A very Microsoft re-evaluation. MS is overall a pretty shitty company as well though, as are pretty much all companies of such scale and corporate culture.
-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
-
We have made minor adjustments to how the search bar works on ResetEra. You can read about the changes here.
Microsoft to acquire Activision Blizzard
- Thread starter Kawngi
- Start date
- Status
A very Microsoft re-evaluation. MS is overall a pretty shitty company as well though, as are pretty much all companies of such scale and corporate culture.
All of those besides maybe Killzone are easy revivals.
I didn't mention Resistance because its probably harder than even Killzone.
Warhark never actually died, a significantly different game Starhawk sucked then Sony started to abandon MP games.
MAG just needs a reboot, with more of a Battlefield inspiration
Socom just needs to copy the Rainbow 6 Siege model and it would be perfect.
70 billion is fucking insane. that's more gdp than most countries.
The amount of money these conglomerate corps have 👀
no it will join the other subscription model in game pass haha
The amount of money these conglomerate corps have 👀
no it will join the other subscription model in game pass haha
Holy shit this is huuuuuuuuuuuuuuge. Like I still don't understand how it can make sense lol. Wat?
Cool I don't have to buy Activision blizzard games anymore, I can just play them all on my 3 years worth of gamepass :)
I think we're talking about two different things. Given the press surrounding Bobby and ActiBlizz and Phil basically releasing a public statement condemning it, I have to think one of their priorities will also be to address ABK's discrimination concerns and make a number of FT positions available for those who want it.
Yup, anything and everything is on the table after this. Like an acquisition of Sony itself isn't super crazy anymore.
User Banned (5 Days): Trolling, fear-mongering.
Man, this really really sucks. Microsoft consolidating the industry and trying to create an effective monopoly is horrendus for the entire industry. Im not even a console player, PC only, but even I can see that this is major bad news. The ppl in this thread who are saying "Oh so awesome, great gamepass value" are braindead and they will be the first hit by this. Just to give you a few ideas of the stunts Microsoft can pull once they have a majority of the industry by the balls (some of these might seem outragous now, but they are all perfectly within the realms of possibility for a company that doesnt have to worry about competition):
"We have decided to double/triple the price of gamepass. What you cant afford that? Tough shit."
"We have decided to pull all of our titles from retail and make them only available through gamepass. What, you cant afford a monthly subscription? What are you gonna do, miss out on all your favorite games? LOL."
"The Xbox console will from now on be 75% more expensive. What are you going to do, buy a God-of-War-station? LOL."
"We have decided to pull all of our games from steam and put them only on our shitty windows store app. What are you going to do, miss out on the latest Elder Scrolls/COD/DOOM/Blizzard thing? LOL."
"Company heads have decided that we want to push our new Windows 11/12/X OS, so from now on all new games will arbitrarily only run on the latest undercooked and broken OS we have released. What are you going to do, miss out on all the latest and greatest games? LOL." <- Pretty sure this will happen, sincerely hope Im wrong
You all have to realize one thing: Microsoft does NOT care about the gaming industry. For them gaming is just another leveraging card in their crusade to monopolise a large portion of the entire tech sector.
I really really hope that this aquisition gets blocked. If Microsoft and Activision Blizzard were based in my country, this aquisition would definitely get blocked by regulators.
"We have decided to double/triple the price of gamepass. What you cant afford that? Tough shit."
"We have decided to pull all of our titles from retail and make them only available through gamepass. What, you cant afford a monthly subscription? What are you gonna do, miss out on all your favorite games? LOL."
"The Xbox console will from now on be 75% more expensive. What are you going to do, buy a God-of-War-station? LOL."
"We have decided to pull all of our games from steam and put them only on our shitty windows store app. What are you going to do, miss out on the latest Elder Scrolls/COD/DOOM/Blizzard thing? LOL."
"Company heads have decided that we want to push our new Windows 11/12/X OS, so from now on all new games will arbitrarily only run on the latest undercooked and broken OS we have released. What are you going to do, miss out on all the latest and greatest games? LOL." <- Pretty sure this will happen, sincerely hope Im wrong
You all have to realize one thing: Microsoft does NOT care about the gaming industry. For them gaming is just another leveraging card in their crusade to monopolise a large portion of the entire tech sector.
I really really hope that this aquisition gets blocked. If Microsoft and Activision Blizzard were based in my country, this aquisition would definitely get blocked by regulators.
War zone yes I assume. The actual call of duty game, single player multiplayer, Will be Microsoft exclusive
There's something to be said for the removal of Kotick from power as unilaterally good news, but even that appears to be an uncertain condition of the deal.
Sony has sold 5x as many consoles as Xbox with no Gamepass and very few exclusives. Sony is fine.
If you include the revenue that Activision made last year ($8.1bn) as well as the projected revenue for Zenimax (around $1.5bn to $2.2bn), that would take Xbox's revenue to $25.3bn. PlayStation revenue last year was $25.04bn, a portion of that will be from the 30% store cut on mtx/digital sales of Activision titles. So yes, whilst this comparison is loose and missing context, you're wrong for suggesting that long term this could not spell a dramatic shift in market share dominance.
