Fingers crossed the Yakuza games finally get physical releases on Xbox after they leave Game Pass.
Why is that?
I would presume because they want to own a physical release of the game. I'm the same way (not about Yakuza specifically; I don't know if I would actually buy any version of the games considering how I've struggled even to finish Yakuza 0)--I bought a physical release of Halo Infinite despite having Game Pass until halfway through 2023, the same way I (eventually) bought a physical release of Gears 5.
I would presume the same, but after my experience with Rock Band 4 (Oh, you have a physical copy! How nice for you! Now download the whole game from the internet rather than copy from the disc and still require the use of the disc to even play!) I'm just kind of settled on all-digital copies simply to avoid the same outcome plus the extra hassle.
Sure, my experiences with download speeds have been documented and all, and my position on Game Pass is dictated primarily by that, but even so digital-only copies are my primary focus.
So I'm curious if there is more to it than 'wants a physical copy for reasons'.
So, uh... Looks like Microsoft is buying Activision/Blizzard for 70 (!) BILLION dollars. Spencer did say a couple months back that there were re-evaluating their relationship with Activision, I guess that's still technically true lol
That's...a lot. A lot to get through regulator approval, to start.
Were there hints to this? Bethesda (and Zenimax) were looking for buyers, and Microsoft was the most obvious candidate because of their long history (bringing Bethesda to the console space, most obviously), but Activision-Blizzard looking for a buyout? I suppose there were some hints of that?
Assuming this goes through, which is is a big if, what does it mean? Well, Sony's not going to be paying for content exclusivity anymore to start. There's basically a 0% possibility that something like Diablo IV, which is already far, far away as is, gets canceled for Playstation 5 (presumably) releases, for the same reason Psychonauts 2 was in development so long it still game to PS4 (but without a PS5 update). Same goes for other projects. Crash Bandicoot already went multiplatform a few years back. Blizzard will continue to not release games for Mac OS, and everyone will continue to pretend to care. Call of Duty will probably see some unique content on Xbox, as was the case back in Xbox 360, but I have a hard time picturing actual exclusivity the way that has been openly outlined for Starfield and Elder Scrolls going forward, and probably Doom. Maybe that's just a lack of imagination. I'd honestly be surprised if Overwatch 2 was even coming out the way things looked.
As it happens, I have pretty much zero doubt that the current state of Activision-Blizzard as the new EA (i.e. industry cultural pariah) and their well-earned reputation had a serious effect on the price (I can absolutely think of a time not that long ago where the corporation was worth well more than $70 billion). Aside from possibly "being a good deal", that doesn't actually offer much comfort. I guess one could extrapolate that Microsoft would implement your typical post-acquisition of "cleaning house"; in fact, this is one of the things people more regularly shat on Microsoft throughout the 1990s and 2000s for doing, and they built their reputation for, in a different time in the industry. Will that happen? Would it be good a thing? Hard to say. This is, after all, a profit-driven decision--Microsoft just happens to be much more willing and eager to appear transparent in this particular space than, for example, Sony (which is a low bar to cross, for anyone who remembers the Sony of the last few decades), perhaps as a consequence of their own now laughably antiquated legal troubles on the US side (from a time before Apple effectively rewrote the game).
Is it a good idea? I wouldn't think so. But I regularly defer to the seemingly bizarre decisions made by Sony as reflecting rational decision-making informed by things the rest of us wouldn't be privy too; it'd be hypocritical not to say the same about Microsoft, an even bigger, more complex corporate behemoth. Obviously this is directlyrelated to the Xbox Division--though all I can say is, "Huh, guess Microsoft isn't selling off the entire Video Gaming arm when they just spent 70 billion dollars on one of the biggest publisher studios in the world."
As a company, Microsoft is committed to our journey for inclusion in every aspect of gaming, among both employees and players. We deeply value individual studio cultures. We also believe that creative success and autonomy go hand-in-hand with treating every person with dignity and respect. We hold all teams, and all leaders, to this commitment. We’re looking forward to extending our culture of proactive inclusion to the great teams across Activision Blizzard.
Very cool, very cool, how much are Kotick and the other shitheads at the top that enabled a culture of abuse for decades about to make
There is literally no way to make an acquisition without massive pay-outs. The uneducated among us, myself included, might theorize this is why acquisitions happen in the first place, though there's more structurally complexity than that; after all, Microsoft isn't an arm of the United States government, and even if it was, anything remotely resembling "nationalization" is considered a disease worse than the cure by Democratic governments, much less Republican ones.
Microsoft seems committed to buying up all the developers until there's no one left to make PlayStation games except for PlayStation themselves. This can only be good for gamers, and not at all monopolistic.
Microsoft seems committed to buying up all the developers until there's no one left to make PlayStation games except for PlayStation themselves. This can only be good for gamers, and not at all monopolistic.
True. Not at all like when Sony's own acquisitions, which have never done anything but foster creativity and excellence in the video gaming, motion picture, and music production industry.
Ironically, I don't think I disagree with you. I made this same complaint years ago about Disney, but admittedly, most of the argument on these forums was, "Yes, it's a price worth paying for X-Men being in a movie with The Avengers."
Microsoft seems committed to buying up all the developers until there's no one left to make PlayStation games except for PlayStation themselves. This can only be good for gamers, and not at all monopolistic.
Microsoft is likely more interested in the service ecosystem. Why do you think there's so much stuff on gamepass etc.?
