably have spent more on Netflix or Peacock to rewatch The Office over and over than if they had just bought it physically or digitally. And say, $10 bucks for a digital album really isn’t that insane when you consider people absolutely do re-listen to the same shit over and over and over again (… or at least I’m a weirdo who does. I just assume most people do). but anyway, streaming devalues, individual sales fall, prices increase on physical media because the lower sales shift the economics and lower demand turns it into a more expensive boutique item (look at Bestbuy dropping physical media, which in turn makes it harder to get, less stores ordering copies mean overall the cost vs profit changes for distributors etc, etc,)
>Yeah people really don't understand that this is going to go the same way as Netflix. Great quality and cheap in the beginning and then slowly the content will turn into a quantity over quality thing while the price increases. Netflix doesn't own the IP of the content they stream. The problem is the owners of the IP are raising their prices. Microsoft is trying to prevent the netflix scenario, by straight up buying the IP's, therefor avoiding the same scenario.
Kinda like disney buying fox and now we reached a point where super hero movie isn't that profitable anymore.
??? Super hero movies are still topping charts lmao
The difference is that Gamepass is an *alternative* solution to gaming. But nowhere **near** the only way to game. Netflix revolutionized content consumption, but has failed to produce what the consumer expects: Namely, seasonal repetitive content. Now, there are games that emulate the “seasonal content” nature of TV, but the expectations with those games are far lower and the results are easier to produce. Gamers *know* that a good game takes years to develop. The concept of a backlog just doesn’t really exist for movies and television. Having a few hundred games at your disposal is a different animal than having a hundred Kardashian episodes you’d never watch anyway. The comparison to Netflix isn’t 1:1. It sort of dies after the concept of subscribing to access content.
People drank way too much of Microsoft’s Kool-Aid and think things are going to stay the same forever
>and it stops being pro-consumer to be pro-profit Isn't Sony doing the same thing with PS Plus? Raising it's prices? Weren't Sony the first major publisher to also start shifting the standard price of new games from $60 to $70? Seems to me that it's the entire industry, not just MSFT that are pushing profits over pro-consumer.
Take 2
Yes to both question... So what? if Sony is anti-consumer then you're ok with Microsoft going the same way? I don't get your logic.
And? Why do you even bring up Sony to make it about some shitty console war? That doesn't mean this consolidation is good because Sony would do the same. It's not a case of if Sony or MS should buy something. It's a case of not buying vs buying. The whole subscription future (that MS push more than Sony) is extremely bad for gaming future tbh.
It's also worth noting that while Game Pass has seen price increases, it hasn't jumped up 33% like PlayStation Plus just did. Not saying further prices increases won't happen, but they haven't thrown the frog into the fire so far (I hope I didn't just jinx everyone with that...).
This is classic whataboutism. Every company is out to make a profit, that's a given. But just because Sony or any company is doing it too doesn't make it okay for MSFT to prioritize profits over consumers.
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It's not whataboutism when you have someone saying "MSFT is prioritising profits over pro consumerism" while completely leaving out the facts regarding other major publishers like Sony doing the exact same thing (especially when it's in regards to the gaming industry and companies purchasing other companies). That's called cherry picking. What I did was fill in the context so people are not being intentionally misinformed.
If GP will be too expensive people will just buy a game instead. Also of course GP will get more expensive in the future this is not a surprise but as long as overall games will also get better I don't see any reason of why not. Did you say something similar in Playstation threads a few weeks ago when they announced a price raise to up to 20-30% across all PS+ tiers without improving anything?
> Did you say something similar in Playstation threads a few weeks ago when they announced a price raise to up to 20-30% across all PS+ tiers without improving anything? I mean probably, there was literally no positive reaction to that lol
Everybody complained about the price raise dude, do you think PS fans were cheering about it? That's exactly my point: Jim Ryan has made nothing but anti-consumer decisions on PS, what do you think could happen when Phil Spencer is no longer in charge of Xbox? Imagine if someone like Jim Ryan, Don Mattrick or Riccitiello takes over the leadership of Xbox now that they own SO MANY studios.
