Activision Blizzard bought by Microsoft

[Azzhat]

Yeah, so Activison Blizzard was bought out by Microsoft for 67.8 billion dollars. Rather surprising, and kind of ironic. Ironic because the Xbox was mocked for so long for having no noteworthy exclusives. Now they have quite a few they can make exclusive. 

[Gukahn]

Microsoft is becoming the Disney of gaming industry ?

What do they own now?
Zenimax, which includes bethesda

Bungie

Ensemble Studios, so Age of empires

Lionhead Studios tho i don't think they really use both franchises rn.

Probably a couple of other game studios i don't know about and now they own Blizzard too.. Xbox starting to look weirdly sexy this year ?

[Grey Cloud]

Our first drama of the year.

[Storms of Superior]

I'm still not going back to WoW.

 

[Windu191]

16 minutes ago, Gukahn said:

Microsoft is becoming the Disney of gaming industry ?

What do they own now?
Zenimax, which includes bethesda

Bungie

Ensemble Studios, so Age of empires

Lionhead Studios tho i don't think they really use both franchises rn.

Probably a couple of other game studios i don't know about and now they own Blizzard too.. Xbox starting to look weirdly sexy this year ?

 

Microsoft doesn't own Bungie anymore I think. They split from Microsoft back in 2007, but Microsoft kept ownership of the Halo franchise and founded 343 Industries to develop future Halo titles after Halo: Reach (2010).

 

Also, Don't forget Obsidian Entertainment, which was acquired by Microsoft in 2018. 

Edited January 18, 2022 by Windu191

[̖̪.]

17 minutes ago, Gukahn said:

Microsoft is becoming the Disney of gaming industry ?

What do they own now?
Zenimax, which includes bethesda

Bungie

Ensemble Studios, so Age of empires

Lionhead Studios tho i don't think they really use both franchises rn.

Probably a couple of other game studios i don't know about and now they own Blizzard too.. Xbox starting to look weirdly sexy this year ?

 

Microshit now:

 

CD Red should join them with Cringepunk 2077

 is 50$ good price for CD Red?...

 

tbh. idc. about Zeni, or Blizzard games or any other from Devs list they have...

 

Microshit just likes to own shit...

They buy dying Developers... 

[Pamatronic]

Its not like Blizzard has had much more room to sink even further. And As much as we all like to cry about big companies, Microsoft is probably one of the (slightly) less evil ones.
So I guess this isn't even really a bad thing.

[Guest]

Consider the positive feedback on new games.

 

If a company does not have margins to fail it may have serious stops in case of a bad game.

If a company is a colossus like Microsoft, then you can survive with ease a bad game and continue doing good games in parallel.

 

And, no, companies do not do intentionally bad games. Unless it is some new sort of marketing that is beyond my intelligence.

[̖̪.]

36 minutes ago, CPU said:

And, no, companies do not do intentionally bad games. Unless it is some new sort of marketing that is beyond my intelligence.

 

Its not about making good or bad games...

its about making MONEY...

 

25 Years ago games were rly small, sure... there was some bigger and smaller devs but most of them were making games because 

they wanted to either learn, make something creatinve, show their art etc.

 

Today big dev-s together with my fav. Dev ( Ubisoft ) are making games JUST TO MAKE MONEY

 

Best example is Bobby Kotick from Blizzard...

 He don't give a fuck about his employees or players that play Blizzard games

 

All he cares about are MONEY

 

They just trying to release games and make money...

 How else u can explain Cringepunk???

 How else u can explain 20$ Power Armor for Failout??? 

 

and tbh. i'm ok with Microtransactions... i even paid TONS of Money to Kakao just for outfits for my character in BDO

 i wasted like 200$ just for different look...

 

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler

 

 

CPU...

i agree that ppl who makes games WANT to make GOOD games...

 

But ppl who PAY FOR MAKING Games, they dont give a fuck...

