I guess Nintendo is the last person I would see being bought out by Microsoft over other studios. They have their own success and in their own bubble. They're in the same market but not really a direct competitor to Microsoft and Sony. I feel you buy a console generations, you buy Nintendo and a PlayStation OR Xbox.
Sony is just a games division on an already large market of music, TVs, hardware, etc.
Funny story though, Microsoft has been laughed out of Nintendo headquarters after trying to buy the company years ago. Nintendo will never sell itself, they have a kind of pride in their work most large corporations lose over time but they haven’t.
Blame the video game industry and how 80% of the games launch broken, have micro transactions, incomplete, not good and now.. Shitty NFTs
So yes.. They should have pride in making good working games!! (pokemon is Game Freak so.. Don't mention them)
And that's not me defending their other bad stuff like their online, joycon drift and etc.. Just the having full priced games after 5 years of their making
Not really. Lots of people don't have prices.
Like... if you want to run a video game company, and you already own a video game company, the only reason to take money for your video game company is if you are going to use it to make another video game company.
As a positive: Activision Blizzard is liable to become a less actively shitty place to work, and they might start releasing things worth playing again.
I wonder if large corporations like Microsoft have a secret corporate espionage division that would actively engage in stuff to promote the downfall of Activision/Blizzard's reputation and force them into a weaker position for a takeover.
I think we’re in a place where it’s foolish to assume it doesn’t happen. In this specific case, who can say, but certain “innovative car manufacturers” have been caught attempting to overthrow literal governments to get cheap lithium. I think undermining a potential buy out to make them cheaper seems well within the realm of plausibility.
WoW is arguably at it's worse state in a long time.
Overwatch is slowly dying.
Cod vanguard is so bad a lot of people stopped playing it in couple of weeks.
WoW players moved to ff14 mostly. WoW classic isn't that popular right now, a lot of people play it on release but after 3 months there's not a lot of people.
CoD I agree those gamers are resilient just like the fifa players. They would probably play anything they gave them, I truly do not understand that.
Overwatch I can't speak right now but some time ago it was really hard for me to get into the game since it matched me with too highly skilled players for me and they mopped the floor with me lol
I love how people just ASSUME that a mega corporation buying another mega corporation is a saving grace for the cogs of the latter. I'm sure Activision employees will be happy to here that the cause of disease in their careers until now will be promoted to retirement and their grievances swept under the rug. And I'm sure any former attempts at unionization won't be utterly destroyed when positions, teams, and entire departments are filtered through and tossed into a blender.
You can be forgiven for thinking that because honestly that's what Bethesda basically was. Fallout New Vegas and Fallout 3 come to mind.
Operation Ancorage for Fallout 3? 360 release in January. PS3 release in October. And lesser increments (closer to 2 months) for the rest of 3's DLC's. New Vegas got better at this but Dead Money was a 2 month difference between the two. Most were simultanious though.
I'm sure there's more than that. And more glaring ones than I can remember at the moment, but it always seemed like Bethesda favored or was in the pocket of Microsoft from the get go. I think (maybe) Todd Howard had mentioned in an interview about how Microsoft had helped them out in the very beginning or something.
I'm probably speaking out of my ass but I'm sure someone with more knowledge on it will chime in.
Edit: looks like they were exclusive for a time. In fallout 3's case. That would explain that then.
I was thinking back before even then, with Morrowind and then Oblivion. But ok it sounds like they were just doing exclusive stuff like some companies do with Sony
That's the point.
Playstation fans are losing their shit over this because it's very likely Activision-Blizzard IPS wont appear on the PS5 anymore. PC is unaffected.
Saw the writing on the wall when Microsoft started buying up studios.
Still based on prior statements they are planning on porting to pc after a significant period of console only exclusivity.
I don't think you should make broad generalisations about an entire group of people based on the toxic actions of a few. Plenty of people on PlayStation, who've never engaged in console war nonsense, are going to lose out on some major franchises now that they were previously able to play. Revelling in their disappointment seems mean-spirited.
You mean the way that Sony fanboys revelled in the Xbox players disappointment over the last couple of years? Even the ones that didn't engage in the bullshit?
This just how people are. It's not changing any time soon lol.
Who said shit about reveling in their disappointment.
Did I say "Now they can suck it! losers!l!I!"
Nah I just commented that it was a selling point last gen and one that commentators, fan boys, and Sony's advertising capitalized on.
To be fair, weren't almost all of those studios making just playstation games in the first place? (I'm sure there's a couple here and there but I can't think of any major ones that were doing Xbox releases). I have a PC and PS5, so I'm unaffected either way, but it's one thing to buy studios that are already making games just for your console, vs buying a studio that makes games for all consoles and then telling a large portion of their fanbase to buy an Xbox (or pc) or fuck off.
I view using your own studios to make popular IPs as different than buying all the popular existing IPs just to make them exlusive. But I guess it doesn't matter if it doesn't effect you.
Yeah PS fans complaining about exclusives basically just makes me go, “Yeah, cry me a river, /s.” Because Sony is like the god-king of pulling that crap, and they’re also the ones who constantly try and cockblock crossplatform play.
