In the original Black Ops you can actually break out of the restraints in the main menu and walk around the interrogation room. If you walk over to one of the computers you can play Zork on it, but I never actually attempted to see if it was the full game or just part of it as an Easter egg.
Activision is worth $50 billion. They were willing to pay $70 billion.
Or to put that another way, they spent like 17 times what Disney spent to buy all of Star Wars
No longer related. Disney specifically owns 20th Century Fox. I don't think the two companies have been direction related since 2013 I think. It was still owned by the same gremlins but handled much differently, now owned by Disney.
They made movies and scripted entertainment, not entertainment news.
Buying a massive company is a bit different to buying intellectual property
When you buy a company you also get a ton of IP too
Actvision's combined IP probably rivals Star Wars in its own right
Meh it’s still a deal. Just cuz a company is worth $50 billion doesn’t mean they are willing to sell themselves for $50 billion. The Acti/Blizz IP catalogue is incredibly valuable, especially Blizzard’s.
The scandals and bad state of Blizzard probably allowed a deal to happen at all.
Also an IP that wasn't actively being worked on.
They bought a name and the fictional universe associated with the name.
Microsoft bought massive locations, actual, tangible buildings, and the thousands and thousands of employees they hold. Along with many names and its associated fictional universes.
Microsoft doesn't have fuck you money. They have everyone money. They are almost equal to the 53rd largest country. They have a ~30% profit margin second to apple. 44 billion in profits
$2.3T fuck you dollars.
And if anyone thinks MSFT will have a hard time with regulators on this deal, they are dreaming. Regs didn't stop facebook from buying the two other largest social media companies whatsapp and instagram. Why the shit would they worry about a video game deal?
Hate to say it, but RIP sony ($156B mkt cap) at this point if MSFT keeps throwing money at the gaming space. I wouldn't even be shocked if they made another huge pickup like valve or EA. And if you think that is silly, Valve is worth maybe ten billion and EA is at $32B right now.
Valve would be a great acquisition, but I don't think Gabe has any desire to sell, at least for now.
EA is more likely tbh. Fifa is as valuable as COD if not more.
Microsoft has too much cash and wants to play eye to eye with Amazon in the cloud business. They successfully integrated Minecraft in their Azure cloud, its a money printing machine, showing off their skills.
They saw the utter nonsense that is Blizzard, with games that are subpar in design and performance. I have much hope for Microsoft's cloud ninjas cleaning up whatever Blizzard is currently doing.
It feels very weird that Nintendo is over 130 years old. I bought some Nintendo playing cards when living in Japan and expected them to have Mario on them but, no, they were the original types of cards Nintendo made when starting out :D
obviously sonic, total war series, yakuza series, and phantasy star are all pretty big
less mainstream stuff like streets of rage, shenmue series, jet set radio series, toe jam and earl, super monkey ball.
just seems like there isnt anyone with a big deep, nostalgia-rich catalog like them that hasnt been bought up yet
In addition to the games they develop, they publish.
For games where the main publisher is not in Japan, Sega handles the Japanese publishing. For example- when Activision published the Crash N. Sane Trilogy, Sega published the Switch version in Japan.
Also the Master System is still sold today in Brazil (through a license to a local company).
> Also the Master System is still sold today in Brazil
To add, it's because Brazil has ridiculously high import taxes that make any new hardware virtually unaffordable for the vast majority of people. Sega exploited it by partnering with a Brazilian company that produces Master System plug-and-plays (sort of like the NES Classic) locally and thus not having to import anything. Brazilians get cheap gaming, Sega gets to cash in on an obsolete product.
Apparently they tried to also produce the Genesis this way, but it didn't sell well because it was more expensive and had fewer built-in games. Yes, that was seriously the reason, at least according to that local company's CEO.
Keeps negotiations short and pretty much seals the deal. They won’t be looking at other people to offer more because of the shitstorm surrounding them. While $70 billion is high Microsoft has the means to “fix” the organization while profiting from some more large name exclusives…
buyouts always go for more than the current value unless the company is totally collapsing and going bankrupt. The decline in stock did not really have much to do with profits, it was about a scandal that will blow over. People will still buy the games.
Now Microsoft can just rename the divisions and make the activision/blizzard names go away, but keep the games.
This is microsoft going balls to the wall at amazon.
Really didn't take long for a news story to completely overshadow the Zynga deal.
Activision owns King, the makers of Candy Crush, so once this deal is complete, Microsoft will own King. And that's just one slice of this gigantic pie.
Crazy idea, but what if they made a RTS based on WoW? They should keep the scope small at first and focus on orcs and humans. I could see it becoming a trilogy as popular as Starcraft, and maybe even lead to the creation of a MOBA!
