Microsoft to buy Activision Blizzard

Is isn't it sort of obvious. Microsoft is going to try and put the Playstation down.
I'm not saying they will... but they have a better chance of pulling that off today then they did yesterday.

Starfield exclusive, Elder Scrolls 6... almost for sure exclusive. Now add on the next Call of duty after the next one... a house cleaning at blizzards and a relaunch of Overwatch as Overwatch 2 (xbox exclusive) Diablo 4 is scheduled for 2023, expect them to drop the PS4. Tony Hawk... exclusives. Crash Bandicoot and Spyro exclusives (hey even consoles need some good kid stuff).

I also find it hard to understand 70 billion for EA... but for that price people thinking Microsoft is just planning to let EA function as they have been and produce all their content for Sony are dreaming. This isn't as much about Microsoft buying EA as how much content Sony just got locked out of in 2023 and beyond.
Why do people keeps saying EA? I'm picking on you, but it seems a lot of people in this thread have done it.
Blizzard fans should be thankful it's not Electronic Arts buying out Blizzard/Activision. Everything EA touches turns to dust or poop or poop dust.
EA doesn't have the money to buyout a company like Activision. Not even close. They're not the monster they used to be.
 
So there's a bunch of talk about this perhaps going to GamePass? $10 a month for a full library? I'm sort of split on that. I mean, its cheaper than a Warcraft sub as it is...
 
Blizzard fans should be thankful it's not Electronic Arts buying out Blizzard/Activision. Everything EA touches turns to dust or poop or poop dust.
EA isn't big enough for this one. I would be completely un-surprised if EA was in M$ cross hairs for the next big buy. EA has been slowly trying to right their ship very recently, but they aren't swimming in goodwill either. They also have some strife among their lazy, spoiled, disgusting employees that think 20 hours is "too long" for a work day.
 
I do not see anything good coming from this future gaming monopoly.

Not liking it either. I freaking hate Amazon, but I always end up using it because of limited choices. I don't see this looking any different.

At this point Tencent and Sony are the only companies bigger than M$. I mean, there's nothing like a monopoly here but it's starting to look like the film industry. The same motion picture industry went so creatively stagnant that streaming is starting to devour its intestines. Never mind that the software industry as a whole seems to think that subscription product is the only way things will be done in the future. I don't know about this new world where nobody owns anything.

Automakers want to rent you your fucking air conditioning for fuck's sake.
 
Sony interactive entertainment is only valued at 13 billion. MS could easily buy it is Sony was willing to sell it. If MS slapped down 100 billion on the table who know what Sony might do.
If Sony loses Playstation that's basically the end of Sony imo. IIRC it is their cash cow product.

Sony had better step up and work on their in house studios and make some purchases themselves because now MS has ample studios to outpace them. Naughty Dog, Sony Santa Monica, etc. can only get you so far when the game releases are 3 years apart. MS can release a AAA game every quarter at this point. If they want to and go full exclusive for everything then yeah Sony is in trouble. Especially nextgen, they have an install base this time around but that can shrink quickly.
 
If Sony loses Playstation that's basically the end of Sony imo. IIRC it is their cash cow product.

Sony had better step up and work on their in house studios and make some purchases themselves because now MS has ample studios to outpace them. Naughty Dog, Sony Santa Monica, etc. can only get you so far when the game releases are 3 years apart. MS can release a AAA game every quarter at this point. If they want to and go full exclusive for everything then yeah Sony is in trouble. Especially nextgen, they have an install base this time around but that can shrink quickly.
Their electronics segment is just as big as their gaming segment. A 25% loss in net revenue isn't going to break Sony Corp, in my opinion, but it will certainly change what they look like.
 
That depends on how you look at it. From the immediate perspective this would be a good thing since Activation Blizzard has more people that hate them than love them. Microsoft will absolutely fund the living shit out of their games, but this comes at a cost. The whole point is to get gamers onto the Xbox platform. That means for the near future that new Call of Duty games won't be on Playstation. At some point Mac OSX ports of World of Warcraft will end since it's also not Xbox. Future World of Warcraft ports will be made to work on gamepads, which you can take that what you will but again Xbox. Linux gaming will have an impossible time installing these games as at some point they'll be exclusive to the Xbox GamePass store. Or at least getting Linux gamers banned for finding creative ways to install games off GamePass.

To me it seems that Microsoft is pulling a Disney and just buying as much IP as they can to feed their Xbox platform. This won't always include PC as I believe the union of Windows PC and Xbox is temporary until Microsoft brings Xbox back to the forefront of gaming. Once that's achieved we'll be left behind... again.
Xbox is important, but never more important than Windows. MS goal is the metaverse and they will need PCs and Xbox talking to each other to achieve that. The Xbox gamepass gives users a reason to keep using Windows. I don't see myself using another operating system when I have an Xbox inside my PC.