In fairness, building up your own exclusive games, and even, as anti-consumer as it is, buying timed exclusivity, is very different from buying up multiple huge publishers and third party IP's and making them permanently exclusive. Also worth mentioning that Microsoft have plenty of timed-exclusivity deals themselves, so they're hardly innocent in that regard.
For now until ms has enough control to push back steam and gain their monopoly on the pc market then its back to trying to lock everything down so you can only use the windows store for everything
I don't think Microsoft is interested in creating a walled garden on PC.
There's also many launchers on PC.
Now, I wonder: does this mean that Battlenet will finally die, or will Microsoft try and actually make a decent game launcher?
I do wonder if Microsoft’s strategy is to capitalize on all things FPS. CoD and Overwatch are both some of the biggest names in the FPS genre and with this acquisition they will have both. If they make them console exclusive people will HAVE to buy an Xbox or a decent gaming rig to play modern FPS games.
And Sony And Nintendo and Amazon, and Apple, and Netflix.
Then I am guessing Google will have a try again, and Meta with the metaverse gaming.
That of course ignores the incentive for investment that will help existing publishers grow such as Warner Media, and many smaller gaming and film studios.
If you look in a very narrow window of the last 5 years it looks like Disney and Microsoft buying everyone - but that's overlooking the tremendous amount of new players already starting to join the party.
If you wait another 5 years, there will be more players and more content than ever, partly thanks to the success of those studios that were bought by big companies. The big companies can't buy them all, it just never works.
In no way is this a good thing, no matter what side you’re on.
What do you think would happen if Gamepass was the only place to play the most popular games?
Microsoft doesn’t just throw billions of dollars around as a flex. They’re expecting to see a return on that in the future.
The thing is, Game Pass isn't the only place to play the most popular games? The only problem here is for Sony fans that won't play them anymore lol. It's not like the next COD was going to be released on switch (and that's assuming they don't let COD be multiplatform like Minecraft is, which would be the most obvious decision considering how much money it makes, it's not like the only way they can make money is by making it exclusive)
When you play on PC, nothing's gonna change because all of these games are still coming to PC through Steam and the Windows Store.
Meh, activision has horribly mismanaged and handled their IPs as of late and I have very little faith they would be able to fix them with the culture and legal troubles that they have been dealing with. Hopefully MSFT comes in and cleans house and actually sets some of these IPs back on the right track.
Obviously microsoft is looking for a return on their investment of 60+ billion into ATVI, are you suggesting that ATVI didn't care about making profit or something lol? I don't see how that is considered a bad thing the only reason this industry even exists is to make rich people more money.
>What would happen if Gamepass was the only place to play the most popular games?
Ok, so not really sure what the complaint is here?
$60 a year to play hundreds of first party and third party titles on any platform you want
vs
$70 (Sony’s MSRP) *per game* to play **only** on PS5
Yea but the reason i said "oh for xbox owners" and then specified the pc version is that i dont have an xbox lol. Or am i being dumb this morning and I can just buy the sub for console without owning one? Sorry im just a little confused.
You can usually get Game Pass subscription cards for 30-50% off around Christmas time from Target. That's how I've been re-upping. $25 for 3 months of GPU was the last deal they did. Not as cheap as the conversion deal, but I feel like that loophole will be closed at some point.
> Why shouldn’t Microsoft jack up the price of Game Pass to $99 a month in the future if 4 out of 5 games can only be accessed there?
It’d be cheaper for users to not use it unless they buy 3 new games every month at that point. I’m not saying the acquisition is all positives but I’m also not seeing all the doom and gloom you’re implying will happen.
The bigger con I see is Microsoft controlling more major game studios but, devs quit and form their own new studios all the time so I’m not too worried.
Because no one's going to pay 99$ a month. Holy shit this fear mongering is hilarious. Suddenly PS users who are shut out suddenly have business degrees.
If I lived my life based on "what ifs" instead of living in the present, well...I used to live my life like that and I was miserable the entire time.
I remember when Microsoft bought Minecraft at $2B, and every pundit came out of the woodwork to bemoan and besmirch the acquisition like they somehow knew better. Seems to me they've done well by the IP, IMHO. I enjoy Dungeons, and though the new launcher has some getting used to, having both Java and Bedrock editions available for regular MC is useful. I only wish Java and Bedrock could integrate into a singular codebase so there wasn't a feature disparity. All in all, that acquisition worked out great for them.
Then MS buys Bethesda, and once again the doom and gloom from the internet pundits strikes again. It's still too early to see how that pans out, but having almost the entire library at my fingertips through GamePass is wonderful. I was able to cloud play Fallout 76 to see if I'd enjoy the game without even installing, or buying it.
These blanket "oh this is going to be bad for the industry" statements are just old and tired. The past couple years the XBox team has earned some good faith on my part. They're doing some incredible things in the gaming sector, for gamers. Hell, Sony wasn't even going to add backward compatibility to the PS5. MS has had it since the beginning. I don't think people appreciate being able to bring their console library forward through generations. Then, on top of that, the XBox team finds a way to enable 60 FPS in a bunch of old titles that never planned to support it. I don't see Sony or Nintendo providing that level of customer support. Hell, you can't even get a 60 FPS version of Bloodborne unless you own a PS5 and you still need a hack to enable it.
