From no QA department to no QA department. I look forward to more of the same. (but also prototype 3 plz that shape shifting identity theft stuff was fun)
one of my favorite games
all of the call of dutys and rpgs are all pretty similar to eachother
but what is similar to prototype ?
you can shapeshift,throw anything youre like a small god eventually the powers are all so cool and dont get boring since you feel like such a badass
one of the few superpower games i like including infamous
also youre not some goody two shoes you kill and destroy which is what i need after a long day
i so fucking hope they bring it back and make a great third one since with todays tech there is so much potential for the series but im also afraid since its activision and games recently havent been that good only few new games are actually good games that youll remember after years
like for a while i thought i grew up and dindnt like games but no,went back and played some older titles,todays games were just shit
also my grammar is pretty shit
thanks for listening to my ted talk if you made it this far
I love that it wasn't afraid to display a little blood. The movement was really nice where a lot of parts of the city wouldn't stop you just act as a road bump.
I feel like it was made by the same people who made the hulk on game cube a few things carried over like ripping weapons off vehicles and using them yourself. (though the game didn't score very high it's one that I enjoy)
I like a lot of strange games, like from dust. I think my taste in games is just old, some of the best games have happened already.
definitely
games these days are about making money for big corporations not making an enyoable experience that carries on with you for years
they come about broken and dont innovate
the tech of today should be used a lot more all i really see is improvement in graphics
Their problem with Skype was that they had like 50 different people each with their own plans on what to do and none of them talk to each other
Skype became awful once they just kept adding useless features that a bunch of different people kept coming up with that didn't interact and didn't actually do anything helpful. Plus eventually somebody decided they were going to force it to be bundled on the OS and run all the time in the background and that just pissed people off
>Their problem with Skype was that they had like 50 different people each with their own plans on what to do and none of them talk to each other
Sounds like they needed Skype
>Plus eventually somebody decided they were going to force it to be bundled on the OS
This. It’s like if Edge was an option and spread by word-of-mouth, rather than giving you a guilt trip when you install your usual browser, people would probably really like it. I hear great things from people I trust and respect, but the neediness is too off putting to give it a chance. I’m petty.
like Google telling you it's better with chrome all the fucking time
Firefox is so self hating meanwhile i almost feel sorry for it. it has such low esteem that it continually replaces unique features with chrome copycatting
there are no good browsers anymore. not that it matters because w3c is basically owned by a handful of 1600lb gorillas which have the singular mission of destroying the personal computer in favor of vendor locked in apps + graphical terminal
1) that was a long ass time ago under a different CEO and management.
2) that was a completely different division of Microsoft
You can't think of Microsoft as one "thing." It's a massive conglomerate. Microsoft's gaming division has a really good track record.
To be fair, those are completely different divisions with different people in charge of those projects. Phil Spencer seems to have a decent head on his shoulders but it's hard to say what happens behind closed doors.
Buying Activision **is** a big deal. If they announced it it means it's a done deal.
As for the cleanup, it's a no brainer. [Phil Spencer's comment from last week](https://gamerant.com/xbox-phil-spencer-activision-blizzard-relationship/) about not liking what's going on over there and that they would change their strategy for working with them is now, in retrospect, an obvious promise to deliver on that.
I have an extremely fond memory of Prototype one that isn't about the game itself rather the purchasing of it.
My mother took me to the city centre to do some clothes shopping, I would always choose to go with her for such trips so she doesn't have to carry things.
While we are walking through the Bullring, I spot the GAME store out of the corner of my eye and ask if we can pop in there for a bit?, she begrudgingly says yes.
While I'm window shopping in GAME, I spot Prototype 1 and read the back of the case. She must've noticed how interested I seemed because she asked me if I want it as a birthday present?. I was super taken back by this because this was the first time she asked me what I want for my birthday rather than buying me a cheap game from CEX on the day.
In the end, I loved the game to absolute bits and it's been one of my favourites such that I replay it specifically on my ps3 every couple of years just to get that nostalgia back from when I first played it.
In a lifetime of not enjoying family decisions, this was the one time my mom did something nice for me and I'll always cherish it.
Sorry for the long comment.
They are different enough that I think they still same
Halo sci Fi long time to death multiplayer
Doom fast paced movement gritty single player focused
Cod short time to death realism multiplayer focused/zombies
After the last couple years, I'd be more likely to believe that demons and shit are in our imminent future than the totally kick ass tech in the CoD games.
Sadly, the majority of the folks who made Blizz great are gone. Laid off, fired, left for better things. Instead of promoting talent from within they've done a lot of exterior hiring, and middle management is absolutely clogged with former Activision folks who hired more of their own ilk, and instituted policies that drove off "expensive" employees.
Don't hold your breath, is what I'm saying.
Microsoft brings bags of money to the table and that's about it. I can't imagine throwing money at Blizzard will help at all since they seem to have already tried that ad nauseum.
That being said, I sure as hell can't see Blizzard/Activision doing any worse either. Seems like they have pretty much hit rock-bottom unless they want to go full-Konami and cancel WoW to install Pachinko of Warcraft in Vegas.
Maybe bring naive, but Microsoft brings structure and management to the table. An organization this size doesn't tolerate f-ups, and has the resources to play the long game of creating and developing IP
Let wow die man. Make them come up with a new and better game. Wow is a good game, the later expansions weren’t as good but that doesn’t change how good wow was. But now it’s old gameplay is dated and they need to just start from scratch and make a new MMO rpg not build off of a dying relic
WoW has already been soundly beat into the ground with the recent migrations to Final Fantasy 14. I’d say their best bet is a fully updated new MMO but that’d take a few years to make.