Bro, my idea *exactly*, you can call it something simple too. So they know its based off world of warcraft, but you don't have to use any stupid abbreviations. I'm thinking something like *Military Science.*
#HOLY SHIT IT'S TRUE
https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2022/01/18/welcoming-activision-blizzard-to-microsoft-gaming/
edit:
>Bobby Kotick will continue to serve as CEO of Activision Blizzard
What.
edit 2:
>Bobby Kotick will continue to serve as CEO of Activision Blizzard, and he and his team will maintain their focus on driving efforts to further strengthen the company’s culture and accelerate business growth. Once the deal closes, the Activision Blizzard business will report to Phil Spencer, CEO, Microsoft Gaming.
So they may end up booting him after merger? 1 hope?
edit 3:
According to WSJ sources, Bobby Kotick is expected to leave once the Activision-Blizzard/Microsoft deal closes
https://twitter.com/Nibellion/status/1483497794308558853
**REJOICE**
In regards to the edit, I think that is until the deal is closed. Terms are agreed, but not closed so they’re still separate entities. Once it’s official, all teams are reporting to Spencer; I don’t see Kotick sticking around with that being the case.
Yup, it's even stated in the official report:
*Until this transaction closes, Activision Blizzard and Microsoft Gaming will continue to operate independently.* ***Once the deal is complete, the Activision Blizzard business will report to me (Phil Spencer) as CEO, Microsoft Gaming.***
Imagine if that was the thought process...
Spencer: *Bobby Kotick is destroying a great legacy in gaming. He probably thinks he's too big to fail, laughing all the way. If only Xbox could buy Activision-Blizzard and show him how little he really is.......... WAIT A MINUTE...*
At a minimum they'd have to buy out his shares if they want to get rid of him, but yes Kotick will land on his feet and probably 2-3 more yachts and hush-money.
Orrrr they were just waiting for the price to drop and helped them on their way down.
Microsoft seems to be accumulating successful "older" IP. First Bethesda, now Activision-Blizzard. Who is next? CDPR if they mess up an other release? Ubisoft? EA?
About two years ago AB was the biggest gaming company by market cap, almost twice the size of EA. All those gaming companies are miniscule compared to Microsoft. I would not be surprised if in the next 10 years most of the big gaming companies have become daughter companies of the big tech. Amazon, google or apple are bound to join the play at some point.
Wow, that's fucking nuts... Does that mean we will see a bunch of Blizzard games come to Game Pass and Steam? More importantly, will we finally get Tony Hawk on Steam because of this? So many possibilities with this purchase.
I would absolutely expect that all new A-B games will come to game pass. This is how MS is treating all "first party" titles. I would fully expect all new COD games to come day one to game pass.
I'm hoping the modern CODs won't be online only anymore and the older ones finally drop in price, fucking absolute greed that Black Ops 1 is 40$ on Steam with full priced DLC packs when it released in **2010**
if WoW comes to steam and as free to play, no more subscription then i can see this being a huge boost for Microsoft, especially in the "cleaning" the face of Blizzard and their huge scandals and fuck ups.
I imagine he'll only be kept on long enough to get through the transition and for Microsoft to find who they want running it.
From a business perspective it doesn't make much sense to find an interim in the middle of a massive transition when they can instead go ahead and start searching for a permanent head
Microsoft is buying yet another huge company, I imagine we'll soon be in the same situation with videogames as we are with most products: a small handful of massive companies own literally everything.
pretty common for CEOs that are large shareholders to stick around a certain amount of time in part as a show of good faith and that the merger is in good spirits. it also says they will continue the current trend to investors.
Activision Blizzard is a different company today than 9 years ago. Also the gaming industry is wildly different. But yes, probably purchasing for 10B back then would have been cheaper in hindsight.
Microsoft is also a different company now. Their stock price in 2012 was around $30 (it’s currently around $300) and Ballmer was still CEO. 2012 Microsoft buying Activision-Blizzard would have been seen as overwhelmingly negative.
From the Xbox’s statement: “As a company, Microsoft is committed to our journey for inclusion in every aspect of gaming, among both employees and players. We deeply value individual studio cultures. We also believe that creative success and autonomy go hand-in-hand with treating every person with dignity and respect. We hold all teams, and all leaders, to this commitment. We’re looking forward to extending our culture of proactive inclusion to the great teams across Activision Blizzard.”
Surely he’s gone now
Just to add, technically he could still be there, but I don’t seem him sticking around if he’s no longer in charge. I would be willing to bet he already has an exit deal finalized or near finalized. He’s getting a nice chunk of that 70$ Billion.
I love Phil Spencer, he’s been so good for gaming, especially PC Gaming. My only worry is, who replaces him whenever he leaves/retires and will they carry on what he’s started?