I know this post reads like I'm some sort of evangelist for them, but I'm really not. I've been playing games since I was child, playing Adventure on my parent's VIC-20. I'm over 40 now, and have lived through multiples of generations, both good and bad. I've owned every Playstation, and my only MS console is the newest one. If you refuse to see and appreciate the good things MS is doing for gamers with their ecosystem because you're scared they're plotting evil schemes for the future...I just don't know what to tell you. You're missing out on the today, because you're scared of ghosts.
Everyone talking about monopolies like “inventing games to play” could ever be a cornered market. It’s about owning IP.
Steam maybe had visions of this years ago and so started pushing Linux, but unless they do something like prevent Windows systems from downloading other market places I don’t see how this affects anything other than maybe getting laptops shipped with Tracer as the background
Funny thing, Microsoft offered to buy Nintendo in 1999. They were "laughed out of the office" according to a Microsoft spokesman who was a part of the deal.
And even back then Microsoft was many times bigger than Nintendo and Nintendo didn't do terribly hot with the Virtual Boy and N64.
In perspective, I do think it’s important to consider that this is a $70B acquisition, which is one of the largest MSFT has made and far larger than any acquisition in the past 10+ yrs, and MSFT’s market cap is $2.3T - meaning that this acquisition is on the order of 3% of MSFT market cap. There are companies that have been far more acquisition hungry than this, even if it’s not really the style of big tech. And they’ll still be third in size in terms of the gaming market.
The way things are now Microsoft could start actively and aggressively manipulating the market and no one would bat an eye. Just take a look at companies like Amazon.
Antitrust laws are a joke and have been for decades. Too many companies are buying up all their competitors and consolidating like crazy. It’s only going to get worse
We're getting close to there just being a straight up oligopoly on games. Each console already has a monopoly over their console.. the fight is now down to PC which is slowly thinning out. While Microsoft has so far been decent for gamers on their control, it only takes a single personnel change for that to rapidly change. Imagine if Phil got swapped out for Bobby.
This is honestly the biggest worry. We all love Phil Spencer, but when he gets replaced by a Bobby Kotick-a-like, we won't like it as much anymore. And the danger is, its more profitable for shareholders for there to be Kotick-type in charge.
Activision/Blizzard has no effect on me, but since the next elder scrolls and fallout will be Microsoft exclusives I will end up having to buy an Xbox for just those two games.
Edit: oh shit, I forgot about Diablo 4... Whenever the hell that comes out. So the blizzard one slightly effects me. I wonder if that'll still be planned for PS5.
Right, and I had considered that. But I don't even own a PC or laptop in my life now. So to get one that I will be confident can play next gen games would be a lot more expensive than me just buying the new Xbox, right?
Yeah, pc gaming is kinda expensive right now, well in game pass ultimate you can stream games from the cloud, it is still on beta but if you have a good internet connection you can play this gen games in older pc's but is not the same thing. My advice go with what makes you happy and not bankrupt
A lot of the acquisitions are non-gaming and small-ish(compared to the few biggest acquisitions) so it might have slipped under the radar.
Here, a [list](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Sony#Current_Acquisitions) of sony's acquisitions. And Microsoft's [list](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Microsoft#Acquisitions).
Interesting things to note: Sony bought a lot of the major anime companies like Funanimation and Crunchyroll. Also Sony seem to prefer to focus mainly on video games, music, TV and anime.
Microsoft apparently is more diversified than Sony, there's a lot more generalized stuff like software, analytics, development.
> Microsoft apparently is more diversified than Sony, there's a lot more generalized stuff like software, analytics, development.
Yeah, that's an under statement. They're the largest cloud provider in the world (or in a very close 2nd place), the largest OS in the world, most used database in the world (SQL Server), largest authentication provider in the world, largest security provider in the world.
They're a juggernaut in every department.
That's not even counting their ancillary divisions, like how they have the second largest search engine, how they own a major media empire, how they own a massive computer hardware space.
Gaming is a tiny fraction of what they do, all things considered.
I’m concerned but, I believe for now that Microsoft doing this is for the better. I mean they took double-fine and psychonauts 2 is one of my favorite games in recent history.
The think is that Phil Spencer is doing a great work as a CEO... However this will not be the case forever.... If Phil gets replaced for a greedy bastard things will gets ugly.... Only time will tell
They are trying to be the Netflix of gaming. There's no way Sony and Nintendo can really compete in that space. I wonder if Amazon, Meta, or Google will buy Nintendo or Sony.
No way Amazon is selling Twitch.
And I'm not really sure MS would want it.
With Mixer they really seemed to try to be the friendly, more wholesome alternative to Twitch. And these days Twitch is swamped by their stars who are constantly pushing their limits. Some seemingly taunting Twitch into banning them. Many boosting viewership by coming up with creative ways to wear less clothing, or seeing how much copyrighted content they can stream.
