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Microsoft to acquire Activision Blizzard
- Thread starter Kawngi
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Truth. They just don't have the same "casual market" cachet that CoD enjoys.
Man, that's all pretty crazy. Given how big a the deal is with respect to monetary terms, there's little doubt some anti-trust issues will arise. Xbox really is gunning to be the home for Western-style games, isn't it?
Well they did kill themselves, so that's something
I liked Killzone 1-2 and Resistance 1
Idk. Its 12 hours old. Everyone should assume its already made the rounds.
Which is why it's even funnier that some folks are like "what about MAG or SOCOM?"
Like none of these franchises still exist, and the reason is they were all given chances and didn't take off. The casual FPS gamer just wants COD.
Microsoft will still be smaller than Sony in gaming revenue after this, so hardly a monopoly.
Heh. I just went from a Teams job of 3+ years to a place that uses Slack. God, I miss Teams.
Substitute Madden for FIFA for the rest of the world and that's one of Sony's problems post A-B takeover in a nutshell.
The stock price in the company today has, at time of writing, dropped 12%.
Was just at -10%, oof. The highlights of that investor call will be interesting.
Microsoft now owns enough classic games they could re-launch Game Room without talking to anyone.
Imagine!
Imagine!
And explains why a Capcom or Square-Enix buyout would do very little to move the needle for this group.
It'd take a Take2 or EA purchase to really have a similar impact.
CoD rarely gets discussed here but in the UK charts they were posted CoD had two games in the Top 5.
Think about it…. the old CoD sells more than a new Far Cry game and Vanguard, despite losing ca. 35% YoY is still the second biggest game of 2021 in the UK.
On top of that you have a massive BR game and mobile.
That's why I'm fairly sure that CoD will remain available on PS4/5 Systems.
The negatives (loss of income) clearly outweigh the benefits (denying this game to the competition) here.
this is scorched earth which people were saying was a likely reaction to sony buying a bunch of third party exclusives at the start of the gen. the fact that sony got in to a biding war with a company 25x its size is funny. is this good for the industry, no, but it was a predictable end result.
rh people was saying the same thing about starfeild, the moment actblizz deal closses the next cod will be xbox/pc only.
This news is truly insane. This is for sure not against any anti-trust laws. They aren't even close to market share even with the acquisition. Also I think COD is exclusive to tech with gamepass. Same plan they have with Starfield and Elder Scrolls. Subscribers are more valuable than single purchase sales. Simple math.
Sorry for not responding earlier, I just saw so much text that I kinda just pushed it off for a while
Yeah, fanboys of all kinds will make exceptions for something being bad for other console owners if it makes THEIR preferred console have more exclusives. It's honestly pretty sad and shows just how tribal a lot of folk are. There's plenty to love about how MS is handling the Xbox, but locking franchises away from other platform is definitely not good for gamers
Past YoY revenue is not transitive. I think you are being very short sighted if you think the landscape will remain exactly the same forever. COD has been Sony's best selling game for years and I'm damn positive this purchase will move the needle. I wouldn't put too much into that revenue bucket just yet.
Trust me they are not spending $70bn just to have Activision games on gamepass day one there are cheaper ways to do that.
They don't make their money back on this by maintaining the status quo. This is a move to shift consumers to the platforms MS own.
This is honestly where I'm at tbh. Only instead of the 90s, it's the early to late 2000s where I was mostly a casual pc & ps2 gamer that didn't play the hottest releases. The days of the sims, bratz, Barbie, Disney Nancy drew, roller coaster tycoon & varies clones & c-b tier stuff. The glory days I guess…. This is really depressing to me because it's literally the path to paying hundreds of dollars a month for various services just like I do with streaming.
made even worse when you throw the possible Microsoft monopoly around because god forbid they don't have one like they do with thier office software. made even better with the it no longer even having to option to own it and having to pay 70-100$ just for the sheer privilege of borrowing it!
but sure! Papa Microsoft is definitely the friend of the gamer and definitely won't pull the exact same shit! God, this generation hasn't even truly started and I fucking hate it…
still doesnt subject ms to anti trust, there are set legal definitions for abuse of market share, and this violates none of them.
Yeah, I don't get why people think they're still going to be in third every year just because they were in 2020. If they release a CoD, Elder Scrolls, Overwatch, and Banjo (or whatever) in the same year they could very easily dominate. It's a meaningless argument.
Thats what nokia though about samsung. Sony brand is still really strong and are best at marketing which helps a lot with the mainstream buying sony consoles.
However with almost exclusice every sony game available on pc, whats left to justify a purchase ps5 over an xbox?
I might be wrong but I'd put money on CoD missing a year some time in the mid 2020's and possibly going to a two or three year cycle.