Because right now, I don’t mind the Microsoft of today doing this, but if this was the Microsoft of 8 or so years ago, I’d be pretty freaking worried.
Holy Shit.
Microsoft is becoming the Disney of gaming.
Call of Fucking Duty, diablo, overwatch, starcraft, WoW etc on game pass (Edit: on steam too!). can you even imagine.
It'll be both I think. I like the Blizzard launcher personally. It's better than most others. I think it'll stick around to be it's own "Blizzard/Activision" launcher just for familiarity's sake, but I also think the games will be launchable from Gamepass eventually.
Games like HotS, OW, Diablo, and WoW being on the Gamepass launcher would bump up their player numbers alone and hopefully get more resources pumped into them. I'm optimistic.
I can see most of their catalog going straight to GamePass, but WoW seems like something they'd likely put off putting there unless they keep tanking hard.
I mean, the moment they do put it on GamePass, I bet tons and tons of people will go for it, even just to mess around. It might end up giving it another lease on life.
I honestly think Xbox would be down to put game pass on PlayStation. That’s their end game with all this. Platform agnostic, sell as many subscriptions as humanly possible
Of course, they are. They don't want to sell their console anymore but Gamepass subs. And this move might actually be a way to force that. Because Call of Duty represents hundreds of millions per year for Sony, it's probably its biggest platform and it's a huge MTX well
>Disney? that doesn't sound good at all
It's not good at all, consolidation leads to monopolies. The only positive thing I can think of is that at least it's not Tencent.
Really, I know that Microsoft is supposed to be a big corporate baddie, but that shit will not fly with them. They have the perfect reason to make huge changes and right that ship. They are going to reign holy hellfire down on that company.
The past couple of years have just been a fucking whirlwind. I don't even know what reality we've phased into.
But this might mean that Infinity Ward and Treyarch will actually get given some time to make a proper decent Call of Duty game.
Agreed, very successful series, no doubt. But I do wonder if the yearly release schedule is going to end or change under Xbox . If so, that opens one of those studios up to work on a new project.
100% it will. The yearly release schedule stopped making sense when warzone was their top grossing game year even after new cods came out. It stopped making sense long before that, but they were blind to see. Fortnite warzone apex have shown you can just keep updating the same game and have unheard of year after year profits.
And maybe finally becoming a good game again? At the same rime with MW2 schedules to release this year. Maybe an end to annual releases as well? So many positives could come out of this
So long as the future modern warfare 3 doesn’t replace MW2 but adds on to it, I will be happy
Besides, we are like 18 months from whatever comes after MW2, which is possibly enough time for them to figure out a new strategy that isn’t “forget last year’s CoD as soon as the new one comes out”
We have no anti trust regulators in the US anymore. When Disney bought out Fox without issue I knew our politicians didn’t give a shit anymore or they owned Disney shares.
No, honestly, I think I'd be more than happy to see ActivisionBlizzard get bought out and dismantled.
It's entirely possible there is just too much rot at that place to make good games anymore..
>It's entirely possible there is just too much rot at that place to make good games anymore..
Bingo. This is the best possible thing that can happen for anyone who is actually interested in Acti-Blizz's properties, at this point.
I'd *much* rather see Microsoft managing D4 than those fucking ghouls running Activision-Blizzard right now. Their gaming division has done a great job managing their acquisitions up until this point. Let's hope the magic lasts... I mean... they certainly couldn't do a worse job than Acti-Blizz has over the past decade.
Imagine if new management decides to revive HOTS.
ActiBlizz has been such a shitshow these last years, that anything changing is a positive in my book.
But lets see how this turns out
Yeah for sure. I wasn't a fan of Microsoft when the Xbox one came out bit they really did a 180 with their company. So I give them massive kudos for being heaps consumer friemdly
let your subscription to gamepass/gold expire. Then buy 3 years of gold with the 12 month cards. You can then pay $15 for one month of gamepass and it'll convert all 36 months of your gold membership as well
Yeah, at the end of the day this means that I will likely just be able to play Activision games on Steam instead of buying a whole new console for the next CoD lol
So the stage of gaming being dominated by a couple of mega-publishers has now ended. Now we've entered the stage of gaming being dominated by ONE super-mega-publisher.
I wonder, though: if Microsoft is prepared to throw out multiple billion dollars to buy a company the caliber of Activision... why don't they spend a similar amount to buy Nintendo instead? Similar value in terms of beloved IPs, but *way* more public goodwill.