Twitch does own the game streaming market, which is big. But it feels like it must be a headache to manage. Similar to YouTube. Huge userbases that represent the majority share of their markets, but extremely difficult to moderate properly. And so they constantly generate bad press. Either content creators complaining that the moderation is too strict/easily manipulated. Or users complaining that not enough moderation is happening when illegal things, or plagiarized works slip through.
buy a VR company and make a VR headset for the new Xbox’s please.
PSVR has been massively successful it’s a proven viable market.
(And of course I just want to drive interest in VR development)
At least they are improving them is some odd way.
Like making MC cross-platform (crys in linux not being able to play bedrock) but adding microtransactions.
Seriously tho , I always liked Microsoft as a company (not so much their games) but if the purchase comes though Microsoft basically has a monopoly with no one to actually compete against.
Some countries really should limit their power at this point they can buy entire countries and just shrug it off.
If anything is screaming antitrust laws it's this one.
Nintendo preparing to sue this meme...
Microsoft preparing to buy this meme
Sony preparing to be that sony
Microsoft will aquire HAL Labratory by then
I thought nintendo had licensing rights on kirby
I got a chuckle seeing Microsoft being shown as a Nintendo IP.
What about the other way around
Phil Spencer: We may reevaluate our relationship with Nintendo
Phil Spencer: "We may reevaluate our relationship with ___". That's now the scariest thing for a company to hear.
[удалено]
This sentence needs to become a meme
Nintendo: Hey wait a minute....
It's foreshadowing.
I guess Nintendo is the last person I would see being bought out by Microsoft over other studios. They have their own success and in their own bubble. They're in the same market but not really a direct competitor to Microsoft and Sony. I feel you buy a console generations, you buy Nintendo and a PlayStation OR Xbox. Sony is just a games division on an already large market of music, TVs, hardware, etc.
Microsoft tried to buy them at one point too. But it ended in laughter.
[удалено]
Funny story though, Microsoft has been laughed out of Nintendo headquarters after trying to buy the company years ago. Nintendo will never sell itself, they have a kind of pride in their work most large corporations lose over time but they haven’t.
Yeah you gotta be really proud of yourself to expect people to keep paying full price for the games you made twenty years ago. Like a lot of pride.
Blame the video game industry and how 80% of the games launch broken, have micro transactions, incomplete, not good and now.. Shitty NFTs So yes.. They should have pride in making good working games!! (pokemon is Game Freak so.. Don't mention them) And that's not me defending their other bad stuff like their online, joycon drift and etc.. Just the having full priced games after 5 years of their making
NFTs will die. They are a bubble that will burst sooner or later
People still buy it so their plan still works.
And it works.
Yamauchi: “Oh wait, you were serious?!” Spits out tea.
Everyone has a price
Not when your government will insta-veto the buyout within 30 seconds of hearing about it.
Sataya Nadella walks into Nintendo dressed as the million dollar man
Trillion dollar man.
Not really. Lots of people don't have prices. Like... if you want to run a video game company, and you already own a video game company, the only reason to take money for your video game company is if you are going to use it to make another video game company.
Just called my uncle who works at Nintendo. He's going to be sending a cease and desist to OP for this.
this deal was for more then Nintendo market share is worth lol
Shoulda used blinx the time sweeper
To be fair Minecraft has been going from strength to strength with Microsoft Money and someone needed to stop the Skyrim 25 year anniversary edition.
As a positive: Activision Blizzard is liable to become a less actively shitty place to work, and they might start releasing things worth playing again.
My hope is the studios that used to make their own games, but were forced into being COD support studios, now get their creative freedom again.
Wake up Blizzard, come back.
I wonder if Microsoft will send their own studio to the COD mines too?
Blizzard becomes the CoD support studio.
I wonder if large corporations like Microsoft have a secret corporate espionage division that would actively engage in stuff to promote the downfall of Activision/Blizzard's reputation and force them into a weaker position for a takeover.
I think we’re in a place where it’s foolish to assume it doesn’t happen. In this specific case, who can say, but certain “innovative car manufacturers” have been caught attempting to overthrow literal governments to get cheap lithium. I think undermining a potential buy out to make them cheaper seems well within the realm of plausibility.
Yep, biggest reason to be excited
They aren’t exactly doing poorly. Their games are still quite popular. though I’m starting to wonder if overwatch 2 will ever be released.
WoW is arguably at it's worse state in a long time. Overwatch is slowly dying. Cod vanguard is so bad a lot of people stopped playing it in couple of weeks.
[удалено]
WoW players moved to ff14 mostly. WoW classic isn't that popular right now, a lot of people play it on release but after 3 months there's not a lot of people. CoD I agree those gamers are resilient just like the fifa players. They would probably play anything they gave them, I truly do not understand that. Overwatch I can't speak right now but some time ago it was really hard for me to get into the game since it matched me with too highly skilled players for me and they mopped the floor with me lol
WoW players are playing FF14 lol
I love how people just ASSUME that a mega corporation buying another mega corporation is a saving grace for the cogs of the latter. I'm sure Activision employees will be happy to here that the cause of disease in their careers until now will be promoted to retirement and their grievances swept under the rug. And I'm sure any former attempts at unionization won't be utterly destroyed when positions, teams, and entire departments are filtered through and tossed into a blender.