It's way more profitable to just run a services organization using their cloud resources than all this hardware stuff. While Stadia etc. flamed out this time, good chance streaming games/content will be much more viable, so locking up IP's and experiences is key. I think Microsoft would much rather not have to deal with the hardware side beyond controllers given how logistically intensive it is and the lockin barriers it creates. While having everyone on your hardware is ideal - that will never happen and that also means you need to support and manufacture everyone's hardware, rather than just pour cash into cloud capacity that can also be used for other things when people aren't gaming on it.
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syndalisGetting ClassyOn the WallRegistered User, Loves Apple Productsregular
Microsoft seems committed to buying up all the developers until there's no one left to make PlayStation games except for PlayStation themselves. This can only be good for gamers, and not at all monopolistic.
To be completely fair, Naughty Dog, Insomniac, Guerilla and many other sony studios weren't exactly created by Sony. Everyone is consolidating and acquiring and standing up their own platforms with monthly payments to get access because MRR is the new valuation indicator and you need lots of content to keep people subscribed.
This is an industrycapitalism-wide issue and I am not entirely sure what to do about it.
SW-4158-3990-6116
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
I mean, when your best argument against "This thing is bad" is "This thing is also bad" perhaps the thing in question is indefensible?
Like, this shit doesn't really affect me in terms of being able to play games. I still have a PC, and Activision puts out even fewer games that I like than Bethesda does. But whatever, we can continue pretending that MS buying Activision is exactly the same as PS buying Housemarque or Insomniac.
Microsoft seems committed to buying up all the developers until there's no one left to make PlayStation games except for PlayStation themselves. This can only be good for gamers, and not at all monopolistic.
To be completely fair, Naughty Dog, Insomniac, Guerilla and many other sony studios weren't exactly created by Sony. Everyone is consolidating and acquiring and standing up their own platforms with monthly payments to get access because MRR is the new valuation indicator and you need lots of content to keep people subscribed.
No, you see, Sony was saving those companies. Just like how they saved Columbia Pictures from the actual corporate menace that was...Coca-Cola.
Though at least this fuss will force people to acknowledge something that they don't want to: Activision-Blizzard is a massive publisher, despite Call of Duty and Diablo surely dying off, at any moment around the corner. Reprehensible behavior doesn't actually correlate with commercial success, even though we wish it did, it just seems to reflect that those responsible for reprehensible behavior and were being rewarded for their profit-making abilities...continue to get rewarded for their profit-making abilities. "Buy outs"--in a less typical sense, since for example Kotick isn't being given a golden parachute, but instead is being subordinated to a new boss (in return for a very large profit margin on his stock, let's assume)--would probably be viciously defended against otherwise.
This is an institutional issue (the word "problem" doesn't seem to do it justice). We knew that when Disney succeeded in buying, what, a third of a global media production, along with two-thirds of movie studios? We overlooked it because, aside from there not being a way to stop it (thank you, Washington), we...what? Wanted the aforementioned X-Men in an Avengers film, and hoped Disney would shutter Fox News because they promised to look out for us (even though they weren't actually buying Newsmax)?
Disney is useful for a different reason--the dust has settled after the years, and if this board is any indication, for the "better." All you need to say is Disney+.
I mean, when your best argument against "This thing is bad" is "This thing is also bad" perhaps the thing in question is indefensible?
Like, this shit doesn't really affect me in terms of being able to play games. I still have a PC, and Activision puts out even fewer games that I like than Bethesda does. But whatever, we can continue pretending that MS buying Activision is exactly the same as PS buying Housemarque or Insomniac.
Sure, like we can pretend Sony wasn't doing this for literally decades, because movies and music aren't video games and, by extension, don't matter? It's the [Xbox] thread, we're only allowed to talk about massive corporate acquisitions that involve Microsoft, or the mods will bring in the hammer.
The only thing I can see about that acquisition is my own selfish side where I can play those games on gamepass so that's cool anyways
That was my greedy take on it too. I'm hoping once the deal closes that Microsoft cleans house a bit and helps the workers there get a less toxic place to work - but I also would love to play World of Warcraft again. I haven't played it since my son was 2ish and he's graduating this year. Having it be included with Game Pass would be awesome.
The only thing I can see about that acquisition is my own selfish side where I can play those games on gamepass so that's cool anyways
That was my greedy take on it too. I'm hoping once the deal closes that Microsoft cleans house a bit and helps the workers there get a less toxic place to work - but I also would love to play World of Warcraft again. I haven't played it since my son was 2ish and he's graduating this year. Having it be included with Game Pass would be awesome.
I'm almost positive they won't put WoW on Game Pass. I'll be happy to be proven wrong but the chance is near zero.
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TexiKenDammit!That fish really got me!Registered Userregular
Maybe this means Overwatch can get regular balances and salvage the game. And yeet Switch players from crossplay.
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syndalisGetting ClassyOn the WallRegistered User, Loves Apple Productsregular
The only thing I can see about that acquisition is my own selfish side where I can play those games on gamepass so that's cool anyways
That was my greedy take on it too. I'm hoping once the deal closes that Microsoft cleans house a bit and helps the workers there get a less toxic place to work - but I also would love to play World of Warcraft again. I haven't played it since my son was 2ish and he's graduating this year. Having it be included with Game Pass would be awesome.
I'm almost positive they won't put WoW on Game Pass. I'll be happy to be proven wrong but the chance is near zero.
small chance they put it on xbox though - would be neat to see how it plays with a controller.
SW-4158-3990-6116
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Also, what is it we plebs can do in protest? Boycott buying games?
Famously effective in the case of Call of Duty.
(Posted because not only is it vaguely pertinent, it's hard to pass on a chance to mock Steam's community causes.)