Linux, Mac OSX etc are competitors and seek to take users from MS. I don't see why MS has to play footsie with them. Apple new chips and funky GPU support is a PITA for game developers. The best experience for MS developed games is on a Windows PC. Would you take a Porsche to a Nissan dealership for maintenance?
 
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Huh? Where the hell you get that from???

Microsoft Market Cap: 2.35 Trillion / $168 Billion in revenue
Tencent Market Cap: 559.36 Billion / $20 Billion in Revenue
Sony Group Market Cap: 156.64 Billion / $81 Billion in revenue

Sony and Tencent are bigger in the games industry, but not in tech as a whole.
 
My only wish is that we get back some of the old IP that was in limbo due to the Activision-id Software divorce. I'd love to be able to buy a digital copy of Heretic II on GOG, for example.
 
So with the HUGE news of Microsoft buying out Activision / Blizzard, do you think the next expansion gets delayed, due to Microsoft maybe wanting to put it on pause and review it to make it better? Or is it just on autopilot and still coming anyways nearly on time?

Also the release date for the 9th expansion, should be this Fall 2022, if it follows the path all previous 8 expansions took, which was always a 2 year release window like clockwork, all WoW expansions have a release date of 2 years between expansions, every one of them. Now maybe not exactly 24 months apart, but some being 22 months, others being 26 months, but in general every 2 years a new expansion released.

If things weren't rocky at Blizzard, and normal times, the 9th expansion would have had a release between Oct. 2022 - Jan. 2023. Do you think this still happens? or it gets delayed to like Spring 2023?
 
Xbox one always online and no resale 2.0. Get everyone hooked on a subscription service where you don’t own the games, all the revenue and no worries of losing $ from sales of used games. Good deal now but what about down the road when Game pass is $30 a month when they own a majority of the game publishers?
 
Xbox one always online and no resale 2.0. Get everyone hooked on a subscription service where you don’t own the games, all the revenue and no worries of losing $ from sales of used games. Good deal now but what about down the road when Game pass is $30 a month when they own a majority of the game publishers?
It is bound to go up in price. I see Game pass ultimate as a lost leader atm. They have to be losing money on it at $15 a month. That $15 a month gives you Xbox gold also. It cost money to run all the servers and bandwidth. Each subscription is potentially over 100 games in lost sales. Not to mention they must be fronting a lot of money to 3rd party devs to be on game pass.
 
Huh? Where the hell you get that from???

Microsoft Market Cap: 2.35 Trillion / $168 Billion in revenue
Tencent Market Cap: 559.36 Billion / $20 Billion in Revenue
Sony Group Market Cap: 156.64 Billion / $81 Billion in revenue
I would go on a rant about how market cap is driven by speculation, hype, and has almost no substance behind it these days.... I was referring to their gaming units though.

What really impresses me about MS though is that I was reading they actually have a trillion greenskins on hand to throw at acquisitions. That company... Damn...
 
Why do people keeps saying EA? I'm picking on you, but it seems a lot of people in this thread have done it.

EA doesn't have the money to buyout a company like Activision. Not even close. They're not the monster they used to be.
Oh at this rate they will all be known as Mega game corp in a few years. :) lol Ya no idea why I typed EA.
 
I would go on a rant about how market cap is driven by speculation, hype, and has almost no substance behind it these days.... I was referring to their gaming units though.
I think it could be exagerated a quick survey of our days to days consumptions and looking at the top stock by market cap and those at the bottom, would easily show an immense correlation between stock market and substance. (I am not sure how speculation could not be a giant part of the stock market and it obviously always been, has part of the game is about actualising in today dollar all the future profit of a company).

If one would ask people that say to predict in the next 50 year's which company will have made the most profit, multiplied by a risk scoring points system of them simply going irrelevant and not working, I suspect for all of them many of company they would name are currently at the top of stock market and none at the bottom.
 
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I'm surprised MS hasn't gobbled up EA yet, their sport franchises alone would've made an acquisition worth it.
 
I would go on a rant about how market cap is driven by speculation, hype, and has almost no substance behind it these days.... I was referring to their gaming units though.

What really impresses me about MS though is that I was reading they actually have a trillion greenskins on hand to throw at acquisitions. That company... Damn...
Last report I saw said Microsoft only had $150B in liquid assets, with $43B of that being in cash.
 
Xbox one always online and no resale 2.0. Get everyone hooked on a subscription service where you don’t own the games, all the revenue and no worries of losing $ from sales of used games. Good deal now but what about down the road when Game pass is $30 a month when they own a majority of the game publishers?
That is a possibility, but I'm not sure how likely that scenario is in practice. Streaming music and video work because the very nature of the technology (play anywhere you have an internet connection) gives them an advantage; Game Pass does have streaming in its Ultimate tier, but it's currently more of a download service chained to Microsoft platforms. It'll make more sense if and when you can game almost anywhere with minimal lag.
 
