Microsoft buys Activision-Blizzard

super_furry

Huge but not the earth-shattering deal it could/would have been a decade ago. Blizzard/Activision are a company very much in decline and living off past glories.

That said, Call of Duty; Diablo; Overwatch and Tony Hawks going Xbox exclusive is huge. Would really widen the already Japanese/American style game split that appears to be happening on Playstation and Xbox.

Penn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118494864#Comment_118494864

Agreed, but Microsoft aren't going to pay 70bn just to skim a % of the sales of the games on other consoles. The aim is to pull games from those consoles over to Xbox due to sales of consoles, peripherals and subscriptions, as well as then the full % of microtransaction/battle pass sales etc, as well as eliminate the profits your competitors would have gotten from those games (again, through the % Sony would get of sales, microtransations, battlepasses).

If the games were still going to come out on PS/Switch etc, Microsoft would have been far better paying much less to have the games on Gamepass Day One.

Niska

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118494898#Comment_118494898

Would be a good launch pad if they're looking to move GamePass further into the mobile market

Plus, does this mean Microsoft now own the word 'Saga'?

TitianGerm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118494927#Comment_118494927

Vanguard, Battlefield and Cold War were all on Sony's top selling games of 2021 list for PS5.

These games are massive to the casual gamer, just like FIFA/Madden/NBA and if you can't play these games on a console then they won't buy that console.

super_furry

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118494462#Comment_118494462

It'll take time to work him out of there but there's no doubt in my mind that he'll be gone.

Makes Phil Spencer's comments about him and Activision seem even more pertinent.

Sonics2k

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118494913#Comment_118494913

Pretty high chance that Kotick would have stayed on no matter who bought them out, he'll probably still take on a very nice and disgracefully large retirement package in a year or so, especially with the clauses in the contracts.

AB is certainly not going to improve just from lawsuits, this company is rotten to the core. Hell, Jennifer Oneal was made Co-head of Blizzard after a lot of the shite at hit the fan and they still didn't pay her as much as Mike Ybarra and she still faced all kinds of madness in there.

Kiith

Not sure how i feel about this. One one hand, MS have been absolutely killing it for a while now, and offer an insanely good service through game pass. On the other hand, i hate exclusivity in any form, and think its a **** practice. (though lets not pretend Sony and Nintendo aren't just as guilty of that). Hopefully this will help give Activision the enema that its needed for a while now. And not just from the utterly toxic workplace, but from the problems with the actual games as well.

Blizz have shown massive levels of incompetence with Warcraft for the last few years. Overwatch and its sequel/dlc/whatever it is seems to be a mess as well. Warcraft Reforged was a joke, Starcraft 2 is well past it, and no idea what to expect with Diablo 4.

super_furry

Hang on...... does this mean Blizzard games on the Steam Deck? Because if I can play Starcraft on the jacks then my life will finally be complete.

SuperBowserWorld

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118494800#Comment_118494800

Doh! Ok. I did a very uninformed google.

Not my kinda games anyway 😀

Unless ... they buy Nintendo or some of those lovely PlayStation first party games ..

CptMonkey

This is bad for gamers in the long road imo. The more stuff that goes exclusively to Xbox or another platform is going to mean higher costs in the long run.

I don’t see Sony being able to pay this kind of money for studios.

Blazer

You'll definitely see PS versions of games..MS is not going to cut itself out of a significant portion of the marketplace just to sell more xboxes. And they're definitely taking a hit on the series X console..for 500 that machine is damn good and even before covid there was no way to have a pc match it pricewise compared to previous consoles.

My betting is they will either put the games up on Gamepass first for exclusiveness for a few months and then a general release or else simultaneous release but have it as part of gamepass for xbox users.

Pretty sure PS5 owners will start baulking at paying 80e for a game when they see xbox users getting it for free etc.

Or else MS will release the games across all platforms and bring it to Gamepass a year down the line. That way they get both revenue streams.

Xbox owning Crash Bandicoot is mad

Here's a sort of schema to help us through future Microsoft acquisitions.

Step 1:

Microsoft acquires a company.

"Welp, they surely won't be Xbox/PC exclusive... wo... won't they?"

Step 2:

Microsoft announces that games are exclusive.

"Whatever, I never liked those games anyway."

Rinse and repeat.

😁

Exclamation Marc

I imagine the revenue from COD on PlayStation is relatively enormous and it would seem a massive gamble if COD was made exclusive and cut off that revenue stream. Sure, you'll have a proportion of users who'll pick up an XBox but I doubt that would really cover what would be lost from the users who don't?