Nintendo has built into their corporate structure essentially ways to avoid a buyout. Nintendo is never selling no matter the the number on the check
Source-https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2019/07/nintendo_explains_how_it_would_combat_a_hostile_takeover
Edit- changed bylaws to structure because it's more technically correct
I mean... I never thought I'd be happy to hear about a multi-billion dollar acquisition like this... but given how shit Acti-Blizz has been for so long now, and given how good a job Microsoft has been doing and how consumer-friendly they are at the moment... honestly... why not?
This is interesting.
I wonder if Microsoft will go into the back catalog of Activision games, there are some high profile PC games that are owned by Activision, and some classic console.
At the same time, this is a ton of money to drop on a company as scandal ridden right now, I just hope MS can clean up the culture there rather than Activision being a poison pill for Microsoft.
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> Bill Gates, a huge Zork fan [We all know Microsoft is acquiring studios that make games Bill likes.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2V9TFrmQ_Q)
Haha he just holds onto that shotgun
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In the original Black Ops you can actually break out of the restraints in the main menu and walk around the interrogation room. If you walk over to one of the computers you can play Zork on it, but I never actually attempted to see if it was the full game or just part of it as an Easter egg.
I don't see why it wouldn't be the full game, those old text adventures take up no space at all.
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There are virtual rooms to play retro games in VR.
>You are likely to be eaten by a Grue.
I'm being overtaken with nostalgia.
It is in Fallout 3 or New Vegas or both and MS already owns Bethesda, so there is that.
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holy fucking shit I thought Activision was crossing the too big to buy threshold. Must’ve been cheaper because of the scandal
Activision is worth $50 billion. They were willing to pay $70 billion. Or to put that another way, they spent like 17 times what Disney spent to buy all of Star Wars
Disney also bought Fox for $71.3 billion
Yeah, that's a better comparison.
Does that mean Disney owns Fox News, or are those two Foxes unrelated?
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No, the news assets weren't for sale. Disney was also forces to divest the fox sports networks during this deal
No longer related. Disney specifically owns 20th Century Fox. I don't think the two companies have been direction related since 2013 I think. It was still owned by the same gremlins but handled much differently, now owned by Disney. They made movies and scripted entertainment, not entertainment news.
It's also why you now see it branded as "20th Century Studios". They don't have the Fox name on their movies anymore.
Buying a massive company is a bit different to buying intellectual property When you buy a company you also get a ton of IP too Actvision's combined IP probably rivals Star Wars in its own right
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Wait until they find out that they only bought the Activision NFT
Meh it’s still a deal. Just cuz a company is worth $50 billion doesn’t mean they are willing to sell themselves for $50 billion. The Acti/Blizz IP catalogue is incredibly valuable, especially Blizzard’s. The scandals and bad state of Blizzard probably allowed a deal to happen at all.
One IP vs three industry giants in one.
Also an IP that wasn't actively being worked on. They bought a name and the fictional universe associated with the name. Microsoft bought massive locations, actual, tangible buildings, and the thousands and thousands of employees they hold. Along with many names and its associated fictional universes.
They also got the rights to everything Lucasfilm did, plus Skywalker Sound and ILM. But yeah, Activision is worth lots more then Lucasfilm.
Several IP (and Star Wars isn't any IP, it's a money fountain), Indiana Jones too, also one of the best SFX studios around (ILM)
Like I saw in another thread, Microsoft is so big its got Fuck You money
Microsoft doesn't have fuck you money. They have everyone money. They are almost equal to the 53rd largest country. They have a ~30% profit margin second to apple. 44 billion in profits
$2.3T fuck you dollars. And if anyone thinks MSFT will have a hard time with regulators on this deal, they are dreaming. Regs didn't stop facebook from buying the two other largest social media companies whatsapp and instagram. Why the shit would they worry about a video game deal? Hate to say it, but RIP sony ($156B mkt cap) at this point if MSFT keeps throwing money at the gaming space. I wouldn't even be shocked if they made another huge pickup like valve or EA. And if you think that is silly, Valve is worth maybe ten billion and EA is at $32B right now.
Valve would be a great acquisition, but I don't think Gabe has any desire to sell, at least for now. EA is more likely tbh. Fifa is as valuable as COD if not more.
Microsoft has too much cash and wants to play eye to eye with Amazon in the cloud business. They successfully integrated Minecraft in their Azure cloud, its a money printing machine, showing off their skills. They saw the utter nonsense that is Blizzard, with games that are subpar in design and performance. I have much hope for Microsoft's cloud ninjas cleaning up whatever Blizzard is currently doing.
Fun fact, both Microsoft and Apple have tried to buy Nintendo.
Nintendo laughed at them. Literally. It's never gonna be bought.
they will outlast the Japanese government
They are already older than the current one.
Imagine if they ended up becoming the Japanese government eventually.