 They care about making product that will make more and more money...

 

 

Thats why last few years i spend mostly time on small Devs...

 Like FableTale Games or FlyingAnvil 

 

 1) Small Devs don't ruin thier games for money

 2) They make games because they want to 

 3) They are full Programmers / Artists... no stupid fucks from marketing etc...

[landess]

Speculation.

 

Not just the subject of topic replies but also one of the driving forces in business.

 

Seems all these AAA game developers did the hard work of becoming an 'Industry Name'.

 

Now the beasts are 'too big' to feed, selling out and enjoying that cash seems reasonable.

 

There is a built-in base of gamer's guaranteed to install future software code and I'm not surprised that Microsoft is making their next move. Windows is already a 'service' now.

[27X]

8 hours ago, CPU said:

Consider the positive feedback on new games.

 

If a company does not have margins to fail it may have serious stops in case of a bad game.

If a company is a colossus like Microsoft, then you can survive with ease a bad game and continue doing good games in parallel.

 

And, no, companies do not do intentionally bad games. Unless it is some new sort of marketing that is beyond my intelligence.

 

Companies make bad games all the time. People buy bad games all the time. The 90s was the last time independent studios could make 100% their own product and IP. As soon as devs decided to choose the chase of big money from the movie industry's model, the notion of games being of quality derived from solely passion and hard work was over.

 

The movie model is based on cult of personality and the concept of mass momentum based on marketing trends and requires absurd margins to maintain momentum, and because of this model you're going to get bad games all the time. and you do. Not subjectively bad, but objectively bad.

Edited January 19, 2022 by 27X

[Kpnut]

7 hours ago, Gukahn said:

Microsoft is becoming the Disney of gaming industry ?

What do they own now?
Zenimax, which includes bethesda

Bungie

Ensemble Studios, so Age of empires

Lionhead Studios tho i don't think they really use both franchises rn.

Probably a couple of other game studios i don't know about and now they own Blizzard too.. Xbox starting to look weirdly sexy this year ?

As has already been said they don't own Bungie. But they are releasing Fable 4 so they are still using one of Lionhead's two franchises. I would like another Black and White game though, they were pretty fun.

[HighwayDio]

Honestly, after they bought Zenimax/Bethesda and seeing how nothing has changed, Microsoft more then likely bought Activision just for exclusives sake. They cant live off Halo forever honestly and that's one powerful thing Sony has had over Microsoft was the better exclusives.

I doubt much will change considering nothing at Bethesda has changed, since their still using that God awful wonderful engine.

[Papitas]

3 hours ago, 27X said:

 

Companies make bad games all the time. People buy bad games all the time. The 90s was the last time independent studios could make 100% their own product and IP. As soon as devs decided to chose the chase of big money from the movie industry's model, the notion of games being of quality derived from solely passion and hard work was over.

 

The movie model is based on cult of personality and the concept of mass momentum based on marketing trends and requires absurd margins to maintain momentum, and because of this model you're going to get bad games all the time. and you do. Not subjectively bad, but objectively bad.

 

Funny thing, I see both industries heading to a big crash. 

 

Hopefully this will work like the last time the videogame industry crashed; when we went from the Atari 2600 to the NES. 

 

As someone else put that out: the canary resurrected as a velociraptor. 

[Captain Cobra]

May Activision Blizzard burn in hell for the rest of this eternity, and all of the next.

[Celedhring]

9 hours ago, HighwayDio said:

Honestly, after they bought Zenimax/Bethesda and seeing how nothing has changed, Microsoft more then likely bought Activision just for exclusives sake. They cant live off Halo forever honestly and that's one powerful thing Sony has had over Microsoft was the better exclusives.

I doubt much will change considering nothing at Bethesda has changed, since their still using that God awful wonderful engine.