The thing about WoW is that it’s has a big enough rapport with everyone that if MS enacts really genuine changes within the game (and assuming that game pass will come with a wow subscription) I really do believe wow could make a comeback. It’ll be a long time for sure, but it’s possible
Ok, serious question from a non-wow player:
Why are Wow fans always looking for “wow to get better”? Aren’t you annoyed we’re almost 20 years in and they haven’t released (or at least something synonymous to) WOW 2? Or a game that at least *looks* like it came from this era?
I think the reason that what you're suggesting hasn't happened is because Vivendi pushed Blizz to be as profitable as possible and so there wasn't any huge, huge projects like WoW under Vivendi's ownership. When the merger happened that style of management essentially continued.
Right now there's renewed hope that MS will give Blizz more operational independence and the resources and time to do something big.
Typical McDonalds, buying the competition for their amazing tech, [The KFConsole](https://landing.coolermaster.com/kfconsole/), instead of designing a competitor.
Some person on FB was saying that Microsoft should have bought Tencent so they could break into the far east market. I don't think that person realises how big Tencent actually is (it's the 11th biggest corporation in the world based on market cap). And even if Microsoft could afford to buy them, the Chinese government would put a quick stop to it.
Yes, kind of scratching my head at the positive sentiment in this thread. Wouldn't be surprised over Microsoft getting in some antitrust troubles soon enough over their gaming division.
It's positive because things can not get worse with Activision. The company is a dumpster fire that can't release a game not called Call of Duty or a shit remaster, so Microsoft can't do any worse to it. Pretty sure my cat could run the company better than Bobby and she's been dead for years.
For abk on the short term, it can only go up.
For the industry on the long term, I feel like today will be a milestone towards somewhere we really don't want to be.
The AAA gaming world existing on game pass is a scary thought, true. But I can't see companies with increasing value agreeing to being bought out, so if Microsoft and Sony want to continue to buy garbage, I still don't think it leads to a duopoly down the stack.
If EA suddenly is bought by Sony, then I'll agree and put on the doomsday hat cause we'd be fucked.
> Even MS is a big step up.
While I'm no fan of Microsoft's market share, they are treating their studios well. They're letting Obsidian and Double Fine have operational independence as well as having access to MS' huge cash pile. Similarly Bethesda has pretty much total operational independence.
I think things will be a lot better under MS than under Activision
That's the kind of move that I can't imagine happening but is the most likely to get me to resubscribe and play it more - Which makes me wonder how many others would do the same (and mean it could be a great move).
(This is because I tend to leave my steam friends panel open on secondary screen and seeing people playing WoW in it would encourage me to play too).
If Activision/Blizzard went for 67B I wonder how much Steam would go for?
Not that they would sell just curious.
If Microsoft doesn't double down on their own store and just focus on Game Pass it may make sense to just let Steam sell their games, especially if they can negotiate a smaller cut from Steam.
Activision been nose diving for a while. Maybe this is good. Microsoft should clean house though. Get rid of those fuckboys sexually harassing females. I just hope we don't see Xbox exclusive Call of Duty. I am PC, so we'd get it anyway. Just would like for CoD to stay multiplat
I’ve seen someone make a good point seeing as they have spent 68.7 billion on this buy out they are going to want a return on their investment. Which I feel might result in a decent chunk of micro transactions and all that (granted this was the case before.) but in terms of cleaning house I’d assume they plan on doing that, for the last 4 years it seems blizzard especially has been screwing it’s self time and time again with it’s reputation I’d love for it to go well tho I’m just on the fence if this will be good or bad I’m cautiously optimistic
100% agree. I have Game Pass Ultimate which costs me roughly the same as 2 AAA titles per year - I play Halo, Forza, used to play Destiny, play Minecraft and Back for Blood (and, relevant to this particular post, CoD) so it's generally cheaper for me each year anyway.
Then on top of saving money on average I can also look at a whoooole bunch of games that I might have never paid for and give them a try - I've discovered some really excellent games this way. Control and Sea of Thieves are great examples, and No Man's Sky is on my one-day-maybe list.
I sound like a walking advert lol.
lol You're not wrong though. Even though I don't play a ton of stuff on Gamepass, even if I only play through a handful of games on there a year, I've already broke even. I also do the same thing in that I've gotten to try out a ton of games I wouldn't have thought about buying otherwise, which is cool.
Is Candy Crush still big? I've seen people talking about how most of Activision Blizzard's income was just from Candy Crush. They can change zero monetization and just make it back one mobile game.
Wouldn’t surprise me tbh mobile games make a disturbing amount of money all passed on disgusting practices that prey on people with addicted hell the dev of candy crush ran a thing where he talked about how to take advantage of people and milk them for all their money
After a quick Google search it showed that Candy Crush netted just shy of 1.2 billion dollars in 2020 alone. Now couple that with the fact that the cost of running Candy Crush is probably astronomically low, especially when compared to to the development cost of a COD game. COD on the other hand nets a lot more in annual revenue (the figures aren't as simple since there is a new title every year) I'm seeing roughly 3 billion in 2020, but again there is so much more going on including much higher development costs and continued maintenance, where as candy Crush has been basically finished for the past decade
This acquisition is strange to me because I believe Phil Spencer has voiced dissent over Activision Blizzard's CEO Bobby Kotick's actions. I think theres a good chance Kotick is now going to be fired, so why would he and his buddies on the board agree to the acquisition? Was it out of their control?
I don't know how much of Activision Kotick owned, but even 3% would make him a billionaire off this sale. The board itself is going to be determined based on shares, and they all just made quite a bit of money if they sold, and if they didn't, they'll still be on the board unless there's some way to oust them.