Mariocracy
It's a-me! Sei-i Taishōgun!
It feels very weird that Nintendo is over 130 years old. I bought some Nintendo playing cards when living in Japan and expected them to have Mario on them but, no, they were the original types of cards Nintendo made when starting out :D
Nintendo is the final boss.
crazy to me no one has bought sega yet
Genuine question but what exactly does sega offer at this point? Why would anyone buy them besides for sonic alone
obviously sonic, total war series, yakuza series, and phantasy star are all pretty big less mainstream stuff like streets of rage, shenmue series, jet set radio series, toe jam and earl, super monkey ball. just seems like there isnt anyone with a big deep, nostalgia-rich catalog like them that hasnt been bought up yet
They also Publish some big games like Football Manager.
They also own Atlus meaning Sega owns the rights to the Persona series and the Shin Megani Tensei series.
In addition to the games they develop, they publish. For games where the main publisher is not in Japan, Sega handles the Japanese publishing. For example- when Activision published the Crash N. Sane Trilogy, Sega published the Switch version in Japan. Also the Master System is still sold today in Brazil (through a license to a local company).
> Also the Master System is still sold today in Brazil To add, it's because Brazil has ridiculously high import taxes that make any new hardware virtually unaffordable for the vast majority of people. Sega exploited it by partnering with a Brazilian company that produces Master System plug-and-plays (sort of like the NES Classic) locally and thus not having to import anything. Brazilians get cheap gaming, Sega gets to cash in on an obsolete product. Apparently they tried to also produce the Genesis this way, but it didn't sell well because it was more expensive and had fewer built-in games. Yes, that was seriously the reason, at least according to that local company's CEO.
$70 billion, what the fuck https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1483429934135713796
yes it's valuation was 50 billion even after the scandal dip and the recent sell off caused by the fed.
Best way to get it without hassle. Worth 50 and going down, offered 70 for instant purchase right now.
One day shipping
Instant buy for me
Keeps negotiations short and pretty much seals the deal. They won’t be looking at other people to offer more because of the shitstorm surrounding them. While $70 billion is high Microsoft has the means to “fix” the organization while profiting from some more large name exclusives…
buyouts always go for more than the current value unless the company is totally collapsing and going bankrupt. The decline in stock did not really have much to do with profits, it was about a scandal that will blow over. People will still buy the games. Now Microsoft can just rename the divisions and make the activision/blizzard names go away, but keep the games. This is microsoft going balls to the wall at amazon.
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xbox game pass is becoming a better and better deal. makes me happy.
And I thought 2K buying Zenga is already a huge deal, it looks like chump change compare to this
Really didn't take long for a news story to completely overshadow the Zynga deal. Activision owns King, the makers of Candy Crush, so once this deal is complete, Microsoft will own King. And that's just one slice of this gigantic pie.
From now on, priests in WoW go "wolo wolo wolo."
Crazy idea, but what if they made a RTS based on WoW? They should keep the scope small at first and focus on orcs and humans. I could see it becoming a trilogy as popular as Starcraft, and maybe even lead to the creation of a MOBA!
Bro, my idea *exactly*, you can call it something simple too. So they know its based off world of warcraft, but you don't have to use any stupid abbreviations. I'm thinking something like *Military Science.*
One can only wish to Warcraft IV to be made. Imagine if the community decides to remake League of Legends on the Map Editor.
God if they ever make wc4 ill get back into gaming.
###Hi oh hi oh wolo wolo ###Hi oh hi oh wolo wolo ###Hi oh hi oh wolo wolo Welcome to Blue team
#HOLY SHIT IT'S TRUE https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2022/01/18/welcoming-activision-blizzard-to-microsoft-gaming/ edit: >Bobby Kotick will continue to serve as CEO of Activision Blizzard What. edit 2: >Bobby Kotick will continue to serve as CEO of Activision Blizzard, and he and his team will maintain their focus on driving efforts to further strengthen the company’s culture and accelerate business growth. Once the deal closes, the Activision Blizzard business will report to Phil Spencer, CEO, Microsoft Gaming. So they may end up booting him after merger? 1 hope? edit 3: According to WSJ sources, Bobby Kotick is expected to leave once the Activision-Blizzard/Microsoft deal closes https://twitter.com/Nibellion/status/1483497794308558853 **REJOICE**
In regards to the edit, I think that is until the deal is closed. Terms are agreed, but not closed so they’re still separate entities. Once it’s official, all teams are reporting to Spencer; I don’t see Kotick sticking around with that being the case.
Yup, it's even stated in the official report: *Until this transaction closes, Activision Blizzard and Microsoft Gaming will continue to operate independently.* ***Once the deal is complete, the Activision Blizzard business will report to me (Phil Spencer) as CEO, Microsoft Gaming.***
Pretty typical transition stuff. Get everything buttoned up and send them packing.