Joking aside, probably? If we all literally decided not to pay a single cent more for content in Overwatch, it would, almost certainly and probably quickly, kill that franchise. Then we would need to repeat the process for Diablo, World of Warcraft, until the effect cascaded, which probably wouldn't take that much further in this particular situation.
I use Overwatch as an example because it'd be easy for me (someone who used to play the game, and bought a Mercy nendoroid years ago). I've already done that. Viola, boycott. It just so happens that the initial step is a practically herculean commitment from the audience base. Blizzard is useful here: they've been potentially looking down the barrel even before their own torrid scandals broke, since at least as early as them "selling out to the Chicoms"), and they are a organization defined by very specific, and often quite storied, franchises.
Activision has been a publisher for decades. Even in the case of their control of Call of Duty, they would be a lot less vulnerable to the same pressure as I assume. The irony here is, not that many years ago, if you wanted to kill Activision(-Blizzard-King), this is how you would do it. An aggressive takeover by Microsoft, who would surely strip-mine it for anything of use, talent, technology or IP wise, and chuck the husk into a shallow grave afterwards. That doesn't seem to be what people are predicting now, which at least reflects a more sophisticated view of it. How do you "kill" Activision-Blizzard, if that's your intent? Unless you're willing to wait for years, in some slow Konami-esque descent, absorb them into the bigger corporate empire until they are just some arm of that? Is that good enough?
We can't have it both ways. Well, maybe unless we're willing to settle with just Kotick getting off scot free and the bad actors in the middle management being ruined, along with everyone else.
The only thing I can see about that acquisition is my own selfish side where I can play those games on gamepass so that's cool anyways
Well, presumably you're here to purchase* and play video games. It's hard to fault you otherwise.
By the sounds of it, you're not here to consider the plight of labor (which would be admirable if you were), or the fate of your investment portfolio (which would be...less admirable than that), so it's not entirely fair to fault you or anyone else for it.
Also, what is it we plebs can do in protest? Boycott buying games?
They (Actiblizz) would need to make games I was interested in first before that'd do any good...
It really is that straightforward. Financially and commercially, I could not care less about Overwatch (literal clarification: I used to care a lot more)--I've effectively been boycotting the game for ages. I'm guessing Blizzard, a company I fell out of love with about 3 years before everyone else in no small part due to Overwatch, won't be missing me.
On the other hand, I bought Diablo II's remaster. Not completely without controversy, as the relevant thread here would note. So while I have hard time picturing me helping much, I'm certainly not hurting them either.
Short term: financial appraisal and adjustment following the Zenimax acquisition.
Long term: (i.e. why they didn't do it x years ago?) Probably because they couldn't, because Activision-Blizzard wasn't looking to sell, because the price was in relative terms even higher? Even if these aren't exclusively the reasons, you can be darn sure they entered the calculus.
Also, what is it we plebs can do in protest? Boycott buying games?
They (Actiblizz) would need to make games I was interested in first before that'd do any good...
I'm the consumer they were actively pushing away. I've only bought Tony Hawk, Spyro and Crash stuff from them and I think those teams were getting moved to make Call of Duty gun DLC or something.
On the slightly brighter side, at least this means all the harassment stuff has better chance of being dealt without Kotick to sweep it all aside. (It also means Kotick is getting a big payday but let's be honest, he was a long time CEO with a lot of stock options. He was always gonna get a payday before leaving)
It's gonna be wild seeing CoD as an exclusive now. And I don't care what anyone says, MS did not spend $70 billion so they could keep selling games on Playstation. (Unless Sony would let them put Gamepass on Playstation. I'm sure MS would be happy with that)
Now to go finish reading the crazy thread on Reset Era that's gaining 5 pages for every 1 I read.
So, uh... Looks like Microsoft is buying Activision/Blizzard for 70 (!) BILLION dollars. Spencer did say a couple months back that there were re-evaluating their relationship with Activision, I guess that's still technically true lol
That's...a lot. A lot to get through regulator approval, to start.
Were there hints to this? Bethesda (and Zenimax) were looking for buyers, and Microsoft was the most obvious candidate because of their long history (bringing Bethesda to the console space, most obviously), but Activision-Blizzard looking for a buyout? I suppose there were some hints of that?
Assuming this goes through, which is is a big if, what does it mean? Well, Sony's not going to be paying for content exclusivity anymore to start. There's basically a 0% possibility that something like Diablo IV, which is already far, far away as is, gets canceled for Playstation 5 (presumably) releases, for the same reason Psychonauts 2 was in development so long it still game to PS4 (but without a PS5 update). Same goes for other projects. Crash Bandicoot already went multiplatform a few years back. Blizzard will continue to not release games for Mac OS, and everyone will continue to pretend to care. Call of Duty will probably see some unique content on Xbox, as was the case back in Xbox 360, but I have a hard time picturing actual exclusivity the way that has been openly outlined for Starfield and Elder Scrolls going forward, and probably Doom. Maybe that's just a lack of imagination. I'd honestly be surprised if Overwatch 2 was even coming out the way things looked.
As it happens, I have pretty much zero doubt that the current state of Activision-Blizzard as the new EA (i.e. industry cultural pariah) and their well-earned reputation had a serious effect on the price (I can absolutely think of a time not that long ago where the corporation was worth well more than $70 billion). Aside from possibly "being a good deal", that doesn't actually offer much comfort. I guess one could extrapolate that Microsoft would implement your typical post-acquisition of "cleaning house"; in fact, this is one of the things people more regularly shat on Microsoft throughout the 1990s and 2000s for doing, and they built their reputation for, in a different time in the industry. Will that happen? Would it be good a thing? Hard to say. This is, after all, a profit-driven decision--Microsoft just happens to be much more willing and eager to appear transparent in this particular space than, for example, Sony (which is a low bar to cross, for anyone who remembers the Sony of the last few decades), perhaps as a consequence of their own now laughably antiquated legal troubles on the US side (from a time before Apple effectively rewrote the game).