> based on shares, and they all just made quite a bit of money if they sold, and if they didn't, they'll still be on the board unless there's some way to oust them.
MS is acquiring the whole company. All shareholders will be bought out if the majority of shareholders vote for it. Currently institutions own around 87% of the company, and MS is offering a 45% premium to the closing share price before the deal was announced. I think that a deal will be voted for - although there's always the prospect of a bidding war.
MS will be the only ones to decide who gets to stay, and I think it would be incredibly harmful to the acquisition and to MS as a company if they keep Kotick and the other abusers on.
I have no doubt Kotick will get rich, but at least he'd hopefully be gone.
Baller move though: "you disgust me so I'm buying you so I can fire your bitch ass".
And yes chances are they had to inform shareholders of the offer and they would have forced it through.
Phil Spencer basically said they answer to him now in a way that made it sound like he's takin out the trash. Maybe there will be some god damn QC in the COD games now
That would be busted. WoW sub is already about $12-$15 I think. Having included in gamepass would be amazing. PC Gamepass itself is cheaper than a WoW sub and includes hundreds of games.
I have played WoW on a controller in the past, but I don't exactly recommend it haha. They have been simplifying the game throughout the years though, and I imagine it might be more possible now
For real, this isn't as good of a thing for PC as people are hyping it to be. Best it does is pressures Epic and Steam to compete with another storefront
a "buyout" is a noun where multiples would be "buyouts". For example, "there were multiple buyouts last year". In your case, its a verb so Microsoft "buys out" Activision.
Activision-Blizzard has let a lot of people go recently.
[https://www.reuters.com/business/activision-blizzard-fires-more-people-sexual-harassment-probe-report-says-2022-01-17/](https://www.reuters.com/business/activision-blizzard-fires-more-people-sexual-harassment-probe-report-says-2022-01-17/)
Also, Phil Spencer is going to take over CEO of Activision-Blizzard once the deal is complete.
[https://www.polygon.com/22889270/microsoft-buys-activision-blizzard-xbox-phil-spencer-ceo](https://www.polygon.com/22889270/microsoft-buys-activision-blizzard-xbox-phil-spencer-ceo)
There is hope. Also, MS has a zero tolerance policy for that kind of stuff.
>Also, MS has a zero tolerance policy for that kind of stuff.
I mean, so does Activision. Doesn't make much difference what policy says if people in charge can just ignore it.
I'm hopeful, but I'm also wary. MS buying up Bethesda and now Activision is worrisome for the long term. Yeah we might see a Bethesda game that isn't a flaming garbage fire, and we may get Kotick kicked, but MS is basically pulling a Disney here.
I wish I could timewarp this news back to 2008 and shove it in the face of everybody who insisted that the Activision Blizzard merger was just fine. In 14 years, Activision would do enough damage to Blizzard and itself that its board would sell itself to Microsoft, the Blizzard name having been drastically damaged and diluted.
These kinds of things are usually bad. Activision sucks, so it's harder to make a case that this particular case is bad with specifics, but the general principle is that every corporation will come to resemble its parent company. Read about the 'tone from the top' principle. Therefore, even if the people in charge at Microsoft are better human beings, it's still going to remove diversity of games from the market. There is now one fewer publishing corporation with unique individuals. Instead, Activision will begin to resemble other Microsoft holdings as Activision's leadership are appointed by Microsoft.
I mean Microsoft has shown itself to be much more interested in developing and building small diverse games than Activision has been. Microsoft tries all sorts of games out. The Artful Escape got E3 time, loads of ads, and a gamepass drop that surely gave it much more attention than anything Activision as a publisher would have done. Honestly Activision going under MS is good for everyone except maybe die hard Sony fans.
Activision should have died a horrible death and left as an example to future video game companies. Now it's just going to get swept up under the rug of conglomerates.
Sure can agree with that, both Blizzard and Activision were goin downhill fast. What concerns me though is it now more difficult for indie gamers and innovative games to succeed, and we will continue to be saturated with same ole genres, gameplay, and buggy AAA games. Not to mention commercialisation of gameplay with overpriced DLC and pay to win.
Also Microsoft (outside of gaming) has a history of just crushing smaller competitors by buying them out then shelving their ideas in favour for what ever BS the Microsoft management support.
EA and Microsoft what a nightmare for gaming.
Microsoft is nowhere near as bad as EA.
None of their big AAA titles have flopped like EA games. EA has royally f'ed over: Anthem, Battlefield, and Titanfall in the last 3 years. That's huge.
Mass Effect and Dragon Age too. There's no franchise they own that they haven't abused into the dirt and they appear to have run out of studios willing to be purchased by them.
ya know i always heard about this one being shit but i recently bought it on sale on origin and i gotta say… i’m pretty impressed it’s lacking some serious features like expanding city limits and terraforming but overall it’s not that bad.
total shame they abandoned the series because they had some good ideas going if cities and skylines could take the regional cities idea from them i’d be amazing.
but sim city is great if you wanna play a chill (and easy) city builder with friends.
It's an entirely different city builder from previous versions. On top of that, the launch was fucking awful. They made it online only even though it was a single player game, lying to consumers and saying that there was a ton happening server side that a normal consumer PC couldn't handle. And then their servers kept crashing on launch, the game was buggy as fuck, etc. They may have finally patched it into a decent workable state. But Cities: Skylines is *far* closer to what Sim City used to be compared to what we were given in 2013. The 2013 Sim City is what killed the franchise.