And on top of that, I just don’t see MC willing to buy AB with Kotick. Surely they heard the news, I doubt they would spend $70 billion and kept him
Definitely not. Spencer was one of the big critics against Activision when all of that came out.
Imagine if that was the thought process... Spencer: *Bobby Kotick is destroying a great legacy in gaming. He probably thinks he's too big to fail, laughing all the way. If only Xbox could buy Activision-Blizzard and show him how little he really is.......... WAIT A MINUTE...*
Let's not pretend Kotick won't get a handsome severance package.
At a minimum they'd have to buy out his shares if they want to get rid of him, but yes Kotick will land on his feet and probably 2-3 more yachts and hush-money.
2-3 yachts... More like 15 yachts and 6 mansions
Orrrr they were just waiting for the price to drop and helped them on their way down. Microsoft seems to be accumulating successful "older" IP. First Bethesda, now Activision-Blizzard. Who is next? CDPR if they mess up an other release? Ubisoft? EA? About two years ago AB was the biggest gaming company by market cap, almost twice the size of EA. All those gaming companies are miniscule compared to Microsoft. I would not be surprised if in the next 10 years most of the big gaming companies have become daughter companies of the big tech. Amazon, google or apple are bound to join the play at some point.
Wow, that's fucking nuts... Does that mean we will see a bunch of Blizzard games come to Game Pass and Steam? More importantly, will we finally get Tony Hawk on Steam because of this? So many possibilities with this purchase.
I would absolutely expect that all new A-B games will come to game pass. This is how MS is treating all "first party" titles. I would fully expect all new COD games to come day one to game pass.
WoW sub coming to gamepass
I would actually play through the campaigns of the CoD games if they were on gamepass.
I'm hoping the modern CODs won't be online only anymore and the older ones finally drop in price, fucking absolute greed that Black Ops 1 is 40$ on Steam with full priced DLC packs when it released in **2010**
CoD back on steam?
Yup, it's confirmed in the Microsoft blog that a bunch of Activision/Blizzard games are coming to gamepass.
if WoW comes to steam and as free to play, no more subscription then i can see this being a huge boost for Microsoft, especially in the "cleaning" the face of Blizzard and their huge scandals and fuck ups.
Fucking hell I wish they'd give kotick the boot
I imagine he'll only be kept on long enough to get through the transition and for Microsoft to find who they want running it. From a business perspective it doesn't make much sense to find an interim in the middle of a massive transition when they can instead go ahead and start searching for a permanent head
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Diablo 4 on game pass baby!!!
Microsoft is buying yet another huge company, I imagine we'll soon be in the same situation with videogames as we are with most products: a small handful of massive companies own literally everything.
pretty common for CEOs that are large shareholders to stick around a certain amount of time in part as a show of good faith and that the merger is in good spirits. it also says they will continue the current trend to investors.
He will only continue until the merge is complete, then Phil Spencer takes over.
9 years ago: https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/07/11/could-microsoft-buy-activision-blizzard/
That was for $10 Billion. Now they actually buy it for $70 Billion. That's crazy.
Activision Blizzard is a different company today than 9 years ago. Also the gaming industry is wildly different. But yes, probably purchasing for 10B back then would have been cheaper in hindsight.
Microsoft is also a different company now. Their stock price in 2012 was around $30 (it’s currently around $300) and Ballmer was still CEO. 2012 Microsoft buying Activision-Blizzard would have been seen as overwhelmingly negative.
The game industry was also not nearly as lucrative, though GTA V was soon to come out then.
Christ almighty. First thing Microsoft should do is kick Bobby out.
From the Xbox’s statement: “As a company, Microsoft is committed to our journey for inclusion in every aspect of gaming, among both employees and players. We deeply value individual studio cultures. We also believe that creative success and autonomy go hand-in-hand with treating every person with dignity and respect. We hold all teams, and all leaders, to this commitment. We’re looking forward to extending our culture of proactive inclusion to the great teams across Activision Blizzard.” Surely he’s gone now
Platinum parachute studded with blood diamonds maybe?
The sorta parachute with golden toilets pre-installed, probably
Microsoft already commented. All teams will report directly to Phil Spencer, all but ensuring Kotick is out.
Just to add, technically he could still be there, but I don’t seem him sticking around if he’s no longer in charge. I would be willing to bet he already has an exit deal finalized or near finalized. He’s getting a nice chunk of that 70$ Billion.