You mean...BUGSTHEDA, right? lol..they had to jerk off a patch to correct their bugs in their latest version.  The only reason Skyrim and Fallout 4 are still going strong is because of the modding community not those fucktards.  Bugstheda should be paying obeisance and kowtowing to every modder who made those two games better and keeping those Bugstheda morons afloat for decades. 

 

[fishburger67]

1 hour ago, Celedhring said:

You mean...BUGSTHEDA, right? lol..they had to jerk off a patch to correct their bugs in their latest version.  The only reason Skyrim and Fallout 4 are still going strong is because of the modding community not those fucktards.  Bugstheda should be paying obeisance and kowtowing to every modder who made those two games better and keeping those Bugstheda morons afloat for decades. 

 

Gee wiz and how do you really feel??

[FauxFurry]

19 hours ago, Gukahn said:

Microsoft is becoming the Disney of gaming industry ?

What do they own now?
Zenimax, which includes bethesda

Bungie

Ensemble Studios, so Age of empires

Lionhead Studios tho i don't think they really use both franchises rn.

Probably a couple of other game studios i don't know about and now they own Blizzard too.. Xbox starting to look weirdly sexy this year ?

They own King so they don't just take the cake, they take they entire sweet shop. 

Candy Crush skins for Halo when?

[Rayblue]

Late stage capitalism.

[Guest]

They agreed to buy Activision-Blizzard, still has to get approved, like NVIDIA with ARM

 

But let's not go "PlayStation is over party" just yet, not that I'm a Sony Pony

 

If that means that Overwatch and other Battle.net exclusives come to Steam then good, I'm one of those "don't want another launcher on my PC" types

[Nonsequitur]

This makes Microsoft the #3 game company in the world.

They have army's of coders and testers - the little companies like volition, etc. don't have a change anymore. 

This is a death sentence to the small developer. The mid-sized will slowly be devoured. Eventually, we will all be playing Microsoft Flight Suite they never got rid of from Win 3.X making it an overstuffed piece of fluff that always took up too much space.

[Vader666]

On 1/19/2022 at 1:23 AM, HighwayDio said:

after they bought Zenimax/Bethesda and seeing how nothing has changed

 

They got added to the game pass.

And that's the reason they bought Activision.

In addition to getting King and with that a foot into mobile gaming.

 

I belive Microsoft is going to push much more into the games as a service buissnes or subscribtion based services.

Which means that even windows will be "subscribtion only" at some point in time.

 

[Guest]

On 1/18/2022 at 9:06 AM, Gukahn said:

Microsoft is becoming the Disney of gaming industry ?

What do they own now?
Zenimax, which includes bethesda

Bungie

Ensemble Studios, so Age of empires

Lionhead Studios tho i don't think they really use both franchises rn.

Probably a couple of other game studios i don't know about and now they own Blizzard too.. Xbox starting to look weirdly sexy this year ?

You forgot inXile entertainment

I played a lot of games from them. ?

[steelpanther24]

The acquisition shouldn't happen, but it will.   That is because we have things that regulators can understand

(warning boring econ stuff)

Spoiler

https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/gaming-market-105730

 

While we have a congress that has little to no understanding of things that have come about since the 80s

(warning, a too real characterization of Congressional hearing on GameStop

 

Spoiler

 

 

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Vader666 said:

 

They got added to the game pass.

And that's the reason they bought Activision.

In addition to getting King and with that a foot into mobile gaming.

 

I belive Microsoft is going to push much more into the games as a service buissnes or subscribtion based services.

Which means that even windows will be "subscribtion only" at some point in time.

 

Isn't that what the new generation of consoles is about. Stream your game so you have no physical copy but are tied to a plan of sorts?

In a sense i was hot for getting a console, but besides not able to obtain one, it seems that especially XBOX seems to push the install little on the console and get the rest later on demand when you needed it. Thats why you have the entry console with no disc option.
So you are right. In a sense. You will buy the game through XBOX and have no copy like on Steam and downloaded when you actually want to play it.

It may not fully this generation but surely with the next.