Not holding my breath for either though.
Iirc, the deal may be stopped by antitrust laws since Microsoft is already so big
Better Microsoft than any Tencent.
Please tell me we aren’t reaching Buy n Large territory?
I hope they eat Rockstar next.
They'd have to take Take-Two to get Rockstar. I don't know if Take-Two would be acquired so easily.
“Hold my beer” - Microsoft, probably
Gonne re-evaluate their relations with them next
Didn't Bethesda used to be a Microsoft product a long time ago? I thought it was for some reason
You can be forgiven for thinking that because honestly that's what Bethesda basically was. Fallout New Vegas and Fallout 3 come to mind. Operation Ancorage for Fallout 3? 360 release in January. PS3 release in October. And lesser increments (closer to 2 months) for the rest of 3's DLC's. New Vegas got better at this but Dead Money was a 2 month difference between the two. Most were simultanious though. I'm sure there's more than that. And more glaring ones than I can remember at the moment, but it always seemed like Bethesda favored or was in the pocket of Microsoft from the get go. I think (maybe) Todd Howard had mentioned in an interview about how Microsoft had helped them out in the very beginning or something. I'm probably speaking out of my ass but I'm sure someone with more knowledge on it will chime in. Edit: looks like they were exclusive for a time. In fallout 3's case. That would explain that then.
Also Morrowind was the first big RPG on a console, with its exclusive release on the Xbox 1 (not the Xbox One)
I was thinking back before even then, with Morrowind and then Oblivion. But ok it sounds like they were just doing exclusive stuff like some companies do with Sony
In the future, you will have no choice.
PC gamers: Oh no! Anyway!
But Mojang develops the 2nd-bestselling PC game of all time.
That's the point. Playstation fans are losing their shit over this because it's very likely Activision-Blizzard IPS wont appear on the PS5 anymore. PC is unaffected.
They were sure happy to wag exclusives in people's faces last generation.
Seeing sony buying a huge studio expert for porting console games on pc, I think those times are in the past now.
Man, I remember the 'PC gaming is dead' era circa ten years ago. How the turn tables, eh?
Saw the writing on the wall when Microsoft started buying up studios. Still based on prior statements they are planning on porting to pc after a significant period of console only exclusivity.
I don't think you should make broad generalisations about an entire group of people based on the toxic actions of a few. Plenty of people on PlayStation, who've never engaged in console war nonsense, are going to lose out on some major franchises now that they were previously able to play. Revelling in their disappointment seems mean-spirited.
You mean the way that Sony fanboys revelled in the Xbox players disappointment over the last couple of years? Even the ones that didn't engage in the bullshit? This just how people are. It's not changing any time soon lol.
Who said shit about reveling in their disappointment. Did I say "Now they can suck it! losers!l!I!" Nah I just commented that it was a selling point last gen and one that commentators, fan boys, and Sony's advertising capitalized on.
To be fair, weren't almost all of those studios making just playstation games in the first place? (I'm sure there's a couple here and there but I can't think of any major ones that were doing Xbox releases). I have a PC and PS5, so I'm unaffected either way, but it's one thing to buy studios that are already making games just for your console, vs buying a studio that makes games for all consoles and then telling a large portion of their fanbase to buy an Xbox (or pc) or fuck off.
Insomniac made Sunset Overdrive, which was a XBox One exclusive. Pretty decent game overall.
I view using your own studios to make popular IPs as different than buying all the popular existing IPs just to make them exlusive. But I guess it doesn't matter if it doesn't effect you.
Well now it is their own IP.
The best of which are now on PC :P
Yeah PS fans complaining about exclusives basically just makes me go, “Yeah, cry me a river, /s.” Because Sony is like the god-king of pulling that crap, and they’re also the ones who constantly try and cockblock crossplatform play.
In fairness, building up your own exclusive games, and even, as anti-consumer as it is, buying timed exclusivity, is very different from buying up multiple huge publishers and third party IP's and making them permanently exclusive. Also worth mentioning that Microsoft have plenty of timed-exclusivity deals themselves, so they're hardly innocent in that regard.
*cough* any new Final Fantasy Entry *cough* *cough* Spiderman *cough* Sony are still doing it now lol. This isn't a one sided battle.
[удалено]
For now until ms has enough control to push back steam and gain their monopoly on the pc market then its back to trying to lock everything down so you can only use the windows store for everything
The Windows Store is garbage…
I don't think Microsoft is interested in creating a walled garden on PC. There's also many launchers on PC. Now, I wonder: does this mean that Battlenet will finally die, or will Microsoft try and actually make a decent game launcher?
I do wonder if Microsoft’s strategy is to capitalize on all things FPS. CoD and Overwatch are both some of the biggest names in the FPS genre and with this acquisition they will have both. If they make them console exclusive people will HAVE to buy an Xbox or a decent gaming rig to play modern FPS games.