Is it a good idea? I wouldn't think so. But I regularly defer to the seemingly bizarre decisions made by Sony as reflecting rational decision-making informed by things the rest of us wouldn't be privy too; it'd be hypocritical not to say the same about Microsoft, an even bigger, more complex corporate behemoth. Obviously this is directlyrelated to the Xbox Division--though all I can say is, "Huh, guess Microsoft isn't selling off the entire Video Gaming arm when they just spent 70 billion dollars on one of the biggest publisher studios in the world."
As a company, Microsoft is committed to our journey for inclusion in every aspect of gaming, among both employees and players. We deeply value individual studio cultures. We also believe that creative success and autonomy go hand-in-hand with treating every person with dignity and respect. We hold all teams, and all leaders, to this commitment. We’re looking forward to extending our culture of proactive inclusion to the great teams across Activision Blizzard.
Very cool, very cool, how much are Kotick and the other shitheads at the top that enabled a culture of abuse for decades about to make
There is literally no way to make an acquisition without massive pay-outs. The uneducated among us, myself included, might theorize this is why acquisitions happen in the first place, though there's more structurally complexity than that; after all, Microsoft isn't an arm of the United States government, and even if it was, anything remotely resembling "nationalization" is considered a disease worse than the cure by Democratic governments, much less Republican ones.
so i don't know if i every voiced it publicly anywhere, i don't think i did, but i had a theory a while back that MS might try to buy Blizzard. not the whole of Activision-Blizzard, just Blizzard. i thought that maybe Rod Ferguson moved over there in part to see if there was interest and get an idea of what, if any, changes needed to made*. i soured on the theory when Vicarious Visions got rolled into the company, i didn't think Activision would give a prolific support studio alongside such a sizable chunk of the company. and then all the stories off abuse and such came out and it just seemed like they were likely to be seen as radioactive.
but i guess buying the entire company and not just one toxic part of it gets around those issues, to an extent anyway.
*my basis for this was something similar happening before MS bought Nokia. flimsy, and possibly illegal? i'm not sure, but that factor in to me keeping the idea to myself.
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AbsalonLands of Always WinterRegistered Userregular
Pretty much the only opportunity to get all those IPs at a marked-down price for the foreseeable future, I assume. Candy Crush, my dude/tte, Candy Crush.
Also, what is it we plebs can do in protest? Boycott buying games?
They (Actiblizz) would need to make games I was interested in first before that'd do any good...
I'm the consumer they were actively pushing away. I've only bought Tony Hawk, Spyro and Crash stuff from them and I think those teams were getting moved to make Call of Duty gun DLC or something.
They ruined the already niche music rhythm game landscape.
So, uh... Looks like Microsoft is buying Activision/Blizzard for 70 (!) BILLION dollars. Spencer did say a couple months back that there were re-evaluating their relationship with Activision, I guess that's still technically true lol
That's...a lot. A lot to get through regulator approval, to start.
Were there hints to this? Bethesda (and Zenimax) were looking for buyers, and Microsoft was the most obvious candidate because of their long history (bringing Bethesda to the console space, most obviously), but Activision-Blizzard looking for a buyout? I suppose there were some hints of that?
Assuming this goes through, which is is a big if, what does it mean? Well, Sony's not going to be paying for content exclusivity anymore to start. There's basically a 0% possibility that something like Diablo IV, which is already far, far away as is, gets canceled for Playstation 5 (presumably) releases, for the same reason Psychonauts 2 was in development so long it still game to PS4 (but without a PS5 update). Same goes for other projects. Crash Bandicoot already went multiplatform a few years back. Blizzard will continue to not release games for Mac OS, and everyone will continue to pretend to care. Call of Duty will probably see some unique content on Xbox, as was the case back in Xbox 360, but I have a hard time picturing actual exclusivity the way that has been openly outlined for Starfield and Elder Scrolls going forward, and probably Doom. Maybe that's just a lack of imagination. I'd honestly be surprised if Overwatch 2 was even coming out the way things looked.
As it happens, I have pretty much zero doubt that the current state of Activision-Blizzard as the new EA (i.e. industry cultural pariah) and their well-earned reputation had a serious effect on the price (I can absolutely think of a time not that long ago where the corporation was worth well more than $70 billion). Aside from possibly "being a good deal", that doesn't actually offer much comfort. I guess one could extrapolate that Microsoft would implement your typical post-acquisition of "cleaning house"; in fact, this is one of the things people more regularly shat on Microsoft throughout the 1990s and 2000s for doing, and they built their reputation for, in a different time in the industry. Will that happen? Would it be good a thing? Hard to say. This is, after all, a profit-driven decision--Microsoft just happens to be much more willing and eager to appear transparent in this particular space than, for example, Sony (which is a low bar to cross, for anyone who remembers the Sony of the last few decades), perhaps as a consequence of their own now laughably antiquated legal troubles on the US side (from a time before Apple effectively rewrote the game).
Is it a good idea? I wouldn't think so. But I regularly defer to the seemingly bizarre decisions made by Sony as reflecting rational decision-making informed by things the rest of us wouldn't be privy too; it'd be hypocritical not to say the same about Microsoft, an even bigger, more complex corporate behemoth. Obviously this is directlyrelated to the Xbox Division--though all I can say is, "Huh, guess Microsoft isn't selling off the entire Video Gaming arm when they just spent 70 billion dollars on one of the biggest publisher studios in the world."