I just makes sense I think. MS will have so many massive FPS franchises that they would be stepping on themselves if they continue to release CoD every November. You put out big shooters maybe two or three times a year. With that MS bench you now have at least 4 shooter franchises that need room to breathe. Halo, Doom, Gears, CoD, and an alt tier bench with Wolfenstein, Overwatch, potentially Quake and whatever shooteresque shit Arkane is working on.
Dropping more than two of those first four in any one year, especially without putting at least three months between releases on a subscription service will reduce impact. Better to drive subs by spreading release excitement.
You could also get away with pushing one of the alt games instead of one of the bigger franchises in say, the summer. You would need to support the most recent big releases longer with maps skins and season passes, but CoD has felt archaic in that regard for a long time anyway and needs a revamp.
In addition It would be good PR, addressing burn out , making space for creativity, all those things a lot of the other acquired studios have praised ms for.
Also it would suit the game pass model better allowing some of Activision to move onto other game pass boosting projects that can fill lulls in the release schedule.
but that exists both ways, why buy a xbox with all of its games being released on pc?
You can have GP, which would include CoD, Halo, Forza etc., on Xbox. You can't on PS5.
At the end of the day COD is irrelevant to me and nothing on xbox has my attention so it's still sony all day. Now the only thing that would be a blow to me is if MS picked up Square as two of my favorite franchised are there.
This I said I'll pick up an XSX for Perfect Dark but if that releases on PC as well then fuck a XSX
those games will be gp on pc too? if you have a good enough games to play sony's games ported to pc, that will be true for ms games too.
i think part of the issue for me is yeah, MS has been making all the right moves lately and "good guy Phil" and stuff. But what about five years from now? Remember good guy Sony with PS4 who loved indies and was dunking on MS with all the right consumer forward moves? Not that Sony is bad now, just they aren't quite as outwardly fan focused, nickel and diming a bit more, and then key people begin to leave when there's differences of opinion or just want a new pasture or family/health matters or whatever. There's a ton of things that could change with MS that changes them too and them becoming an increasingly bigger chunk of "core gaming" titles has pessimistic me side eyeing a bit.
but, until then… I won't be buying any future or older activision titles for the next year as gamepass gonna gamepass and luckily first party titles never go off so I'll have lots of time to catch up on Diablo II or uhhh… CoD Ghosts? I dunno. Gamepass is already a fucking endless buffet of gaming hours so pile em on.
but, until then… I won't be buying any future or older activision titles for the next year as gamepass gonna gamepass and luckily first party titles never go off so I'll have lots of time to catch up on Diablo II or uhhh… CoD Ghosts? I dunno. Gamepass is already a fucking endless buffet of gaming hours so pile em on.
I think they'll want to continue regular expansions of service games like Warzone. But yeah, for straight up campaign CODs, they'll probably increase the time between titles and hopefully use Treyarch, Infinity Ward, and Sledgehammer in more creative non-COD ways.
The funny thing is in an anti-trust argument, Microsoft could use Sony's own past history against them ... Sony snatched Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and most of the support of Capcom, Konami and others and locked it away from Nintendo.
Yet Nintendo more than survived, they flourished over time. Simply gaining support or control over certain 3rd party developers doesn't mean the console race becomes entirely non-competitive.
It means it's harder for Sony to remain the market leader, but that's not the criteria for a monopoly, the gaming world doesn't cease to function properly if Sony is forced into no.2 or even no.3.
Yet Nintendo more than survived, they flourished over time. Simply gaining support or control over certain 3rd party developers doesn't mean the console race becomes entirely non-competitive.
It means it's harder for Sony to remain the market leader, but that's not the criteria for a monopoly, the gaming world doesn't cease to function properly if Sony is forced into no.2 or even no.3.
Sorry, misread your previous post. But yeah, MS are interested in subs, they don't care if you sub to GP on PC or Xbox, they just need to move users from Sony to GP.
That's the thing, MS's endgame won't be not working with indies. They want content of all sizes.
MS's heel turn if they get to be number 1 or simply big enough will be to crank the Game Pass price.
Exactly. Guarantee the same poster wasn't bitching when Sony bought Insomniac and Housemarque and paid square enix for exclusives.
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Yes but artificially keeping GamePass dirt cheap while they subsidize it with enormous profits from Windows, Office, and Azure is also bad. It is basically impossible for anyone but Google, Apple, or Amazon to compete with a loss leader like that -- Google and Amazon are only failing because they don't have the IP... MS obviously has the IP and is building a moat there too.
35% of this list has the potential to be locked away forever on the competitor's devices. So, it is fair to say that Microsoft does have Sony in a bit of a bind here.
loss leading is tech business model 101 for decades, nothing new here.
and by the time the deal is completed next year, MS would have already made some of it back. crazy.
if ms is smart they fully replace the wow dev team, at least its leadership.. the meltdown wow had is a embarasment lol. like how the fuck do you screw up one of the most profitable games in the world the way blizzard did.
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