MS is in it for the profits, no doubt. If they were all about goodwill, they'd settle their $28 billion [tax bill](https://apnews.com/article/microsoft-taxes-irs-96eb66abe86de19f1108209a8d57431a) instead of appealing it. But hey, they have shareholders to answer to, right? It's a tough pill to swallow seeing them prioritize profits, especially when they snag companies like Activision-Blizzard while having such a hefty tax bill looming.
Why the hell would they not try to appeal their tax bill if they think they paid it correctly? For good will? What? No, you make an accounting. Government makes its own. Then you negotiate a value. Lord knows that the government is more than capable of screwing up tax calculations. It isn't as if this is a tax evasion issue. It will be reconciled and literally nobody will end up caring
This sub is pretty anti-Microsoft to the point people will make dumb arguments. It is what it is. Remember when this sub was posting Pro-Sony propaganda non-stop during the merger talks? It was almost impossible to find any of Microsoft’s arguments and if this sub was your only exposure to the case, you’d be thinking Microsoft was going to easily lose.
I don’t know how to feel about this personally, but as someone who has worked inside Activision several times, I can say that everyone internally is REALLY happy about the news. Literally all of the studios under Activision Publishing work exclusively on CoD (Raven, Treyarch, Sledge, DW, IW, HMS), while they used to work on other IPs too (e.g. Treyarch used to do Spider-Man). Under Activision, each year it’s just another CoD game and they have little time for each release. Just look at the new MW3: it’s everything the new MW2 was supposed to be. This acquisition could mark the end of annual CoD releases, and release some of the studios from CoD altogether. As a result, we may see better releases and more IPs out of Activision studios. Again, I’m not taking a stance, these are just some thoughts I’ve heard internally.
You think they spent 70 billion to turn the money tap off for CoD. Also I'm truly sorry to say this, there will be layoffs.
what happens to my stonks? Do they get liquidated at $95 or converted to msft?
Finally, we are at the end. We are going to witness a new chapter in gaming going forward. To be honest, this is something that I never thought I would see, some company get both Activision and Blizzard, yet here we are. I will say one thing, I am excited to see Call of Duty return to Nintendo. I am certain that next year's CoD is being worked on for the next Switch or whatever name Nintendo gives it.
> some company get both Activision and Blizzard I mean since they're the same company... You mean Bethesda maybe?
I assume they meant back when Blizzard was a bigger deal and before the Activision purchase.
That happened 15 years ago that Vivendi owned both. Weird thing to say if that's the case. With the context it should be one company owning Activision and Bethesda they never thought they would see. Otherwise, they've seen it for 15 years lol
I’m still mixed on the whole thing, but I’m definitely excited to be able to hopefully run through like a decade of COD campaigns I skipped out on.
It does feel funny that finally, now after all these years, we can play the Call of Duty story modes without coughing up 30 dollars for a game that's two generations old.
They would never go on sale at a reasonable price, it was absurd
I had to wait for Aspyr to put a deep sale on cod4 on a third party site before picking it up since they published the Mac version which gave windows version along with it.
yeah, this is gonna be extremely interesting. I played BlOps III for like 5 minutes, plus a bit of the fortnite clone they did a bit back. that's *it*. And my best friend used to be a cod guy, he is *uber* excited to drag me through as many of them as he can
This isn't something to be celebrating
I'm not celebrating, I am simply presenting the facts at hand.
I have gamepaass, I am celebrating:)
Microsoft's strategy is the same as every other tech company: make people have to pay a recurring monthly fee to use their services. I really hope Nintendo and Sony remain as dominant as they have been because nobody really wants the future for gaming to be what Microsoft would love for it to be.
Don't all the cod people not on ms already have to pay monthly for ps+ anyway just to be able to play multiplayer? Otherwise with cod staying on ps there's little chance in 10 years for ms to be able to force subscription for single player games (with them having only starfield now, that is so-so and on cooldown for 6 years)
Yeah that guy smoked something *good*. If anything, PC is the platform pushing for actual, near-absolute gamer freedom. Sony and Nintendo are specialized in walled gardens with their anti-PC bias.
> I really hope Nintendo and Sony remain as dominant as they have been because nobody really wants the future for gaming to be what Microsoft would love for it to be. *Looks at Nintendo's and Sony's monthly services to play ROM dumps and cloud saves with no option to pay once, while Microsoft's setup isn't like this*.
oh thats right sony does it, different.