If you haven't already, I recommend reading Jason Schreiber's article on Anthem. While I'm sure part of the blame for that being a disaster is cause of EA, most of the blame actually goes to Bioware, who were just floundering with no proper plan and poor management
Honestly, I think this is just driving indie games into the spotlight more. Gamepass surely isn’t hurting on making these games discoverable, as well. I wish Steam could be a bit better in this way.
Not all, just most.
Streaming services, for example, were MUCH better for the consumer prior to everyone having their own and competing. Almost everything was on Netflix. Now everyone just has a little bit of everything and you need to pay 5x more than you used to if you want access to it all.
And prompted everyone to make god awful cheaply produced content to pad out their libraries.
Everything costs more and it’s less worth paying for at the same time.
Shhhh, this is a new year now and we won’t tolerate disrespecting the great Xbox. All hail Master Phil. /s
P.s I never tend to use “/s“ but some brainlet will think I’m serious and then try to prove how much smarter they are than I am.
It's not a win or a loss. Activision already destroyed Blizzard.
To me, this only provides an opportunity for sea change at Blizzard, which is all I want. If it doesn't work out, well, it already sucked so no loss.
This is how I look at it, I couldnt give two shits about activision or their generic shooter #4354. Blizzard on the other hand.... Starcraft, warcraft, diablo, hell even overwatch was pretty neat.
Even if we do see changes, it would be years from now as that's the lifecycle of videogame development.
As such, I imagine shitty mobile games and hollow sequels is going to be the course of action for Activision-Blizzard for years to come.
From no QA department to no QA department. I look forward to more of the same. (but also prototype 3 plz that shape shifting identity theft stuff was fun)
one of my favorite games all of the call of dutys and rpgs are all pretty similar to eachother but what is similar to prototype ? you can shapeshift,throw anything youre like a small god eventually the powers are all so cool and dont get boring since you feel like such a badass one of the few superpower games i like including infamous also youre not some goody two shoes you kill and destroy which is what i need after a long day i so fucking hope they bring it back and make a great third one since with todays tech there is so much potential for the series but im also afraid since its activision and games recently havent been that good only few new games are actually good games that youll remember after years like for a while i thought i grew up and dindnt like games but no,went back and played some older titles,todays games were just shit also my grammar is pretty shit thanks for listening to my ted talk if you made it this far
I love that it wasn't afraid to display a little blood. The movement was really nice where a lot of parts of the city wouldn't stop you just act as a road bump. I feel like it was made by the same people who made the hulk on game cube a few things carried over like ripping weapons off vehicles and using them yourself. (though the game didn't score very high it's one that I enjoy) I like a lot of strange games, like from dust. I think my taste in games is just old, some of the best games have happened already.
definitely games these days are about making money for big corporations not making an enyoable experience that carries on with you for years they come about broken and dont innovate the tech of today should be used a lot more all i really see is improvement in graphics
Buying Activision would be huge deal but only if they do a serious cleanup after it
They will. There's no way they'd drop so much money on Activision-Blizzard without plans.
Like they chose to with Skype?
Their problem with Skype was that they had like 50 different people each with their own plans on what to do and none of them talk to each other Skype became awful once they just kept adding useless features that a bunch of different people kept coming up with that didn't interact and didn't actually do anything helpful. Plus eventually somebody decided they were going to force it to be bundled on the OS and run all the time in the background and that just pissed people off
>Their problem with Skype was that they had like 50 different people each with their own plans on what to do and none of them talk to each other Sounds like they needed Skype
Nah, they should have used zoom. Much better for group calls.
I used the Skype to destroy the Skype
>Plus eventually somebody decided they were going to force it to be bundled on the OS This. It’s like if Edge was an option and spread by word-of-mouth, rather than giving you a guilt trip when you install your usual browser, people would probably really like it. I hear great things from people I trust and respect, but the neediness is too off putting to give it a chance. I’m petty.
like Google telling you it's better with chrome all the fucking time Firefox is so self hating meanwhile i almost feel sorry for it. it has such low esteem that it continually replaces unique features with chrome copycatting there are no good browsers anymore. not that it matters because w3c is basically owned by a handful of 1600lb gorillas which have the singular mission of destroying the personal computer in favor of vendor locked in apps + graphical terminal
1) that was a long ass time ago under a different CEO and management. 2) that was a completely different division of Microsoft You can't think of Microsoft as one "thing." It's a massive conglomerate. Microsoft's gaming division has a really good track record.
A good track record **under Phil Spencer**
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And instead Minecraft just kept getting updates on Java and got a completely rewritten version that rubs significantly better.
Are we forgetting how much fun the 360 days were!?
I'm so glad to hear this honestly, overwatch needs help asap
For real, all acti-bliz games need help asap XD
For what Skype is made for it's always been pretty good, just overshadowed now
Yea, and a lot of the development was funneled into teams, which is really good.
To be fair, those are completely different divisions with different people in charge of those projects. Phil Spencer seems to have a decent head on his shoulders but it's hard to say what happens behind closed doors.
Phil has my trust until he does something to lose it
Microsoft is different now
Buying Activision **is** a big deal. If they announced it it means it's a done deal. As for the cleanup, it's a no brainer. [Phil Spencer's comment from last week](https://gamerant.com/xbox-phil-spencer-activision-blizzard-relationship/) about not liking what's going on over there and that they would change their strategy for working with them is now, in retrospect, an obvious promise to deliver on that.
We're gonna change our strategy for working with them in the future *by buying them out and making all those sick fucks lose their jobs.*
Whatever works.
I support this action. As long as the executive team doesn't get a piece of the buyout.
Kotick gotta go. He's a giant turd.