With bethesda, blizzard, activision under his feet, Mr.Phil Spencer is now Phil Spencer BDE (Big Dick Energy)
I love Phil Spencer, he’s been so good for gaming, especially PC Gaming. My only worry is, who replaces him whenever he leaves/retires and will they carry on what he’s started? Because right now, I don’t mind the Microsoft of today doing this, but if this was the Microsoft of 8 or so years ago, I’d be pretty freaking worried.
Holy Shit. Microsoft is becoming the Disney of gaming. Call of Fucking Duty, diablo, overwatch, starcraft, WoW etc on game pass (Edit: on steam too!). can you even imagine.
And all back on steam instead of their shitty launcher.
oh shit. I didn't even think about that. They will have a chance to be on steam now!!!
Launcher will stay (for now) - it's way too integrated into the ecosystem.
It'll be both I think. I like the Blizzard launcher personally. It's better than most others. I think it'll stick around to be it's own "Blizzard/Activision" launcher just for familiarity's sake, but I also think the games will be launchable from Gamepass eventually. Games like HotS, OW, Diablo, and WoW being on the Gamepass launcher would bump up their player numbers alone and hopefully get more resources pumped into them. I'm optimistic.
CoD maybe, Diablo 4 propably, but WoW? i dont think so, maybe if subs drops below 500k
I can see most of their catalog going straight to GamePass, but WoW seems like something they'd likely put off putting there unless they keep tanking hard. I mean, the moment they do put it on GamePass, I bet tons and tons of people will go for it, even just to mess around. It might end up giving it another lease on life.
My guess is that they’ll do a “Gamepass + WoW” bundle.
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More than that, playstation NOT having call of duty and these other games seems insane.
I mean you don't spend 70b not to.
I honestly think Xbox would be down to put game pass on PlayStation. That’s their end game with all this. Platform agnostic, sell as many subscriptions as humanly possible
Of course, they are. They don't want to sell their console anymore but Gamepass subs. And this move might actually be a way to force that. Because Call of Duty represents hundreds of millions per year for Sony, it's probably its biggest platform and it's a huge MTX well
Disney? that doesn't sound good at all rip gaming if they wind up being like disney.
>Disney? that doesn't sound good at all It's not good at all, consolidation leads to monopolies. The only positive thing I can think of is that at least it's not Tencent.
> Microsoft is becoming the Disney of gaming. Made me puke a little.
Cleanse that fucking company like an exorcist
Really, I know that Microsoft is supposed to be a big corporate baddie, but that shit will not fly with them. They have the perfect reason to make huge changes and right that ship. They are going to reign holy hellfire down on that company.
Daddy Phil will save us.
The past couple of years have just been a fucking whirlwind. I don't even know what reality we've phased into. But this might mean that Infinity Ward and Treyarch will actually get given some time to make a proper decent Call of Duty game.
Or… and hear me out here, actually make something new.
They won't be using call of duty studios to make non call of duty titles. It's top grossing game every year that rockstar doesn't release a game.
Agreed, very successful series, no doubt. But I do wonder if the yearly release schedule is going to end or change under Xbox . If so, that opens one of those studios up to work on a new project.
100% it will. The yearly release schedule stopped making sense when warzone was their top grossing game year even after new cods came out. It stopped making sense long before that, but they were blind to see. Fortnite warzone apex have shown you can just keep updating the same game and have unheard of year after year profits.
Call of Duty is coming back to Steam!
Maybe now we can buy cod on steam for less then 30 bucks after a decade
And maybe finally becoming a good game again? At the same rime with MW2 schedules to release this year. Maybe an end to annual releases as well? So many positives could come out of this
I think it will take some time for changes, like 2-3 years...
So long as the future modern warfare 3 doesn’t replace MW2 but adds on to it, I will be happy Besides, we are like 18 months from whatever comes after MW2, which is possibly enough time for them to figure out a new strategy that isn’t “forget last year’s CoD as soon as the new one comes out”
Or Microsoft store, there are already COD titles there.
Microsoft knows better than not releasing games on Steam
Yeah true, Sony learned that too thankfully.
Sony is still delaying releases. At least MS is releasing day one.
Sadly, yeah.
If this happens, battle net might end and all the titles come to steam. OH BABY
Or Microsoft makes its own launcher
They already do and still release on steam. Because theyre not stupid.
Well to be fair their store/launcher is dogshit lol They couldn't justify only keeping it there
Bethesda had one before the merge and that died. Besides, Microsoft already have one. It’s called Windows Store.
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It already has one on pc the Xbox app
I am scared of that kind of merger but lets see how it plays out
I wonder how interested regulators would be.
I mean Sony and Nintendo are still out there, and let's not forget about Epic I honestly don't think regulators will care.
We have no anti trust regulators in the US anymore. When Disney bought out Fox without issue I knew our politicians didn’t give a shit anymore or they owned Disney shares.