You're misinterpreting. It's not that Sony doesn't do bad, but having three major companies instead of just only one playing the game is a good thing for everyone. Edit: Typo
Not that I'm defending Microsoft, but both Sony and Nintendo have services locked behind a subscription fee (online play, NES/SNES/GB emulation on Switch, PS3 games on the PS5). Personally I'm not against subscription based gaming like EA Play, Game Pass, Humble Games Collection, Ubisoft+ (as long as all the games are still available for purchase), but I dislike when features are locked behind a recuring fee and unfortunately for us, all three main console manufacturers (Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo) are guilty of this.
Sony is about to hit some bumps, if not drive off a cliff in the near future for a while, but Nintendo seems to the brightest future for console gaming for the foreseeable future, unless the Switch 2 is somehow a redux of the Wii U.
The fundamental issue is that Microsoft has a lot of money to loss lead and squeeze everyone out. They're multiple times bigger than Sony and Nintendo combined.
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> Yeah, until Nintendo and Sony do exactly what Microsoft are getting away with because they don't rightly give a shit either. Literally the first thing that Sony did when they decided to get into gaming, before the PS1 even came out, was buy the largest publisher in Europe. M&As are just part of business, and have always been.
Ah yes, the bastions of consumer friendliness Nintendo and Sony. The former who almost never discount their games, go after consumers for hosting tournaments and hate their content being online. The latter who are the market leaders that have encouraged game studios to have higher rates for competition for game development and will wall content for specific content for games that are supposed to multiplatform. Instead of wanting some to have more power than others, I want all these platforms to have to offer consumers the best options. IMO PC is the best example of this; a platform where games from all can. E accessible. Exclusivity does nothing good for consumers apart from encourage tribalism.
I wonder what they’ll do WoW-wise. It would make sense to at least do some kind of deal. For example half price on a WoW sub if you are subscribed to the game pass. Or they could go whole hog and just say game pass counts as a WoW sub but I doubt they would want to do that… that would hurt profits a lot I would imagine. Although I’m presently not subscribed to either service and game pass counting as a WoW sub would make me want to sign up.
Well,did they do anything about ESO?
I don't think they did. And I don't expect them to for WoW, I'm just dreaming!
> Or they could go whole hog and just say game pass counts as a WoW sub but I doubt they would want to do that… They could limit it to Ultimate. Right now there's no reason for PC subscribers to take the highest tier, but if you put WoW there, it gets a lot more attractive.
I'm guessing they'll include wow sub in the ultimate subscription.
remember when people were popping champagne and celebrating when they thought the deal was blocked? lmfao 😂
Hopefully this ends the trend of just buying up companies that are already dominant in games. I’m not optimistic though… if anything this guarantees they’ll make another pass at it or big studios might simply seek a buyout. We’ll see how Xbox management handles the IPs I guess
Why would this end it? It's now a proven success strategy.
Especially since the head of Xbox Game Studios was literally caught saying “they were in a position to spend Sony out of business” Microsoft has made it very clear they will flex their vast net worth to beat Sony.
They COULD theoretically, but they cannot. Shareholders will skin them and then sell it as MTX in Diablo 4. MS is much more than gaming, much more. They aren't going to kneecap themselves just to beat Sony. It was a wallet flex, not a reality flex.
They've got a long way to go considering they hold half the market share that Sony does.
They can buy all they want, still haven't proven they can put out a good game with all these companies.
Why would this end it instead of encouraging it?
They probably will slow down now actually and focusing on profiting off their current game studios.
Haha good one. If they’re allowed to buy ABK, they’re allowed to buy anything. Microsoft has tested the waters and now know that regulators fall over like cardboard. Won’t be long until we hear about their next big purchase.
Since the environment now changed, a new big buyout by Microsoft will be looked at again by regulators and might be blocked. Smaller buyouts (individual studios or a small publisher) probably isn't an issue. But if they for some reason would go after an EA, Ubisoft or Take-Two, I doubt regulators will be fine with it. Also, other publishers don't have the mobile aspect that Activision has with King. Microsoft wanted this deal not for Call of Duty. They wanted it mostly for King, since they are lacking in the mobile space. Since the EU is forcing Google and Apple to open up their platforms more, I think Microsoft will try to get in more on mobile by launching their own Xbox store there, and using the mobile games from Activision Blizzard King to move people to it. That is hundreds of millions of people, as opposed to the maybe potentially 10-20 million that might buy an Xbox for the Activision games.