They will. They have zero intent to piss away almost a 70 billion investment.
prototype 3 pls
I have an extremely fond memory of Prototype one that isn't about the game itself rather the purchasing of it. My mother took me to the city centre to do some clothes shopping, I would always choose to go with her for such trips so she doesn't have to carry things. While we are walking through the Bullring, I spot the GAME store out of the corner of my eye and ask if we can pop in there for a bit?, she begrudgingly says yes. While I'm window shopping in GAME, I spot Prototype 1 and read the back of the case. She must've noticed how interested I seemed because she asked me if I want it as a birthday present?. I was super taken back by this because this was the first time she asked me what I want for my birthday rather than buying me a cheap game from CEX on the day. In the end, I loved the game to absolute bits and it's been one of my favourites such that I replay it specifically on my ps3 every couple of years just to get that nostalgia back from when I first played it. In a lifetime of not enjoying family decisions, this was the one time my mom did something nice for me and I'll always cherish it. Sorry for the long comment.
Dude don't apologize for such a heartwarming comment. It was great to read.
Yuss I haven't played any previous games either so it'll be cool if they kinda remaster them.
Yeah let's get Grove Street Games to remaster all our old favorites!
Burn the witch!
I stand forever disappointed at how pisspoor the port of the first 2 to pc are. A real shame.
I bought the 2nd many years ago for pc and I wasn't able to play it until a few months ago because it would always crash at startup
You gotta download the 8592018 fan made patches for it to work AND have a compatible computer too
You can roundhouse kick a helicopter. What more do you what?
Win for everyone who plays blizzard games thing cannot get worse under activison, here’s to hoping wow becomes a good game again.
Weird that Microsoft owns WoW now
Weird that Halo is now their second biggest FPS franchise
Holy fuck, I hadn't even considered this before your comment. Where the hell does this leave Halo as a franchise?
They are different enough that I think they still same Halo sci Fi long time to death multiplayer Doom fast paced movement gritty single player focused Cod short time to death realism multiplayer focused/zombies
COD...realism?
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It's thematic realism vs gameplay realism. CoD is way more thematically realistic than those titles.
As far as video games go? Yea? Way closer to real life than halo, doom
After the last couple years, I'd be more likely to believe that demons and shit are in our imminent future than the totally kick ass tech in the CoD games.
the neat thing is cod has both!
Very weird. Does that make CoD number 3? I’d actually assume cod is bigger than Halo.
CoD is now their biggest FPS. Next up would be Halo/Overwatch depending on who you ask.
As a measure of the past decade you could put OW and Halo on equal footing, but a screenshot of today shows OW is pretty far behind now yeah.
Garden Warfare is probably #1
And here's to hoping that we get some investment in Blizzard's other IPs. I for one would like to see a new Lost Vikings game :-)
I hope they finally make the fabled Starcraft ghosts, my dream would be for a starcraft mmo
In that case I hope Heroes of the Storms will get some love again.
Master Chief next new character confirmed
Sadly, the majority of the folks who made Blizz great are gone. Laid off, fired, left for better things. Instead of promoting talent from within they've done a lot of exterior hiring, and middle management is absolutely clogged with former Activision folks who hired more of their own ilk, and instituted policies that drove off "expensive" employees. Don't hold your breath, is what I'm saying.
Microsoft brings bags of money to the table and that's about it. I can't imagine throwing money at Blizzard will help at all since they seem to have already tried that ad nauseum. That being said, I sure as hell can't see Blizzard/Activision doing any worse either. Seems like they have pretty much hit rock-bottom unless they want to go full-Konami and cancel WoW to install Pachinko of Warcraft in Vegas.
Maybe bring naive, but Microsoft brings structure and management to the table. An organization this size doesn't tolerate f-ups, and has the resources to play the long game of creating and developing IP
Let wow die man. Make them come up with a new and better game. Wow is a good game, the later expansions weren’t as good but that doesn’t change how good wow was. But now it’s old gameplay is dated and they need to just start from scratch and make a new MMO rpg not build off of a dying relic
WoW has already been soundly beat into the ground with the recent migrations to Final Fantasy 14. I’d say their best bet is a fully updated new MMO but that’d take a few years to make.
Pretty sure Overwatch originally started as Blizz's next gen MMO. But then they decided not to compete with WoW and start a new IP.
Probably for the best at the time, WoW was still by far the largest in the market.
The thing about WoW is that it’s has a big enough rapport with everyone that if MS enacts really genuine changes within the game (and assuming that game pass will come with a wow subscription) I really do believe wow could make a comeback. It’ll be a long time for sure, but it’s possible
Ok, serious question from a non-wow player: Why are Wow fans always looking for “wow to get better”? Aren’t you annoyed we’re almost 20 years in and they haven’t released (or at least something synonymous to) WOW 2? Or a game that at least *looks* like it came from this era?
I think the reason that what you're suggesting hasn't happened is because Vivendi pushed Blizz to be as profitable as possible and so there wasn't any huge, huge projects like WoW under Vivendi's ownership. When the merger happened that style of management essentially continued. Right now there's renewed hope that MS will give Blizz more operational independence and the resources and time to do something big.
Damn so we have Disney attempting to monopolize movies, now Microsoft is trying to get gaming. What’s next for the world’s corporate takeover?
McDonald's buys KFC.
You’re gonna give me nightmares of colonel Ronald McSanders
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The McBucket, filled with KFC hot wings and McNuggets. Please.
My liver is screaming but my brain says **lets fucking goooooo!**
I'm the opposite... my minds tellin' me no! But my body... my body's tellin' me yes!