That is a possibility, but I'm not sure how likely that scenario is in practice. Streaming music and video work because the very nature of the technology (play anywhere you have an internet connection) gives them an advantage; Game Pass does have streaming in its Ultimate tier, but it's currently more of a download service chained to Microsoft platforms. It'll make more sense if and when you can game almost anywhere with minimal lag.
Seem to be talking about 2 different thing, you can be always online, no resale 2.0, monthly fee and have a local console (we already have this I think with Xbox gold pass or what not) and streaming witch is related but different.
 
I'm overall happy with this, Blizzard and Activision are both sitting on mountains of viable IP, and doing almost nothing with the bulk of it. Diablo Immortal has hit major regulatory hurdles in their target launch country, Diablo 4 is behind schedule, WoW while still, a juggernaut is not in a good place, the CoD franchise is struggling. Leadership over at A/B has gotten weak and their ideas stagnant for years and they have been more than happy to kick the can down the road. I mean what was the last Blizzard title that you sat down, played through, and thought "That was fucking awesome!" I can only see better things coming from this because A/B was running itself into a hole while its leadership counted down the days to their retirement.

Aside:
Please take note of my use of the word "better", not good or great.
While I am sure Microsoft will put the resources and people in place to do what it aims to do, at the end of the day they are still a corporate juggernaut and they will make development decisions with the same goals that A/B had just with a more refined formula and larger financial backing. But that also means they expect larger returns, I am sure when they crunched the numbers they determined how long they expected to get their full returns on this and I would guess they don't expect it to be that long.
 
Not at all. COD is top in sales consistently yearly.
But active player count then drops like a rock, they aren't able to keep their engagement numbers where they want them, they blame cheaters and bots (which in this case I believe is actually accurate) for driving the bulk of the player base away. This is where I think Microsoft will have some good things, their resources for anti-cheat, and hacking detection, and blah blah blah are remarkably good. I am hoping that with their focus on gaming and such Microsoft will spend some time working on their VM sandbox infrastructure. In their server environments, Microsoft and Nvidia have gotten the vGPU performance damned near-native, 90+% in most cases, if they could refine that and get AMD onboard and get it into the 95+% range it would be more than viable to have their windows games running inside a sandboxed VM using their own virtualized driver environment independent of the actual OS running it. This would make cheating and developing cheats much much harder for online-based games, though at the cost of a slight increase in requirements.
 
If they could overhaul World of Warcraft in a way that will somehow appeal to me so I can stop looking for other games to replace it with, that'd be great.
 
Xbox one always online and no resale 2.0. Get everyone hooked on a subscription service where you don’t own the games, all the revenue and no worries of losing $ from sales of used games. Good deal now but what about down the road when Game pass is $30 a month when they own a majority of the game publishers?

Well. You probably won’t agree with me. But with all this there is absolute value in game pass especially when you buy all your passes during holiday sale and stack up for 3 years. I literally paid less than half the retail cost for game pass ultimate codes and have 3 years. I think it was price of less than 4 games with discount. So the value is there if you get them on sale. I bought 6 six month passes for 180.
 
Well. You probably won’t agree with me. But with all this there is absolute value in game pass especially when you buy all your passes during holiday sale and stack up for 3 years. I literally paid less than half the retail cost for game pass ultimate codes and have 3 years. I think it was price of less than 4 games with discount. So the value is there if you get them on sale. I bought 6 six month passes for 180.
Yeah, lots of places list Game Pass as a ridiculous value overall. I'm keeping my eye on it.
 
But active player count then drops like a rock, they aren't able to keep their engagement numbers where they want them, they blame cheaters and bots (which in this case I believe is actually accurate) for driving the bulk of the player base away. This is where I think Microsoft will have some good things, their resources for anti-cheat, and hacking detection, and blah blah blah are remarkably good. I am hoping that with their focus on gaming and such Microsoft will spend some time working on their VM sandbox infrastructure. In their server environments, Microsoft and Nvidia have gotten the vGPU performance damned near-native, 90+% in most cases, if they could refine that and get AMD onboard and get it into the 95+% range it would be more than viable to have their windows games running inside a sandboxed VM using their own virtualized driver environment independent of the actual OS running it. This would make cheating and developing cheats much much harder for online-based games, though at the cost of a slight increase in requirements.
Disagree, its a combination of shitty patching policies that ultimately destory the 'fun' of a game due to lazy development and money, and the hyper focus on graphics draining resources from every other aspect.

Just ran into this channel and he is a little memey for me but he lays it out fairly well, and covers things I've been saying for years.

Patches destroying everything


The Graphics problem
 
Disagree, its a combination of shitty patching policies that ultimately destory the 'fun' of a game due to lazy development and money, and the hyper focus on graphics draining resources from every other aspect.