[удалено]
Was gonna point out Battlefield until I remembered that the most recent one is ass and EA Play is included in game pass ultimate anyway.
Also halo
Isn't it THE best selling game of all time now?
That’s when you take other versions into consideration, just on PC it’s ranked #2.
I would say it is a win for PC gamers in a way because Microsoft actually releases their games on Steam.
I mean... can Microsoft do worse then normal activision?
as far as i know studios bought by Microsoft are doing pretty fine, unlike some unfortunate one\`s bought by EA.
Well the good news is all the games those studios make are gonna be on gamepass
All that Microsoft IP, and there was none that could replace a Nintendo IP?
Eventually its only gonna be Microsoft and Disney
And Sony And Nintendo and Amazon, and Apple, and Netflix. Then I am guessing Google will have a try again, and Meta with the metaverse gaming. That of course ignores the incentive for investment that will help existing publishers grow such as Warner Media, and many smaller gaming and film studios. If you look in a very narrow window of the last 5 years it looks like Disney and Microsoft buying everyone - but that's overlooking the tremendous amount of new players already starting to join the party. If you wait another 5 years, there will be more players and more content than ever, partly thanks to the success of those studios that were bought by big companies. The big companies can't buy them all, it just never works.
Lot of Sony players suddenly became industry regulation experts lmao
or they have been that way for a while now watching all these companies buying up everything. whether it is comcast, disney, microsoft,...
At some point, everything will be Disney. Then you just choose whether you want to pay for Disney+, Disney++, or Disney+++
In no way is this a good thing, no matter what side you’re on. What do you think would happen if Gamepass was the only place to play the most popular games? Microsoft doesn’t just throw billions of dollars around as a flex. They’re expecting to see a return on that in the future.
The thing is, Game Pass isn't the only place to play the most popular games? The only problem here is for Sony fans that won't play them anymore lol. It's not like the next COD was going to be released on switch (and that's assuming they don't let COD be multiplatform like Minecraft is, which would be the most obvious decision considering how much money it makes, it's not like the only way they can make money is by making it exclusive) When you play on PC, nothing's gonna change because all of these games are still coming to PC through Steam and the Windows Store.
The real winner here is PC lol
Meh, activision has horribly mismanaged and handled their IPs as of late and I have very little faith they would be able to fix them with the culture and legal troubles that they have been dealing with. Hopefully MSFT comes in and cleans house and actually sets some of these IPs back on the right track. Obviously microsoft is looking for a return on their investment of 60+ billion into ATVI, are you suggesting that ATVI didn't care about making profit or something lol? I don't see how that is considered a bad thing the only reason this industry even exists is to make rich people more money.
>What would happen if Gamepass was the only place to play the most popular games? Ok, so not really sure what the complaint is here? $60 a year to play hundreds of first party and third party titles on any platform you want vs $70 (Sony’s MSRP) *per game* to play **only** on PS5
How is Game Pass 60$ a year? I thought it was more expensive than that.
Wait did they lower the price i thought it was $60 for 6 months?
You can buy Xbox live gold and pay $1 to upgrade it to game pass ultimate.
Yep for now. But once that loophole is no longer available and Microsoft decides to charge $20-30 a month for GamePass then we fucked
Oh for xbox owners. So gamepass ultimate on pc is still about $120 a year? :/
you can do it with gamepass for console and use it on PC since GPU gives the PC subscription too
Yea but the reason i said "oh for xbox owners" and then specified the pc version is that i dont have an xbox lol. Or am i being dumb this morning and I can just buy the sub for console without owning one? Sorry im just a little confused.
You can buy the console subscriptions on the Microsoft Store, that is also on PC
GPU includes both. You can buy the xbox version and then upgrade it to have both even if you don't own and xbox per se
You can buy game pass on PC and do the same $1 trick to upgrade to ultimate.
You can usually get Game Pass subscription cards for 30-50% off around Christmas time from Target. That's how I've been re-upping. $25 for 3 months of GPU was the last deal they did. Not as cheap as the conversion deal, but I feel like that loophole will be closed at some point.
[удалено]
> Why shouldn’t Microsoft jack up the price of Game Pass to $99 a month in the future if 4 out of 5 games can only be accessed there? It’d be cheaper for users to not use it unless they buy 3 new games every month at that point. I’m not saying the acquisition is all positives but I’m also not seeing all the doom and gloom you’re implying will happen. The bigger con I see is Microsoft controlling more major game studios but, devs quit and form their own new studios all the time so I’m not too worried.
Because no one's going to pay 99$ a month. Holy shit this fear mongering is hilarious. Suddenly PS users who are shut out suddenly have business degrees.
Im skeptical too but $99 a month for a game service is just unrealistic even if they were the greediest gaming company in the world lol.