As a company, Microsoft is committed to our journey for inclusion in every aspect of gaming, among both employees and players. We deeply value individual studio cultures. We also believe that creative success and autonomy go hand-in-hand with treating every person with dignity and respect. We hold all teams, and all leaders, to this commitment. We’re looking forward to extending our culture of proactive inclusion to the great teams across Activision Blizzard.
Very cool, very cool, how much are Kotick and the other shitheads at the top that enabled a culture of abuse for decades about to make
There is literally no way to make an acquisition without massive pay-outs. The uneducated among us, myself included, might theorize this is why acquisitions happen in the first place, though there's more structurally complexity than that; after all, Microsoft isn't an arm of the United States government, and even if it was, anything remotely resembling "nationalization" is considered a disease worse than the cure by Democratic governments, much less Republican ones.
so i don't know if i every voiced it publicly anywhere, i don't think i did, but i had a theory a while back that MS might try to buy Blizzard. not the whole of Activision-Blizzard, just Blizzard. i thought that maybe Rod Ferguson moved over there in part to see if there was interest and get an idea of what, if any, changes needed to made*. i soured on the theory when Vicarious Visions got rolled into the company, i didn't think Activision would give a prolific support studio alongside such a sizable chunk of the company. and then all the stories off abuse and such came out and it just seemed like they were likely to be seen as radioactive.
but i guess buying the entire company and not just one toxic part of it gets around those issues, to an extent anyway.
*my basis for this was something similar happening before MS bought Nokia. flimsy, and possibly illegal? i'm not sure, but that factor in to me keeping the idea to myself.
Not a bad theory in the least. I was looking for hints because, from a inside baseball standpoint, the Zenimax acquisition was fairly choreographed. Bethesda was already in bed with Xbox technologically, and Zenimax as a whole was increasingly defined by, well, technology, that and management of IPs that Microsoft had a particular history too by virtue of the supremacy of Windows. Also, they wanted a buyer (with Sony looking into Starfield exclusivity, on top of what they actually got).
That seemed likes choreographed, at least to me. I remember that era, more than a half-decade ago (I believe, it feels like much longer); the point then was that Microsoft could afford it, but Blizzard wouldn't sell (at least not easily), because they were darlings, and because they were darlings, the industry wouldn't stand for it. The Xbox Division would be dodging Molotov cocktails on campus as feedback. Of course, that was contemporaneous with "The selling-off of the Microsoft Game Studios division is inevitable, buy stock and set your watches to it." Blizzard, very obviously, changed. So did the Xbox division. But I remember the speculation (and I think your theories, if you shared them)--even speculation that Sony might attempt it instead, given their dominant position in the industry, their fascination with MMORPGs, and you know, their whole history of massive corporate acquisitions in the motion picture and music industries (then almost dragged the company under while Playstation buoyed it).
I think my contribution to the argument was limited to "Golly-gee, I sure would like it if World of Warcraft came to Xbox." Not exactly insightful.
Building off my current speculation and that of @Wraith260 in the past.
"Why now?" Well, what's changed in the last ten years that we might overlook? Blizzard was a critically-acclaimed almost exclusively PC-side developer and industry darling that could do no wrong, and nominally independent. Each of those points changed.
And Microsoft became a major publisher for video games on the PC, and not just productivity software, effectively created a cross-platform ecosystem for Xbox in Windows, and then, after experimenting with game streaming for years on mobile, etc., put the subscription model Game Pass into service on both PC and console.
Aside from, "People used to love Blizzard, now they hate it," that alone makes the Activision-Blizzard acquisition make a lot more sense than it would've been in an earlier era. But you could just as easily say, "no one would touch a company this radioactively toxic." I find that dubious, but this is all theory anyway. Just from that standpoint, it makes a lot more sense as to why you'd buy Activision-Blizzard now than Blizzard then.
(I am in no position to begrudge anyone looking forward to a classic cartoon-style series of a classic cartoon-style video game. Though Netflix hasn't had a great run of luck recently, as far as I can tell, but I could just be giving undue weight to Cowboy Bebop's catastrophic collapse.)
I was curious what the actual, well, Penny Arcade comic might have to say about this massive corporate move tomorrow, but then again I checked what I had missed from Monday and it was about blood, feces and urine in pokeballs, so maybe I shouldn't wait with baited breath.
Synthesis on
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augustwhere you come from is goneRegistered Userregular
Man microsoft even paid a premium per share at $95 per share. The stock was worth considerably less yesterday.
Maybe the Bliz/Act board wasn't confident in being able to pull out of the slump any time soon and Microsoft took advantage.
It's not even really a premium. ATVI was higher than $95 just a few months ago. There wasn't really any fundamental reason for the drop in share price besides labor problems at Activision (which would be a non-issue if Microsoft cleans house and does mass layoffs of redundant positions afterwards). The IPs are still untouched, the code is still there, the publishing deals are still signed.
This was Microsoft waiting until there was blood in the streets before buying at a discount.
I found another possible upside. Maybe now all those Activision teams who have been trapped doing support for CoD these many years will finally get to do something else? I'm pretty sure I keep seeing Raven logo's on CoD games, maybe MS will let them out of the CoD mines.
Man microsoft even paid a premium per share at $95 per share. The stock was worth considerably less yesterday.
Maybe the Bliz/Act board wasn't confident in being able to pull out of the slump any time soon and Microsoft took advantage.