Just ran into this channel and he is a little memey for me but he lays it out fairly well, and covers things I've been saying for years.

Patches destroying everything


The Graphics problem

I sort of agree with him but still sort of don't he makes a lot of good points but I like a shifting meta in online games otherwise everybody just does the same thing all the time and it gets stale fast, but yeah I'm still butt hurt over Anthem I actually liked that game and miss it.
 
I sort of agree with him but still sort of don't he makes a lot of good points but I like a shifting meta in online games otherwise everybody just does the same thing all the time and it gets stale fast, but yeah.
The point is they shift the meta in the laziest and most damaging way by just nerfing old metas. Frankly I find it stale, rather than find ways to adapt or develop an 'off' meta, its just 'old meta is dead, new meta is xyz' usually requiring some kind of purchase to take full advantage of the new meta. It is so boring I cant even muster the will to participate in those titles anymore.

It has dumbed down gamers to an insane degree as well, just a bunch of lemmings following the meta.
 
The point is they shift the meta in the laziest and most damaging way by just nerfing old metas. Frankly I find it stale, rather than find ways to adapt or develop an 'off' meta, its just 'old meta is dead, new meta is xyz' usually requiring some kind of purchase to take full advantage of the new meta. It is so boring I cant even muster the will to participate in those titles anymore.

It has dumbed down gamers to an insane degree as well, just a bunch of lemmings following the meta.
Yeah, there is that too, it's a shitty tightrope. But I think my original point still stands CoD players drop off pretty quickly, regardless of the reasons why it's not a good sign. Initial sales are good but it's player engagement that brings in the money because an engaged player buys DLC and skins and blah blah blah, and while great sales will cover the development costs it doesn't bring in the kind of revenue that keeps shareholders happy. Microsoft is big enough that this gives them leeway, they are so disgustingly big that they can easily tie in other metrics and methods to show shareholders how the player base is providing them real income bonuses in other areas without relying on the traditional methods mentioned in those videos which are blatantly problematic. Doesn't mean they won't do skins and DLC and loot boxes and whatever new crap they do come up with it just means their jobs aren't dependent on them. And yes I very much agree that graphics hurt more games than they help.
 
No, it’s a great deal if you like enough of the games offered. I used some bing rewards to play Forza Horizon 4, tried a couple other games too. Unfortunately I had a bunch of the better games in Steam already. For many it is a great deal. Just don’t see it staying that cheap.
 
I would have to imagine that Sony Interactive Entertainment is worth significantly more than $68.7 billion.
seems this is hitting sony hard, might not be worth that 68B now...

Microsoft Deal Wipes $20 Billion Off Sony's Market Value in a Day
https://www.bloombergquint.com/technology/sony-drops-9-6-in-wake-of-microsoft-activision-deal

1642622449176.png
 
seems this is hitting sony hard, might not be worth that 68B now...

Microsoft Deal Wipes $20 Billion Off Sony's Market Value in a Day
https://www.bloombergquint.com/technology/sony-drops-9-6-in-wake-of-microsoft-activision-deal

View attachment 434113
This was expected, Sony is a gaming juggernaut and Microsoft is tired of nipping at their heels for scraps.
Sony only really has the console market, but Sony is not selling nearly as many consoles as they predicted mostly because they aren't getting the supply they initially contracted, in either event it's going to rebound it's more a correction than anything else and has as much to do with delays with a bunch of long-awaited PS5 games as it does the Microsoft news.
 
seems this is hitting sony hard, might not be worth that 68B now...

Microsoft Deal Wipes $20 Billion Off Sony's Market Value in a Day
https://www.bloombergquint.com/technology/sony-drops-9-6-in-wake-of-microsoft-activision-deal

View attachment 434113
Yeah, I wouldn't want to be Sony. The market has shifted away from a hardware IP centric model to a content delivery model. Sony is still stuck firmly in the hardware model.

Even their film IP is treated similar, despite the silly money they can make by licensing their IP to Marvel they still dick around with the idea that its 'their brand' and control that matter.
 
seems this is hitting sony hard, might not be worth that 68B now...

Microsoft Deal Wipes $20 Billion Off Sony's Market Value in a Day
https://www.bloombergquint.com/technology/sony-drops-9-6-in-wake-of-microsoft-activision-deal

View attachment 434113

This was expected, Sony is a gaming juggernaut and Microsoft is tired of nipping at their heels for scraps.
Sony only really has the console market, but Sony is not selling nearly as many consoles as they predicted mostly because they aren't getting the supply they initially contracted, in either event it's going to rebound it's more a correction than anything else and has as much to do with delays with a bunch of long-awaited PS5 games as it does the Microsoft news.

So what you're saying is, buy buy buy!?
 
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