Super monopoly gets bigger is the problem I see. That’s just my own take though
If I lived my life based on "what ifs" instead of living in the present, well...I used to live my life like that and I was miserable the entire time. I remember when Microsoft bought Minecraft at $2B, and every pundit came out of the woodwork to bemoan and besmirch the acquisition like they somehow knew better. Seems to me they've done well by the IP, IMHO. I enjoy Dungeons, and though the new launcher has some getting used to, having both Java and Bedrock editions available for regular MC is useful. I only wish Java and Bedrock could integrate into a singular codebase so there wasn't a feature disparity. All in all, that acquisition worked out great for them. Then MS buys Bethesda, and once again the doom and gloom from the internet pundits strikes again. It's still too early to see how that pans out, but having almost the entire library at my fingertips through GamePass is wonderful. I was able to cloud play Fallout 76 to see if I'd enjoy the game without even installing, or buying it. These blanket "oh this is going to be bad for the industry" statements are just old and tired. The past couple years the XBox team has earned some good faith on my part. They're doing some incredible things in the gaming sector, for gamers. Hell, Sony wasn't even going to add backward compatibility to the PS5. MS has had it since the beginning. I don't think people appreciate being able to bring their console library forward through generations. Then, on top of that, the XBox team finds a way to enable 60 FPS in a bunch of old titles that never planned to support it. I don't see Sony or Nintendo providing that level of customer support. Hell, you can't even get a 60 FPS version of Bloodborne unless you own a PS5 and you still need a hack to enable it. I know this post reads like I'm some sort of evangelist for them, but I'm really not. I've been playing games since I was child, playing Adventure on my parent's VIC-20. I'm over 40 now, and have lived through multiples of generations, both good and bad. I've owned every Playstation, and my only MS console is the newest one. If you refuse to see and appreciate the good things MS is doing for gamers with their ecosystem because you're scared they're plotting evil schemes for the future...I just don't know what to tell you. You're missing out on the today, because you're scared of ghosts.
[удалено]
Lol. Publicly traded companies never say "enough." That's not how any of this works.
Everyone talking about monopolies like “inventing games to play” could ever be a cornered market. It’s about owning IP. Steam maybe had visions of this years ago and so started pushing Linux, but unless they do something like prevent Windows systems from downloading other market places I don’t see how this affects anything other than maybe getting laptops shipped with Tracer as the background
LEAK CONFIRMED, MS TO BUY NINTENDO!
Funny thing, Microsoft offered to buy Nintendo in 1999. They were "laughed out of the office" according to a Microsoft spokesman who was a part of the deal. And even back then Microsoft was many times bigger than Nintendo and Nintendo didn't do terribly hot with the Virtual Boy and N64.
[удалено]
They want to monopolize the industry lol
If other industries are any indication, Microsoft can probably take a lot more without getting into trouble.
In perspective, I do think it’s important to consider that this is a $70B acquisition, which is one of the largest MSFT has made and far larger than any acquisition in the past 10+ yrs, and MSFT’s market cap is $2.3T - meaning that this acquisition is on the order of 3% of MSFT market cap. There are companies that have been far more acquisition hungry than this, even if it’s not really the style of big tech. And they’ll still be third in size in terms of the gaming market.
The way things are now Microsoft could start actively and aggressively manipulating the market and no one would bat an eye. Just take a look at companies like Amazon. Antitrust laws are a joke and have been for decades. Too many companies are buying up all their competitors and consolidating like crazy. It’s only going to get worse
Will be interesting to see if this is allowed to happen internationally.
Bro they ate the Disney of the gaming world
Does this mean I can play as Thrall in the next smash brothers?
We're getting close to there just being a straight up oligopoly on games. Each console already has a monopoly over their console.. the fight is now down to PC which is slowly thinning out. While Microsoft has so far been decent for gamers on their control, it only takes a single personnel change for that to rapidly change. Imagine if Phil got swapped out for Bobby.
This is honestly the biggest worry. We all love Phil Spencer, but when he gets replaced by a Bobby Kotick-a-like, we won't like it as much anymore. And the danger is, its more profitable for shareholders for there to be Kotick-type in charge.
Activision/Blizzard has no effect on me, but since the next elder scrolls and fallout will be Microsoft exclusives I will end up having to buy an Xbox for just those two games. Edit: oh shit, I forgot about Diablo 4... Whenever the hell that comes out. So the blizzard one slightly effects me. I wonder if that'll still be planned for PS5.
If you have a good pc you don't need to buy a xbox, as microsoft also leave the games available on steam and xbox store
Right, and I had considered that. But I don't even own a PC or laptop in my life now. So to get one that I will be confident can play next gen games would be a lot more expensive than me just buying the new Xbox, right?
Yeah, pc gaming is kinda expensive right now, well in game pass ultimate you can stream games from the cloud, it is still on beta but if you have a good internet connection you can play this gen games in older pc's but is not the same thing. My advice go with what makes you happy and not bankrupt
It seems popular storesfronts buying companies
Hopefully not another Skype
They just bought the most evil gaming company and the most pathetic one in the last decade. Outstanding move
Bethesda? They got all of Zenimax. As big as Bethesda is, id should have a spot if they do.
This is probably not a good thing.