It's not even really a premium. ATVI was higher than $95 just a few months ago. There wasn't really any fundamental reason for the drop in share price besides labor problems at Activision (which would be a non-issue if Microsoft cleans house and does mass layoffs of redundant positions afterwards). The IPs are still untouched, the code is still there, the publishing deals are still signed.
This was Microsoft waiting until there was blood in the streets before buying at a discount.
I'd be very surprised if the fiasco didn't effect revenue, ie wow subs dropping off etc. These days the stock prices themselves are directly related to image regardless of revenue...just need to look at tesla for that.
The $95 was also close to their ATH which was very short lived. So it still feels like a discount.
Even their last CoD game did poorly compared to the prior instalments, the player count is way down and that continued revenue through microtransactions is a big deal.
Man microsoft even paid a premium per share at $95 per share. The stock was worth considerably less yesterday.
Maybe the Bliz/Act board wasn't confident in being able to pull out of the slump any time soon and Microsoft took advantage.
It's not even really a premium. ATVI was higher than $95 just a few months ago. There wasn't really any fundamental reason for the drop in share price besides labor problems at Activision (which would be a non-issue if Microsoft cleans house and does mass layoffs of redundant positions afterwards). The IPs are still untouched, the code is still there, the publishing deals are still signed.
This was Microsoft waiting until there was blood in the streets before buying at a discount.
Yeah, I barely understand out large-scale acquisitions work, and even I know that it amounts to a massive bribe of the shareholders (though in "return", it appears Microsoft will also obtain all of the company's cash reserves, as was the case with Mojang). The notion "What, they're paying more than the stock price? If anything it should be less because everyone hates the company!" betrays a misunderstanding of how a bilateral acquisition works, I think.
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I would presume the same, but after my experience with Rock Band 4 (Oh, you have a physical copy! How nice for you! Now download the whole game from the internet rather than copy from the disc and still require the use of the disc to even play!) I'm just kind of settled on all-digital copies simply to avoid the same outcome plus the extra hassle.
Sure, my experiences with download speeds have been documented and all, and my position on Game Pass is dictated primarily by that, but even so digital-only copies are my primary focus.
So I'm curious if there is more to it than 'wants a physical copy for reasons'.
....whoa.
That's...a lot. A lot to get through regulator approval, to start.
Were there hints to this? Bethesda (and Zenimax) were looking for buyers, and Microsoft was the most obvious candidate because of their long history (bringing Bethesda to the console space, most obviously), but Activision-Blizzard looking for a buyout? I suppose there were some hints of that?
Assuming this goes through, which is is a big if, what does it mean? Well, Sony's not going to be paying for content exclusivity anymore to start. There's basically a 0% possibility that something like Diablo IV, which is already far, far away as is, gets canceled for Playstation 5 (presumably) releases, for the same reason Psychonauts 2 was in development so long it still game to PS4 (but without a PS5 update). Same goes for other projects. Crash Bandicoot already went multiplatform a few years back. Blizzard will continue to not release games for Mac OS, and everyone will continue to pretend to care. Call of Duty will probably see some unique content on Xbox, as was the case back in Xbox 360, but I have a hard time picturing actual exclusivity the way that has been openly outlined for Starfield and Elder Scrolls going forward, and probably Doom. Maybe that's just a lack of imagination. I'd honestly be surprised if Overwatch 2 was even coming out the way things looked.
As it happens, I have pretty much zero doubt that the current state of Activision-Blizzard as the new EA (i.e. industry cultural pariah) and their well-earned reputation had a serious effect on the price (I can absolutely think of a time not that long ago where the corporation was worth well more than $70 billion). Aside from possibly "being a good deal", that doesn't actually offer much comfort. I guess one could extrapolate that Microsoft would implement your typical post-acquisition of "cleaning house"; in fact, this is one of the things people more regularly shat on Microsoft throughout the 1990s and 2000s for doing, and they built their reputation for, in a different time in the industry. Will that happen? Would it be good a thing? Hard to say. This is, after all, a profit-driven decision--Microsoft just happens to be much more willing and eager to appear transparent in this particular space than, for example, Sony (which is a low bar to cross, for anyone who remembers the Sony of the last few decades), perhaps as a consequence of their own now laughably antiquated legal troubles on the US side (from a time before Apple effectively rewrote the game).
Is it a good idea? I wouldn't think so. But I regularly defer to the seemingly bizarre decisions made by Sony as reflecting rational decision-making informed by things the rest of us wouldn't be privy too; it'd be hypocritical not to say the same about Microsoft, an even bigger, more complex corporate behemoth. Obviously this is directlyrelated to the Xbox Division--though all I can say is, "Huh, guess Microsoft isn't selling off the entire Video Gaming arm when they just spent 70 billion dollars on one of the biggest publisher studios in the world."
There is literally no way to make an acquisition without massive pay-outs. The uneducated among us, myself included, might theorize this is why acquisitions happen in the first place, though there's more structurally complexity than that; after all, Microsoft isn't an arm of the United States government, and even if it was, anything remotely resembling "nationalization" is considered a disease worse than the cure by Democratic governments, much less Republican ones.
True. Not at all like when Sony's own acquisitions, which have never done anything but foster creativity and excellence in the video gaming, motion picture, and music production industry.
Microsoft is likely more interested in the service ecosystem. Why do you think there's so much stuff on gamepass etc.?
It's way more profitable to just run a services organization using their cloud resources than all this hardware stuff. While Stadia etc. flamed out this time, good chance streaming games/content will be much more viable, so locking up IP's and experiences is key. I think Microsoft would much rather not have to deal with the hardware side beyond controllers given how logistically intensive it is and the lockin barriers it creates. While having everyone on your hardware is ideal - that will never happen and that also means you need to support and manufacture everyone's hardware, rather than just pour cash into cloud capacity that can also be used for other things when people aren't gaming on it.