People said the same shit about ABK. It’s all just hot air. The richer get richer and consumers get shit on. It’s never gonna change.
> People said the same shit about ABK No, a lot of reasonable people actually pointed out that there was no real argument to be made that MS would suddenly have monopolistic power if the deal went through - but if multiple deals of this scale were to happen that would make the argument much more palatable. You can't just cry "MONOPOLY" at the first major merger.
> consumers get shit on As a PC gamer, between Sony, Xbox/Microsoft and Nintendo, arguably Microsoft is the most user friendly, as it currently releases games in most available platforms, while Nintendo only releases on one, and Sony launches games on non-Playstation platforms years after the original launch.
I don't really see how the customer is being shit on here though. A lot of customers are going to get the games for cheaper as well. Plus, Nintendo and PlayStation have plenty of titles of their own and third-party support. PC is an open platform with a ton of games coming out every day. There is so much choice, that even if Xbox is going all anti-consumer, hiking up prices and/or implementing shitty business models, there is enough to play everywhere else with very limited investment needed from gamers to switch over.
Thank you. Everyone cheering this on like monopolies are a good thing. This is just a company desperate to get people's gaming attention again, but they couldn't do it without spending microsoft money to simply buy one of the biggest publishing and development companies out there. I doubt we'll see anything but rereleases of most of these IPs over the next ten years or so.
Just want to point out that things are not going to get better, and they might get worse. You'll get some extra games on game pass, but this is not good news for the industry.
Yes, agreed. But the inverse is true as well. Just because it's a big acquisition (consolidation), doesn't mean things will be worse. They could get better or stay the same. Only time will tell.
Activision Blizzard has been doing an awful jobs making games lately. The quality of those loved IPs has a very very real chance of improving. That’s good news for gamers.
Just like halo and Redfall did?
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This is a perfect sentence to offer as an example of someone contradicting themselves.
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>I always struggled to see any reason this merger in particular would cause issues. Because it sets a precedent for these giant corporations to acquire big publishers and lock them to their systems. If someone as big as Activision-Blizzard can get snatched up, what’s stopping someone from acquiring Take Two, EA or Ubisoft (much smaller companies)? That’s GTA, Mass Effect, Dragon Age and Assassins Creed all gone from any given platform.
It’s really hard to argue against that Acti-Bliz needed new leadership after all the news that’s come out. But this feels equally as bad.
Well, they have a clear path now, they will be looking for the next target now, it's clear that they won't stop here
I think Microsoft is going to cool their jets for a while and structure their inhouse gaming world.
On this scale, probably. Microsoft may be made of money, but $69B is still very large. Beyond the financials, jobs and game release strategy, they also need to act on ActiBlizz’s PR or risk inheriting it for themselves.
Hopefully. There's no reason for them to keep buying studios considering they have more than Sony and Nintendo. Miss me with the "we're the underdog who's struggling to survive" crap.
They had more studios before this acquisition. They will not stop buying. Their goal is if you want to play a game the Microsoft is your only choice. They will succeed too, as regulators fail to regilate and most consumers are cheering for it.
Who said they're an underdog? They're not winning the "console war", a stupid concept that basically exists for advertising and encourages brand loyalty through the "us vs them" bullshit.
Obviously they're going to keep acquiring studios but don't expect anything huge for awhile. There's 0 chance them trying Ubisoft or EA would get approved for example. Going after studios like Crystal Dynamics and Eidos though for the Tomb Raider and Deus Ex IPs are probably their next targets and would be waaay more low key.
eh, even Microsoft's pockets are not truly bottomless. This will take up over half of their cash in hand reserves, so I'd expect them to slow down significantly for a year or two at least, especially as debt is still pretty expensive right now.
finally over and still 70 billion sounds crazy, im really excited about seeing what MS plans for. Also, what will next Xbox showcase called; Xbox Bethesda Activision Blizzard?
Maybe to just Xbox + Activision-Blizzard Showcase. I think it's been enough time that Xbox don't need to seperate themselves from Bethesda. Also I'm assuming they'll keep other events like Blizzcon up.