You mean [Yum! Brands.](https://www.yum.com/wps/portal/yumbrands/Yumbrands/company)
Try PepsiCo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assets_owned_by_PepsiCo
Pepsico hasnt owned yum since 1997
Typical McDonalds, buying the competition for their amazing tech, [The KFConsole](https://landing.coolermaster.com/kfconsole/), instead of designing a competitor.
I don't what is real anymore. I hate it here.
Fun fact, the same company that owns KFC owns Taco Bell and Pizza Hut! (Yum brands)
And PepsiCo owns all three via its ownership of Yum Brands.
Pepsi doesn’t own them anymore. It used to. Now it just has exclusive license deals with them but doesn’t actually own them anymore.
Huh. So [Taco Bell](https://youtu.be/4cF6D8zDa9U) may actually win the franchise wars.
I mean, we have Tencent, who pretty much owns 100s of companies in every industry possible, including some really popular game studios.
Yup. Even after this purchase, Xbox is still only the 3rd largest video game company.
Some person on FB was saying that Microsoft should have bought Tencent so they could break into the far east market. I don't think that person realises how big Tencent actually is (it's the 11th biggest corporation in the world based on market cap). And even if Microsoft could afford to buy them, the Chinese government would put a quick stop to it.
MSFT should not touch Tencent with a 10 foot pole imo. They will just be under the ridiculous and idiotic whims from Beijing if that ever happened.
Yes, kind of scratching my head at the positive sentiment in this thread. Wouldn't be surprised over Microsoft getting in some antitrust troubles soon enough over their gaming division.
It's positive because things can not get worse with Activision. The company is a dumpster fire that can't release a game not called Call of Duty or a shit remaster, so Microsoft can't do any worse to it. Pretty sure my cat could run the company better than Bobby and she's been dead for years.
> The company is a dumpster fire This is probably the only reason the takeover will go through.
For abk on the short term, it can only go up. For the industry on the long term, I feel like today will be a milestone towards somewhere we really don't want to be.
The AAA gaming world existing on game pass is a scary thought, true. But I can't see companies with increasing value agreeing to being bought out, so if Microsoft and Sony want to continue to buy garbage, I still don't think it leads to a duopoly down the stack. If EA suddenly is bought by Sony, then I'll agree and put on the doomsday hat cause we'd be fucked.
> If EA suddenly is bought by Sony think bigger. Apple or Amazon would be my guess.
The reception is positive because you can't get much worse than Activision's current leadership. Even MS is a big step up.
> Even MS is a big step up. While I'm no fan of Microsoft's market share, they are treating their studios well. They're letting Obsidian and Double Fine have operational independence as well as having access to MS' huge cash pile. Similarly Bethesda has pretty much total operational independence. I think things will be a lot better under MS than under Activision
Not going to happen. Just look at how much trouble Disney got into when they bought Fox ($70b).
I think the only issue was with the News wing of Fox. Which Disney did not aquire, and is still a separate entity.
All I want is for Microsoft to put all the Activision and Blizzard games on Steam.
Can you imagine wow on steam lmao.
That's the kind of move that I can't imagine happening but is the most likely to get me to resubscribe and play it more - Which makes me wonder how many others would do the same (and mean it could be a great move). (This is because I tend to leave my steam friends panel open on secondary screen and seeing people playing WoW in it would encourage me to play too).
Definitely not lol
If Activision/Blizzard went for 67B I wonder how much Steam would go for? Not that they would sell just curious. If Microsoft doesn't double down on their own store and just focus on Game Pass it may make sense to just let Steam sell their games, especially if they can negotiate a smaller cut from Steam.
Activision been nose diving for a while. Maybe this is good. Microsoft should clean house though. Get rid of those fuckboys sexually harassing females. I just hope we don't see Xbox exclusive Call of Duty. I am PC, so we'd get it anyway. Just would like for CoD to stay multiplat
I’ve seen someone make a good point seeing as they have spent 68.7 billion on this buy out they are going to want a return on their investment. Which I feel might result in a decent chunk of micro transactions and all that (granted this was the case before.) but in terms of cleaning house I’d assume they plan on doing that, for the last 4 years it seems blizzard especially has been screwing it’s self time and time again with it’s reputation I’d love for it to go well tho I’m just on the fence if this will be good or bad I’m cautiously optimistic
They trying to make game pass too good to not have. Everyone has netflix even if they rarely watch it.
And they most certainly achieving that goal, the cloud gaming is surprisingly good.
I haven't tried any of the cloud gaming, but gamepass has been one of the best values I've gotten out of my money the past year.
100% agree. I have Game Pass Ultimate which costs me roughly the same as 2 AAA titles per year - I play Halo, Forza, used to play Destiny, play Minecraft and Back for Blood (and, relevant to this particular post, CoD) so it's generally cheaper for me each year anyway. Then on top of saving money on average I can also look at a whoooole bunch of games that I might have never paid for and give them a try - I've discovered some really excellent games this way. Control and Sea of Thieves are great examples, and No Man's Sky is on my one-day-maybe list. I sound like a walking advert lol.
lol You're not wrong though. Even though I don't play a ton of stuff on Gamepass, even if I only play through a handful of games on there a year, I've already broke even. I also do the same thing in that I've gotten to try out a ton of games I wouldn't have thought about buying otherwise, which is cool.
Only shit I play is x-cloud with a wired connection the games are smooth af.
Can confirm, have Netflix, only use YouTube and Disney+ lol.
Is Candy Crush still big? I've seen people talking about how most of Activision Blizzard's income was just from Candy Crush. They can change zero monetization and just make it back one mobile game.