To be completely fair, Naughty Dog, Insomniac, Guerilla and many other sony studios weren't exactly created by Sony. Everyone is consolidating and acquiring and standing up their own platforms with monthly payments to get access because MRR is the new valuation indicator and you need lots of content to keep people subscribed.
This is an industrycapitalism-wide issue and I am not entirely sure what to do about it.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Like, this shit doesn't really affect me in terms of being able to play games. I still have a PC, and Activision puts out even fewer games that I like than Bethesda does. But whatever, we can continue pretending that MS buying Activision is exactly the same as PS buying Housemarque or Insomniac.
Steam | XBL
it's not april
oh uh wow
well, they had ybarra at blizzard
are we done with "xbox has no games" now?
Hahaha, that's a good one
I doubt we'll ever be done with that!
Steam | XBL
No, you see, Sony was saving those companies. Just like how they saved Columbia Pictures from the actual corporate menace that was...Coca-Cola.
Though at least this fuss will force people to acknowledge something that they don't want to: Activision-Blizzard is a massive publisher, despite Call of Duty and Diablo surely dying off, at any moment around the corner. Reprehensible behavior doesn't actually correlate with commercial success, even though we wish it did, it just seems to reflect that those responsible for reprehensible behavior and were being rewarded for their profit-making abilities...continue to get rewarded for their profit-making abilities. "Buy outs"--in a less typical sense, since for example Kotick isn't being given a golden parachute, but instead is being subordinated to a new boss (in return for a very large profit margin on his stock, let's assume)--would probably be viciously defended against otherwise.
This is an institutional issue (the word "problem" doesn't seem to do it justice). We knew that when Disney succeeded in buying, what, a third of a global media production, along with two-thirds of movie studios? We overlooked it because, aside from there not being a way to stop it (thank you, Washington), we...what? Wanted the aforementioned X-Men in an Avengers film, and hoped Disney would shutter Fox News because they promised to look out for us (even though they weren't actually buying Newsmax)?
Disney is useful for a different reason--the dust has settled after the years, and if this board is any indication, for the "better." All you need to say is Disney+.
Sure, like we can pretend Sony wasn't doing this for literally decades, because movies and music aren't video games and, by extension, don't matter? It's the [Xbox] thread, we're only allowed to talk about massive corporate acquisitions that involve Microsoft, or the mods will bring in the hammer.
That was my greedy take on it too. I'm hoping once the deal closes that Microsoft cleans house a bit and helps the workers there get a less toxic place to work - but I also would love to play World of Warcraft again. I haven't played it since my son was 2ish and he's graduating this year. Having it be included with Game Pass would be awesome.
I'm almost positive they won't put WoW on Game Pass. I'll be happy to be proven wrong but the chance is near zero.
small chance they put it on xbox though - would be neat to see how it plays with a controller.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Famously effective in the case of Call of Duty.
(Posted because not only is it vaguely pertinent, it's hard to pass on a chance to mock Steam's community causes.)
Joking aside, probably? If we all literally decided not to pay a single cent more for content in Overwatch, it would, almost certainly and probably quickly, kill that franchise. Then we would need to repeat the process for Diablo, World of Warcraft, until the effect cascaded, which probably wouldn't take that much further in this particular situation.
I use Overwatch as an example because it'd be easy for me (someone who used to play the game, and bought a Mercy nendoroid years ago). I've already done that. Viola, boycott. It just so happens that the initial step is a practically herculean commitment from the audience base. Blizzard is useful here: they've been potentially looking down the barrel even before their own torrid scandals broke, since at least as early as them "selling out to the Chicoms"), and they are a organization defined by very specific, and often quite storied, franchises.
Activision has been a publisher for decades. Even in the case of their control of Call of Duty, they would be a lot less vulnerable to the same pressure as I assume. The irony here is, not that many years ago, if you wanted to kill Activision(-Blizzard-King), this is how you would do it. An aggressive takeover by Microsoft, who would surely strip-mine it for anything of use, talent, technology or IP wise, and chuck the husk into a shallow grave afterwards. That doesn't seem to be what people are predicting now, which at least reflects a more sophisticated view of it. How do you "kill" Activision-Blizzard, if that's your intent? Unless you're willing to wait for years, in some slow Konami-esque descent, absorb them into the bigger corporate empire until they are just some arm of that? Is that good enough?
We can't have it both ways. Well, maybe unless we're willing to settle with just Kotick getting off scot free and the bad actors in the middle management being ruined, along with everyone else.
Well, presumably you're here to purchase* and play video games. It's hard to fault you otherwise.
By the sounds of it, you're not here to consider the plight of labor (which would be admirable if you were), or the fate of your investment portfolio (which would be...less admirable than that), so it's not entirely fair to fault you or anyone else for it.
They (Actiblizz) would need to make games I was interested in first before that'd do any good...
Steam | XBL
Well, yeah.
PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
It really is that straightforward. Financially and commercially, I could not care less about Overwatch (literal clarification: I used to care a lot more)--I've effectively been boycotting the game for ages. I'm guessing Blizzard, a company I fell out of love with about 3 years before everyone else in no small part due to Overwatch, won't be missing me.
On the other hand, I bought Diablo II's remaster. Not completely without controversy, as the relevant thread here would note. So while I have hard time picturing me helping much, I'm certainly not hurting them either.
Short term: financial appraisal and adjustment following the Zenimax acquisition.