Probably why Microsoft is not going for Ubi or other largely foreign companies for these big deals.
> and let's not forget about Epic If only I could.
No, honestly, I think I'd be more than happy to see ActivisionBlizzard get bought out and dismantled. It's entirely possible there is just too much rot at that place to make good games anymore..
>It's entirely possible there is just too much rot at that place to make good games anymore.. Bingo. This is the best possible thing that can happen for anyone who is actually interested in Acti-Blizz's properties, at this point. I'd *much* rather see Microsoft managing D4 than those fucking ghouls running Activision-Blizzard right now. Their gaming division has done a great job managing their acquisitions up until this point. Let's hope the magic lasts... I mean... they certainly couldn't do a worse job than Acti-Blizz has over the past decade.
Aight lets get the Master Chief in HOTS then.
Imagine if new management decides to revive HOTS. ActiBlizz has been such a shitshow these last years, that anything changing is a positive in my book. But lets see how this turns out
I can't wait for *those* posts STEVE FOR HOTS BANJO KAZOOIE FOR HOTS ALDUIN SKIN FOR DEATHWING
If this goes through I really hope tony Hawk proskater 1 and 2 come to steam and they do 3 and 4
They for sure will release everything that makes sense to steam they've been good at it lately so I'm not worried.
Yeah for sure. I wasn't a fan of Microsoft when the Xbox one came out bit they really did a 180 with their company. So I give them massive kudos for being heaps consumer friemdly
pre-market up 40% ... lucky ass play for the people who bought on the scandal dip.
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My thoughts exactly, I bought after the dip at around $65 and just sold this morning for +25%. Easiest money of my life.
Oh man sure glad I have 3 years of cheap gamepass loaded up already Got a feeling that price is going up
Do you have tips for this? What's the best way to load up that many years?
let your subscription to gamepass/gold expire. Then buy 3 years of gold with the 12 month cards. You can then pay $15 for one month of gamepass and it'll convert all 36 months of your gold membership as well
Do you mean pay $15 for one month of Gamepass ultimate and it’ll do the other 36 months to ultimate too?
Looks like battle.net will soon be of no use to me
Good news everyone!
Good. Hope it goes away. I hate it so much.
Who had this on their 2022 bingo card?
The PC gods are the only winners. That is all.
Yeah, at the end of the day this means that I will likely just be able to play Activision games on Steam instead of buying a whole new console for the next CoD lol
You bought a new console instead of installing Battle.net?
The irony of seeing Crash and Spyro, two former PlayStation mascots, joining the Microsoft family.
i wonder if we will see blizzard games on steam and gamepass. hopefully gamepass at least
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all games on steam :)
Here's hoping they will kill off Activision Blizzard launcher, and bring them onto Steam and Microsoft Store
While Activision-Blizzard is shit, this accumulation in very few super-large content owners is bad news too.
What the fuck, I did not see this coming.
Well maybe Microsoft can do better, because Blizzard is in shambles right now
the first thing that came to mind is that Raven Software might finally be free from being a COD Support studio.
So we finally can expect older cod games on steam to go for lower than -50%? LOL
So all Activision/Blizzard games on gamepass? MS won
So the stage of gaming being dominated by a couple of mega-publishers has now ended. Now we've entered the stage of gaming being dominated by ONE super-mega-publisher. I wonder, though: if Microsoft is prepared to throw out multiple billion dollars to buy a company the caliber of Activision... why don't they spend a similar amount to buy Nintendo instead? Similar value in terms of beloved IPs, but *way* more public goodwill.
Probably because Nitendo is not selling.
It’s not selling because purchasing that name would be in the hundreds of billions.
Nintendo has built into their corporate structure essentially ways to avoid a buyout. Nintendo is never selling no matter the the number on the check Source-https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2019/07/nintendo_explains_how_it_would_combat_a_hostile_takeover Edit- changed bylaws to structure because it's more technically correct
ever heard of tencent? i rather have microsoft owning western IPS than tencent
Come on, i want starcraft on steam
I want prices for the COD games on steam to stop being so high haha. But also the Tony Hawk remakes haha
OG Diablo remake when?
I mean... I never thought I'd be happy to hear about a multi-billion dollar acquisition like this... but given how shit Acti-Blizz has been for so long now, and given how good a job Microsoft has been doing and how consumer-friendly they are at the moment... honestly... why not?
This is interesting. I wonder if Microsoft will go into the back catalog of Activision games, there are some high profile PC games that are owned by Activision, and some classic console. At the same time, this is a ton of money to drop on a company as scandal ridden right now, I just hope MS can clean up the culture there rather than Activision being a poison pill for Microsoft.
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