Microsoft buys Activision/Blizzard for $70B

Worgen

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Whatever, just wash your hands.
CoD is a yearly franchise, with a massively popular F2P BR game stitched onto it.
I am really curious to see what MS would do with COD.
 

Fallen Soldier

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How about I dont care about any consoles?

The last Activision game I played was Diablo 3. With friends. I convinced them not to play it anymore because it wasn't great
Well good for you then. I don’t care if you don’t care about any consoles. I was only giving scenarios as to how bad this could be. I frankly don’t give two fucks about Activision aside from Crash and Spyro.
 
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hanselthecaretaker

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Pretty much what Bob said.

CoD is a yearly franchise, with a massively popular F2P BR game stitched onto it.

World of Warcraft isn't anywhere near the heights it used to be, but its monthly subscription must still rake in a pretty penny.

Hearthstone releases another expansion seemingly every other week, which surely results in a surge of new premium card pack purchases.

Overwatch skins and events are still insanely popular, even if the game is on content life-support until the sequel comes out.

But I think what everyone is sleeping on, is King and their mobile games. My mother in law, and my mum both never play games, but both of them actively play Candy Crush. Mobile games attract the whole other half of the population who would never even consider sitting in front of an Xbox. According to wikipedia, as of 2018, Candy Crush had earned $3.8B by itself.

The power of monetisation.

And now we can also add NFT’s to the list of crap they’ll use to syphon money out of their victims’ customers’ credit cards.
 
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Fallen Soldier

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What pretty funny about this buy out is the fact Activision also planned on buying Rare way back, now their joining them under the Microsoft umbrella.
 

gorfias

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Typo there. Should be "billion". I know, when you start throwing that kind of money around, it stops making sense as a concept to regular people.
Wow!
And the byline: " Mobile is the fastest growing segment of the video game market. "


By accident, while looking at this deal, I've been looking at Game Pass and I really think I see more of the long game. This isn't about Consoles anymore. It's about content. I'm old so I've been collecting games for so long I have 100s of games. And I sweat about the day I'll lose some (PS3 increasingly be emulated, but when my 2 PS3 consoles die, its gonna be a ***** for me). But the future? Were I to be hitting my early teen years today? I wouldn't bother with collections. Streaming is only going to get better.

This kinda happened before in the early 1990s. Hardware was where it was at. Now the profit margins in hardware are small. Content and services are where it is at, regardless of what hardware you use to enjoy that content.

And Microsoft just bought a ton of content.
 

Hawki

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I am really curious to see what MS would do with COD.
Nothing?

I'm not being snarky, I'm just not sure what they'd (want to) do differently. However one feels about CoD, one can't deny its cultural and financial success. I'm not sure where CoD could go new in terms of setting (in that we've had past, present, and future warfare), and if there's a hunger to shake up the gameplay, I haven't seen it. Maybe give the teams some breathing room, but apart from that?

The irony is that for a company that now owns FPS IPs such as Halo and Doom, Microsoft's bought a franchise that probably eclipses both of them combined (in sales at least).
 

Hawki

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For your viewing (dis)pleasure.
 

Worgen

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Whatever, just wash your hands.
Nothing?

I'm not being snarky, I'm just not sure what they'd (want to) do differently. However one feels about CoD, one can't deny its cultural and financial success. I'm not sure where CoD could go new in terms of setting (in that we've had past, present, and future warfare), and if there's a hunger to shake up the gameplay, I haven't seen it. Maybe give the teams some breathing room, but apart from that?

The irony is that for a company that now owns FPS IPs such as Halo and Doom, Microsoft's bought a franchise that probably eclipses both of them combined (in sales at least).
Maybe, but its still possible they will mix up the formula or at least stop doing the yearly cycle and allow for a game to sit for a bit and really gain a base. Thats the fun thing, this is something new so we can speculate all we want about the possibilities that could happen since this shakes things up.
 

Fallen Soldier

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Nothing?

I'm not being snarky, I'm just not sure what they'd (want to) do differently. However one feels about CoD, one can't deny its cultural and financial success. I'm not sure where CoD could go new in terms of setting (in that we've had past, present, and future warfare), and if there's a hunger to shake up the gameplay, I haven't seen it. Maybe give the teams some breathing room, but apart from that?

The irony is that for a company that now owns FPS IPs such as Halo and Doom, Microsoft's bought a franchise that probably eclipses both of them combined (in sales at least).
My hope is that they do something about the yearly release schedule. Maybe give the studios who usually work on Call of Duty some breathing room to make their own stuff. Of course, I expect nothing to change. Believe it or not Treyarch used to make good Spider-Man games back in the day. Now all they make is Black Ops.
 
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laggyteabag

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Believe it or not Treyarch used to make good Spider-Man games back in the day. Now all they make is Black Ops.
Aside from the whole sexual assault thing, the biggest sin of Activision over the past few years, is just their constant effort to funnel any and all talent into the Call of Duty machine, or shutting them down entirely.

I cannot believe that Activision let Toys for Bob create two excellent remasters for Crash and Spyro, then a full-blown sequel for the former, before deciding they should now exclusively support Warzone.

I think just before the acquisition, the only projects that Activision were working on, were CoD, and whatever Blizzard were up to. All of their other IPs were on ice.
 

bluegate

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I cannot believe that Activision let Toys for Bob create two excellent remasters for Crash and Spyro, then a full-blown sequel for the former, before deciding they should now exclusively support Warzone.
But come on, Platformers are games that sell only once, with a live service game you get to entice customers continuously!

Look at all that Fortnite Money Epic is making.
 
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BrawlMan

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I cannot believe that Activision let Toys for Bob create two excellent remasters for Crash and Spyro, then a full-blown sequel for the former, before deciding they should now exclusively support Warzone.
Actually the The Crash Remastered Trilogy was done Vicarious Visions. Crash Team Racing: Nitro-Fueled was developed by Beenox. Toys only did Crash Bandicoot 4 in terms of things related to the franchise.
 

Fallen Soldier

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Aside from the whole sexual assault thing, the biggest sin of Activision over the past few years, is just their constant effort to funnel any and all talent into the Call of Duty machine, or shutting them down entirely.

I cannot believe that Activision let Toys for Bob create two excellent remasters for Crash and Spyro, then a full-blown sequel for the former, before deciding they should now exclusively support Warzone.

I think just before the acquisition, the only projects that Activision were working on, were CoD, and whatever Blizzard were up to. All of their other IPs were on ice.
Activision used to publish some pretty good games way back before they went all in on Call of Duty. Transformers, Spider-Man, Prototype, even Crash Bandicoot and Spyro. Heck they even published Sekiro. Now they’ve just the Call of Duty machine.