Long term: (i.e. why they didn't do it x years ago?) Probably because they couldn't, because Activision-Blizzard wasn't looking to sell, because the price was in relative terms even higher? Even if these aren't exclusively the reasons, you can be darn sure they entered the calculus.
I'm the consumer they were actively pushing away. I've only bought Tony Hawk, Spyro and Crash stuff from them and I think those teams were getting moved to make Call of Duty gun DLC or something.
It's gonna be wild seeing CoD as an exclusive now. And I don't care what anyone says, MS did not spend $70 billion so they could keep selling games on Playstation. (Unless Sony would let them put Gamepass on Playstation. I'm sure MS would be happy with that)
Now to go finish reading the crazy thread on Reset Era that's gaining 5 pages for every 1 I read.
so i don't know if i every voiced it publicly anywhere, i don't think i did, but i had a theory a while back that MS might try to buy Blizzard. not the whole of Activision-Blizzard, just Blizzard. i thought that maybe Rod Ferguson moved over there in part to see if there was interest and get an idea of what, if any, changes needed to made*. i soured on the theory when Vicarious Visions got rolled into the company, i didn't think Activision would give a prolific support studio alongside such a sizable chunk of the company. and then all the stories off abuse and such came out and it just seemed like they were likely to be seen as radioactive.
but i guess buying the entire company and not just one toxic part of it gets around those issues, to an extent anyway.
*my basis for this was something similar happening before MS bought Nokia. flimsy, and possibly illegal? i'm not sure, but that factor in to me keeping the idea to myself.
They ruined the already niche music rhythm game landscape.
Not a bad theory in the least. I was looking for hints because, from a inside baseball standpoint, the Zenimax acquisition was fairly choreographed. Bethesda was already in bed with Xbox technologically, and Zenimax as a whole was increasingly defined by, well, technology, that and management of IPs that Microsoft had a particular history too by virtue of the supremacy of Windows. Also, they wanted a buyer (with Sony looking into Starfield exclusivity, on top of what they actually got).
That seemed likes choreographed, at least to me. I remember that era, more than a half-decade ago (I believe, it feels like much longer); the point then was that Microsoft could afford it, but Blizzard wouldn't sell (at least not easily), because they were darlings, and because they were darlings, the industry wouldn't stand for it. The Xbox Division would be dodging Molotov cocktails on campus as feedback. Of course, that was contemporaneous with "The selling-off of the Microsoft Game Studios division is inevitable, buy stock and set your watches to it." Blizzard, very obviously, changed. So did the Xbox division. But I remember the speculation (and I think your theories, if you shared them)--even speculation that Sony might attempt it instead, given their dominant position in the industry, their fascination with MMORPGs, and you know, their whole history of massive corporate acquisitions in the motion picture and music industries (then almost dragged the company under while Playstation buoyed it).
I think my contribution to the argument was limited to "Golly-gee, I sure would like it if World of Warcraft came to Xbox." Not exactly insightful.
"Why now?" Well, what's changed in the last ten years that we might overlook? Blizzard was a critically-acclaimed almost exclusively PC-side developer and industry darling that could do no wrong, and nominally independent. Each of those points changed.
And Microsoft became a major publisher for video games on the PC, and not just productivity software, effectively created a cross-platform ecosystem for Xbox in Windows, and then, after experimenting with game streaming for years on mobile, etc., put the subscription model Game Pass into service on both PC and console.
Aside from, "People used to love Blizzard, now they hate it," that alone makes the Activision-Blizzard acquisition make a lot more sense than it would've been in an earlier era. But you could just as easily say, "no one would touch a company this radioactively toxic." I find that dubious, but this is all theory anyway. Just from that standpoint, it makes a lot more sense as to why you'd buy Activision-Blizzard now than Blizzard then.
Maybe the Bliz/Act board wasn't confident in being able to pull out of the slump any time soon and Microsoft took advantage.
Is it, though? It's Netflix after all.
(I am in no position to begrudge anyone looking forward to a classic cartoon-style series of a classic cartoon-style video game. Though Netflix hasn't had a great run of luck recently, as far as I can tell, but I could just be giving undue weight to Cowboy Bebop's catastrophic collapse.)
I was curious what the actual, well, Penny Arcade comic might have to say about this massive corporate move tomorrow, but then again I checked what I had missed from Monday and it was about blood, feces and urine in pokeballs, so maybe I shouldn't wait with baited breath.
Cash is cheap right now and it behooves every megacorp to buy things of significant long term value before that changes.
It's not even really a premium. ATVI was higher than $95 just a few months ago. There wasn't really any fundamental reason for the drop in share price besides labor problems at Activision (which would be a non-issue if Microsoft cleans house and does mass layoffs of redundant positions afterwards). The IPs are still untouched, the code is still there, the publishing deals are still signed.
This was Microsoft waiting until there was blood in the streets before buying at a discount.
Steam ID: Good Life
I'd be very surprised if the fiasco didn't effect revenue, ie wow subs dropping off etc. These days the stock prices themselves are directly related to image regardless of revenue...just need to look at tesla for that.
The $95 was also close to their ATH which was very short lived. So it still feels like a discount.
Even their last CoD game did poorly compared to the prior instalments, the player count is way down and that continued revenue through microtransactions is a big deal.
Yeah, I barely understand out large-scale acquisitions work, and even I know that it amounts to a massive bribe of the shareholders (though in "return", it appears Microsoft will also obtain all of the company's cash reserves, as was the case with Mojang). The notion "What, they're paying more than the stock price? If anything it should be less because everyone hates the company!" betrays a misunderstanding of how a bilateral acquisition works, I think.
There were probably a lot easier ways for that to happen, hah.