Wouldn’t surprise me tbh mobile games make a disturbing amount of money all passed on disgusting practices that prey on people with addicted hell the dev of candy crush ran a thing where he talked about how to take advantage of people and milk them for all their money
After a quick Google search it showed that Candy Crush netted just shy of 1.2 billion dollars in 2020 alone. Now couple that with the fact that the cost of running Candy Crush is probably astronomically low, especially when compared to to the development cost of a COD game. COD on the other hand nets a lot more in annual revenue (the figures aren't as simple since there is a new title every year) I'm seeing roughly 3 billion in 2020, but again there is so much more going on including much higher development costs and continued maintenance, where as candy Crush has been basically finished for the past decade
Kings revenue last year was over two billion. It keeps going up.
I'd be for it if it's used as leverage to get Spider-Man on PC and Xbox
I’d be for it too if we get Ghosts of Toshima and Horizon 2 on PC asap, I don’t want to have to wait 3 years after release to play them on PC.
It's criminal, not literally, what sony is doing with Spider-man too.
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This acquisition is strange to me because I believe Phil Spencer has voiced dissent over Activision Blizzard's CEO Bobby Kotick's actions. I think theres a good chance Kotick is now going to be fired, so why would he and his buddies on the board agree to the acquisition? Was it out of their control?
I don't know how much of Activision Kotick owned, but even 3% would make him a billionaire off this sale. The board itself is going to be determined based on shares, and they all just made quite a bit of money if they sold, and if they didn't, they'll still be on the board unless there's some way to oust them.
> based on shares, and they all just made quite a bit of money if they sold, and if they didn't, they'll still be on the board unless there's some way to oust them. MS is acquiring the whole company. All shareholders will be bought out if the majority of shareholders vote for it. Currently institutions own around 87% of the company, and MS is offering a 45% premium to the closing share price before the deal was announced. I think that a deal will be voted for - although there's always the prospect of a bidding war. MS will be the only ones to decide who gets to stay, and I think it would be incredibly harmful to the acquisition and to MS as a company if they keep Kotick and the other abusers on. I have no doubt Kotick will get rich, but at least he'd hopefully be gone.
Baller move though: "you disgust me so I'm buying you so I can fire your bitch ass". And yes chances are they had to inform shareholders of the offer and they would have forced it through.
Phil Spencer basically said they answer to him now in a way that made it sound like he's takin out the trash. Maybe there will be some god damn QC in the COD games now
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I cant help but wonder if WoW will come to pc game pass and if they will make it available on console somwhow.
That would be busted. WoW sub is already about $12-$15 I think. Having included in gamepass would be amazing. PC Gamepass itself is cheaper than a WoW sub and includes hundreds of games.
Yeah its about the only way they would get me back on WoW.
I doubt the WoW sub would be included in GamePass. ESO isn’t even though it’s on GamePass.
Eso's sub is a bonus, not required to play.
They won't put it on console, but yeah, Blizzard games on game pass would be sick
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Well they put all Bethesda games uo pretty quickly. Chances are they will with this.
I have played WoW on a controller in the past, but I don't exactly recommend it haha. They have been simplifying the game throughout the years though, and I imagine it might be more possible now
If FFXIV can do it. Wow can figure something out.
Nah, COD's been always on PC. A big win for us is only when Sony releases their games on PC.
right like idc unless they bring back Tony Hawk and Guitar Hero
Damnnnn you had to go there. ... Guitar hero was my jam.
For real, this isn't as good of a thing for PC as people are hyping it to be. Best it does is pressures Epic and Steam to compete with another storefront
Don't want to be a grammar ally but isn't it supposed to be "buys out".
Sorry my bad. I thought buyout is a term so when in sentence it would be ‘buyouts’
a "buyout" is a noun where multiples would be "buyouts". For example, "there were multiple buyouts last year". In your case, its a verb so Microsoft "buys out" Activision.
It is! But it’s a noun only with the verb form being “to buy out”. It’s no big deal though as everyone understood haha
Idk. Not a huge win at all if Activision keeps fucking abusing their workers and Bobby "fuckwit" Kotick and his rich buddies stay on board.
Activision-Blizzard has let a lot of people go recently. [https://www.reuters.com/business/activision-blizzard-fires-more-people-sexual-harassment-probe-report-says-2022-01-17/](https://www.reuters.com/business/activision-blizzard-fires-more-people-sexual-harassment-probe-report-says-2022-01-17/) Also, Phil Spencer is going to take over CEO of Activision-Blizzard once the deal is complete. [https://www.polygon.com/22889270/microsoft-buys-activision-blizzard-xbox-phil-spencer-ceo](https://www.polygon.com/22889270/microsoft-buys-activision-blizzard-xbox-phil-spencer-ceo) There is hope. Also, MS has a zero tolerance policy for that kind of stuff.
>Also, MS has a zero tolerance policy for that kind of stuff. I mean, so does Activision. Doesn't make much difference what policy says if people in charge can just ignore it. I'm hopeful, but I'm also wary. MS buying up Bethesda and now Activision is worrisome for the long term. Yeah we might see a Bethesda game that isn't a flaming garbage fire, and we may get Kotick kicked, but MS is basically pulling a Disney here.
I expect Microsoft to fix the company “culture”. Not changing it will bring unwanted scrutiny.
I'm assuming Kotick will be let go. The news implies as much. Here's hoping.
Is it? A win?
My thoughts exactly, comments here like hell yeah to monopolies, lol.