Or is it, and I suspect is more like the case, simply anti-competitive to try to strangle Sony on one end? in any event, I don't think Sony will be overly concerned about the move as they'll back their first party library, existing large studio third party providers and indie studios cover enough ground.

Varik

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118494927#Comment_118494927

They're not paying the share price for them, it was a set $95 per share so a very large premium over what the shares current were and at a level comparable to the 2021 max leading off boosted covid sales. Fell off after that with expectation of sales and then the metoo stuff hit so they've been 50s/60s for a the last while.

super_furry

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118495114#Comment_118495114

No chance that spend that money to just hand Sony the biggest annual franchise in gaming. That said, I don't think it will be an immediate drop-off. You won't see Warzone disappear although it may get slower updates than PC/Xbox and I wouldn't be surprised if this year's CoD is so far down the track that it gets a Playstation release, but I'd put money on it being the last one.

BlitzKrieg

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118495054#Comment_118495054

Oh yeah I forgot, Microsoft will have battle.net and all that rubbish under their control too.

SuperBowserWorld

Nintendo looking like the cool punk indie kid these days. 🙃

TitianGerm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118495114#Comment_118495114

Microsoft won't be releasing these games on a Sony machine after the cooling off period. What they may do is offer a Game Pass Apo on the PlayStation if Sony agree to one.

Microsoft don't care how many Xboxes they sell they want to ramp up subscription services because it's guaranteed regular future income and that beats one off as hoc sales.

CatInABox

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118495146#Comment_118495146

Yes, much like the Bethesda deal, anything that has a contract signed will still appear on PS5. Anything that doesn't, won't.

The one kinda exception seems to be the Elder Scrolls Online, which is still getting expansions and the like.

With that in mind, I think all ActiBliz games will soon be exclusive to MS, with the exception of COD Warzone. I'd expect a big bunch of in game bonuses for game pass subscribers though, one's that are very visible in game, so that PS5 users get it advertised to them non stop.

I also believe that Kotick will be pushed out. Won't be outright fired, but will most likely be told that his future lies elsewhere, unless he's content to just suck down a paycheck for doing nothing.

The Raging Bile Duct

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118495119#Comment_118495119

I've played the occasional bit of CoD for maybe an hour when they went free on Plus, some Crash Bandicoot and that's about it from the main list of games I've seen. I've never played a Blizzard game in my life. The acquisition of those franchises makes no odds to me as they're not games I like but they are a massive loss for Sony. The Bethesda acquisition was more of a stinger for me tbh.

All the titles coming out of those studios are going to be Xbox/Windows exclusives. I don't know why people are hoping that they're not.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118495220#Comment_118495220

I'm not hoping. I'm just dealing with reality in an honest way.

The Raging Bile Duct

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118495233#Comment_118495233

Oh, I know you're not hoping for a positive outcome for Sony - I'm more talking about some of the other posts on here.

Retr0gamer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118495129#Comment_118495129

They aren't buying Acti/Blizzard to sell games.

They are buying them to sell their XBox and Gamepass platforms which are far more lucrative than any sales of games from Sony.

If you think Sony are too big to keep games away from their platform you really aren't understanding how important those platforms are to MS over title sales.

Dravokivich

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118495106#Comment_118495106

Long term Microsoft's plan is to transition to cloud services for gaming. Nearly if not all IPs they own on gamepass are available to play via streaming instead of locally and they are aiming to make it as accessible as possible so it won't be locked to a device. They are doing what google didn't understand was needed with Stadia and that's invest in development studios that'll commit to their platform. I see it as no more trivial than games historically only running on Windows OS's.

As someone else has mentioned before, I'd expect Gamepass to also be available on Playstation at some point.

super_furry

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118495220#Comment_118495220

I don't think they'll necessarily be Xbox/PC exclusives, they'll be Game Pass exclusives and Microsoft would probably be open to bringing Game Pass to Playstation but there's no way Sony would let that fly right now so they'll be de facto Xbox/PC exclusives.

Retr0gamer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118495118#Comment_118495118

Better pick up Uncharted 4 before they patch the crash bandicoot section to feature Way of the Warrior instead.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118495245#Comment_118495245

I own all three consoles. I mean I guess it works better for me to have more games on GamePass, but I'm not locked out of anything.

The Raging Bile Duct

I can't see Gamepass coming to Playstation in this generation. It would be the ultimate humiliation for Sony.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118495248#Comment_118495248

This chart might help illustrate this. Microsoft aren't just after the console market, they are after all of the pie.