Don't forget, most of Bethesda's new games post acquisition, have not even been released yet. Same for Activision for some time. You have to look at these things in terms of the impact they may have 5-10+ years from now, not just today.
They couldn't' renege. They had a contract. And they had to honor it.
Microsoft's endgame is two-fold.
The first is within the gaming industry to expand the scope of the gaming audience to start capturing some of the mobile gaming audience (which massively expands the earnings potential) by minimising barriers to console gaming through the promotion of gaming services and cloud-usage (i.e. Gamepass) which helps to overcome the console price barrier which previously existed for a subscription service (which, generally, have low churn rates).
The second is the promotion of cloud infrastructure and Windows as the expectation, which not only will enhance income through Azure if competitors rely upon it for their infrastructure but also encourages adoption of Windows to take up GamePass (and all of the additional financial streams that adds).
I don't think the value could possibly be recouped via sales alone, but through additional adoption of GamePass it's very feasible.
i can't see nintendo ever wanting to sell. no matter how much money they offer.
This. Once a deal like this is announced you can't make any major changes.
Maybe a new version of the EA developer graveyard meme where Phil shoots into EA into the pit and necromancies all the old studios back to life.
User Warned: Hostility
Microsoft buying up studios in their software arm's race doesn't benefit me. Having options on how and where to play games was optimal, now you most likely have to own 2 consoles to play games you could have previously played on 1.
Yes. I meant destruction literally. You moron.
I would argue it would be odd not to mention the CEO in a groundbreaking move like this though. You still have shareholders, employees etc that need to know whats happening. While its the morally wrong (but understandable from Microsofts perspective considering keeping the long term CEO around as an asset during the transition) since Kotick is the big question mark you kind of have to make a definitive statement regarding his status.
Sadly his direct and indirect victims through his lax policies will probably never get justice outside of perfunctory settlements Microsoft will be happy to add to the cash pile just to do what they will with this investment without having to throw in, "btw here's this quarters abuse allegations from blizz/act" in their Annual Report.
He already got away with his crimes, hell this news even helps him since it makes the merger the focus.
But this is what happens when you've got a white bro culture, a spineless board you helped pick out, and billions on the table even before Microsoft came sniffing around.
Well, it's like I said. There are a million different opinions on the ethics of the whole matter. MY opinion on it, is that buying a company that for years has been making content exclusively for you is less harmful to consumers and takes away less REAL choice than buying a massive publisher that released games everywhere. So no, it's not because I "like" nintendo and sony (honestly I don't even like nintendo all that much game wise, few of their games resonate with me).
Have they though? They do great with first party but they've definitely focused on cinematic action-adventures. They do great at GOTY season and sell very well but nowhere near COD numbers.
Nintendo on the other hand basically have every genre handled by their first-party studios.
Lmao Warzone ain't gonna be exclusive.
Future CoD titles, possibly. Maybe even likely. But Warzone will stay on Playstation.
ubisoft's market cap is 7 billion usd. even nintendo could purchase ubisoft.
the next really actually big ones are take two, electronic arts, and epic games before getting into first-parties like nintendo and sony.
Nintendo is pretty insulated from the warfare going on elsewhere in the industry. They're unique in the degree to which people buy their platforms specifically for their first party games. That's not in any jeopardy.
Resistance was actually good though, which is more than I can say about Killzone 2 and Shadow Fall (haven't played 1 and 3 yet).
Anyway, Warhawk and MAG both failed on the PS3 and died with it. I can't see Sony bothering to revive any of those three IPs as none of them could ever measure up to the CoD juggernaut anyway.
I wouldn't say it doesn't harm Sony, and I completely agree that Acti-blizz should be expected to be Xbox exclusive going forward.
But this industry (and Playstation) is resilient to big changes. If they weren't able to kill themselves in the PS3 era, I don't think this deal kills them now. They may have even seen this coming with the shift to so much multiplayer focused development in-house.
You mean like theres no way they would release a game from a studio that makes 20M+ selling RPGs exclusive to their console and PC? I mean we went through this dance before ... honestly this might even affect CoD release timelines in the long run as I dont see a reason for MS to do them yearly.
Do they really need to? Yes of course Call of Duty possibly leaving hurts them financially, probably more than any of them, but it's not going to stop selling PS5 units, or PS6 for that matter. I can see them continue to make smart partnerships of lesser caliber.
I know Microsoft can buy whatever company they want and I know some people probably happy but I'm not one of them. And that's just not because I have a PlayStation I just think that competition is Good and at this point it wouldn't surprise me If this is Sony's last console just leaving Microsoft and Nintendo making consoles in the future
and let's not gloss over it - two out of the last three Nintendo home consoles have been the industry leaders and they killed off any attempts by someone attempting to come in on handheld. They'll look after themselves just fine. They've spent a lot of energy to not be in the same battleground that MS & Sony are fighting over. They'll want to keep on making interesting hardware, theme parks, films...
Remember that MS has tons of corporate contracts due to their OS and they invested in a company that is at the forefront of the MTX game. And with them introducing this "metaverse", it's likely we start seeing a lot of cross-game promotions and IP cross-inclusions.
They wouldn't have dropped this amount of money unless the forecast looked good.
people have been posting this and similar things and it's just been getting ignored lol
what was even the point of ever saying anything
- Status