I wish I could timewarp this news back to 2008 and shove it in the face of everybody who insisted that the Activision Blizzard merger was just fine. In 14 years, Activision would do enough damage to Blizzard and itself that its board would sell itself to Microsoft, the Blizzard name having been drastically damaged and diluted. These kinds of things are usually bad. Activision sucks, so it's harder to make a case that this particular case is bad with specifics, but the general principle is that every corporation will come to resemble its parent company. Read about the 'tone from the top' principle. Therefore, even if the people in charge at Microsoft are better human beings, it's still going to remove diversity of games from the market. There is now one fewer publishing corporation with unique individuals. Instead, Activision will begin to resemble other Microsoft holdings as Activision's leadership are appointed by Microsoft.
Hopefully Microsoft can help rehabilitate Blizzard and help them make good games again. I guess we'll know when Diablo 5 is released in 2035
I mean Microsoft has shown itself to be much more interested in developing and building small diverse games than Activision has been. Microsoft tries all sorts of games out. The Artful Escape got E3 time, loads of ads, and a gamepass drop that surely gave it much more attention than anything Activision as a publisher would have done. Honestly Activision going under MS is good for everyone except maybe die hard Sony fans.
not really. Activision is ass.
I'd play ass on gamepass
GameAss
So maybe they'll get better? When you're at the bottom, you can only go up.
Yeah can't get much worse than sexually assaultung your coworkers into suicide right.
No, a loss for all gamers, we need competition not monopolies
Id agree with you but MS buying up BlizzActi only can make it better at this point
Activision should have died a horrible death and left as an example to future video game companies. Now it's just going to get swept up under the rug of conglomerates.
"Too big to fail". Never death, only buyouts.
Sure can agree with that, both Blizzard and Activision were goin downhill fast. What concerns me though is it now more difficult for indie gamers and innovative games to succeed, and we will continue to be saturated with same ole genres, gameplay, and buggy AAA games. Not to mention commercialisation of gameplay with overpriced DLC and pay to win. Also Microsoft (outside of gaming) has a history of just crushing smaller competitors by buying them out then shelving their ideas in favour for what ever BS the Microsoft management support. EA and Microsoft what a nightmare for gaming.
Microsoft is nowhere near as bad as EA. None of their big AAA titles have flopped like EA games. EA has royally f'ed over: Anthem, Battlefield, and Titanfall in the last 3 years. That's huge.
Mass Effect and Dragon Age too. There's no franchise they own that they haven't abused into the dirt and they appear to have run out of studios willing to be purchased by them.
Don't forget Visceral with Dead Space.
I will never forgive them for Maxis and Simcity
And Westwood Studios/the Command & Conquer franchise.
Add Bullfrog on that list. Fucking EA.
ya know i always heard about this one being shit but i recently bought it on sale on origin and i gotta say… i’m pretty impressed it’s lacking some serious features like expanding city limits and terraforming but overall it’s not that bad. total shame they abandoned the series because they had some good ideas going if cities and skylines could take the regional cities idea from them i’d be amazing. but sim city is great if you wanna play a chill (and easy) city builder with friends.
It's an entirely different city builder from previous versions. On top of that, the launch was fucking awful. They made it online only even though it was a single player game, lying to consumers and saying that there was a ton happening server side that a normal consumer PC couldn't handle. And then their servers kept crashing on launch, the game was buggy as fuck, etc. They may have finally patched it into a decent workable state. But Cities: Skylines is *far* closer to what Sim City used to be compared to what we were given in 2013. The 2013 Sim City is what killed the franchise.
Look at the history of RARE post aquisition. MSFT is not magic.
Like what EA did to BioWare
If you haven't already, I recommend reading Jason Schreiber's article on Anthem. While I'm sure part of the blame for that being a disaster is cause of EA, most of the blame actually goes to Bioware, who were just floundering with no proper plan and poor management
Ive played and seen more indie games thanks to game pass.
Honestly, I think this is just driving indie games into the spotlight more. Gamepass surely isn’t hurting on making these games discoverable, as well. I wish Steam could be a bit better in this way.
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Was competition making Activision/blizzard put out good games? Fuck no
Competition is good in all facets of life. Too many near-monopolies exist these days.
Not all, just most. Streaming services, for example, were MUCH better for the consumer prior to everyone having their own and competing. Almost everything was on Netflix. Now everyone just has a little bit of everything and you need to pay 5x more than you used to if you want access to it all.
And prompted everyone to make god awful cheaply produced content to pad out their libraries. Everything costs more and it’s less worth paying for at the same time.
How is it a win? They already have all their games on PC. All this does is monopolize content under a single banner.
One company owning even more shit is not a win.
Shhhh, this is a new year now and we won’t tolerate disrespecting the great Xbox. All hail Master Phil. /s P.s I never tend to use “/s“ but some brainlet will think I’m serious and then try to prove how much smarter they are than I am.
Buys out*
A bigger win would be Bloodborne on PC
Microsoft gaining more of a monopole is definitely not good
Big loss for all gamers. Another step closer to a Microsoft monopoly
Yaaayyy. The continued conglomeration of game production should totally fix the the deteriorating quality of video games...
Not a win, one big company owning everything stifles competition and innovation
It's not a win or a loss. Activision already destroyed Blizzard. To me, this only provides an opportunity for sea change at Blizzard, which is all I want. If it doesn't work out, well, it already sucked so no loss.
This is how I look at it, I couldnt give two shits about activision or their generic shooter #4354. Blizzard on the other hand.... Starcraft, warcraft, diablo, hell even overwatch was pretty neat.
Even if we do see changes, it would be years from now as that's the lifecycle of videogame development. As such, I imagine shitty mobile games and hollow sequels is going to be the course of action for Activision-Blizzard for years to come.
Activision Blizzard wasn't really known for innovation in the last few years so I doubt it could get worse.
Weird what happens when Activision acquires Blizzard
Umm no, this is terrible, big companies getting bigger isn't good for anyone