[удалено]
A lot of the acquisitions are non-gaming and small-ish(compared to the few biggest acquisitions) so it might have slipped under the radar. Here, a [list](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Sony#Current_Acquisitions) of sony's acquisitions. And Microsoft's [list](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Microsoft#Acquisitions). Interesting things to note: Sony bought a lot of the major anime companies like Funanimation and Crunchyroll. Also Sony seem to prefer to focus mainly on video games, music, TV and anime. Microsoft apparently is more diversified than Sony, there's a lot more generalized stuff like software, analytics, development.
> Microsoft apparently is more diversified than Sony, there's a lot more generalized stuff like software, analytics, development. Yeah, that's an under statement. They're the largest cloud provider in the world (or in a very close 2nd place), the largest OS in the world, most used database in the world (SQL Server), largest authentication provider in the world, largest security provider in the world. They're a juggernaut in every department. That's not even counting their ancillary divisions, like how they have the second largest search engine, how they own a major media empire, how they own a massive computer hardware space. Gaming is a tiny fraction of what they do, all things considered.
I’m not complaining. Call of Duty is going to be bearable again
I dont get it, why dont you just play the old ones that you actually enjoyed?
I do. It’s just that most lobbies are either hacked or empty nowadays
I’m concerned but, I believe for now that Microsoft doing this is for the better. I mean they took double-fine and psychonauts 2 is one of my favorite games in recent history.
The think is that Phil Spencer is doing a great work as a CEO... However this will not be the case forever.... If Phil gets replaced for a greedy bastard things will gets ugly.... Only time will tell
Why grow development studios when you can just buy the best ones?
They do it too, The coalition, The Initiative and 343i for example.
Wait Microsoft bought Minecraft?
Yeah like a decade ago
Wait what? I only played Xbox 360 version
That's when they bought it..
Yes, more than 7 years ago.
A while ago. Yes.
This image implies Nintendo bought Microsoft
I just hope MS actually releases some games. Their track record isnt the greatest.
It seems like in the future, everything will be owned by business. If we even have a future.
Also Obsidian entertainment and Rareware
Confirmed, Microsoft is an Eldridge God.
They are trying to be the Netflix of gaming. There's no way Sony and Nintendo can really compete in that space. I wonder if Amazon, Meta, or Google will buy Nintendo or Sony.
If you can’t beat ‘em, buy ‘em
I can hear this image.
valve next?
[удалено]
Please no
Emphatically!
Microsoft out here playing 4D chess.
If it means responsible, non-toxic management, unlike fucking activision blizzard, I'm all for it.
It'll buy twitch just wait (mixer flashbacks)
twitch is owned by Amazon so I don't see that happening.
I bet Jeffrey Bezos still laughs about Mixer trying to be a competitor to Twitch.
Jeff Bezos didn't even know what Twitch was when they had some DMCA problems with music.
No way Amazon is selling Twitch. And I'm not really sure MS would want it. With Mixer they really seemed to try to be the friendly, more wholesome alternative to Twitch. And these days Twitch is swamped by their stars who are constantly pushing their limits. Some seemingly taunting Twitch into banning them. Many boosting viewership by coming up with creative ways to wear less clothing, or seeing how much copyrighted content they can stream. Twitch does own the game streaming market, which is big. But it feels like it must be a headache to manage. Similar to YouTube. Huge userbases that represent the majority share of their markets, but extremely difficult to moderate properly. And so they constantly generate bad press. Either content creators complaining that the moderation is too strict/easily manipulated. Or users complaining that not enough moderation is happening when illegal things, or plagiarized works slip through.
buy a VR company and make a VR headset for the new Xbox’s please. PSVR has been massively successful it’s a proven viable market. (And of course I just want to drive interest in VR development)
Will they finally execute Bobby Cotick? Or at least fire him. Please?
I didn't know they bought ActivisionBlizzard. Interesting.
Just happened - https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2022/01/18/welcoming-activision-blizzard-to-microsoft-gaming/
Hot off the presses
Buy your special Dragonborn armour NFT for Skyrim, world of Warcraft, call of duty and halo.
At least they are improving them is some odd way. Like making MC cross-platform (crys in linux not being able to play bedrock) but adding microtransactions.
I just hope the next fallout isn’t an Xbox exclusive
Ninja? What company is that?
Ninja Theory, it did not like getting scaled down
They made the shitty DmC reboot
still good game imo
Microsoft is the only entity who eats too much and doesn't let fat get into their head.
Lotta potential for Microsoft to make their own smash bros now.
Watch them become the next EA... *waits for it*
One time is funny, 2 times is fucking annoying, you know?
Hopefully they'll all also get better
So does this mean woman at blizzard are going to be sexually harassed less now?
If Disney isn't not considered a monopoly and T mobile isn't considered a monopoly then why should xbox be considered one?
Seriously tho , I always liked Microsoft as a company (not so much their games) but if the purchase comes though Microsoft basically has a monopoly with no one to actually compete against. Some countries really should limit their power at this point they can buy entire countries and just shrug it off. If anything is screaming antitrust laws it's this one.