Microsoft buys Activision-Blizzard

[Ambrose Burnside]

Well fuck me.

[Ambrose Burnside]

https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2022/01/18/ ... ft-gaming/

[Mavy]

that's nuts. MS realised they can't beat Sony on numbers so they just go off and create a whole new set of numbers! It's really incredible what they're doing with game pass.

I guess Sony doesn't care about crash and Spyro anymore but it's still mind boggling to think MS now own them

[Madmya]

Fucking hell, this is getting ridiculous

[Twiztid Elf]

Absolutely huge news.
COD eventually being exclusive WILL hurt Sony. And with MS already having Elder Scrolls....
But for me personally, I don't play ActiBlizz games anyhow. The wake for Starcraft and Warcraft was years back.

[Twiztid Elf]

Heh. The image on their own announcement. 4 Blizz games, 1 Acti, and 1 King.
Overwatch - Dead.
Diablo - who knows? Lets see how much damage immortal does to the franchise when it comes out. Can 4 save it?
COD - Will always be a monster, but is in decline and will likely never be what it once was.
WOW - Serious decline. Will never again be what it was.
Candy Crush - ugh, whatever.
Starcraft - Dead.

[klee123]

This is crazy.

Potentially COD being taken off the PS ecosystem.

[Ambrose Burnside]

One thing that's undeniable, Microsoft are serious about being major players in gaming. In the PC space, consoles AND mobile.

Interesting to see what they do in the mobile space. The Surface Duo has been positioned as a business phone, but if they look at broadening that to appeal to gamers I'd be keen. I commute a lot. CoD mobile is big, combining that (and everything else) with a powerful dual screen phone with all the advantages of Xbox Live, Game Pass etc? Yes.

[Froggy]

Fuck read this last night and then the power instantly sent out in my suburb such was the tactical nuke of this. Anyone who thinks cods not becoming a Xbox exclusive is dreaming, for 69 billion they are gonna exclusive the shit out of everything they can eventually. This makes Game Pass a must have now, I'm with Twisted, haven't bought their games for years but hey if it's on Game Pass I'll get back into some of them. I need to look at the full list of what IPs are effected here.. didn't see this coming after Bestheda.

[Gamma]

This could lead to another anti-trust case, between Bethesda and Activision MS must almost have a monopoly on shit games by now.

[pilonv1]

Game Pass is about to get even better value, especially if the Blizzard stuff ends up on PC Game Pass.

[Hercy]

I wonder if there's already a big price increase incoming for Australia. Based on the US/UK price ours should already be $21 per month but it's only $16. Surely these big acquisitions will mean that Microsoft will jack up the US/UK price soon.

It will be a big shock for those of us who got in on the $5 a month deals prepaid for 3 years, which are expiring soon.

[Ambrose Burnside]

This could lead to another anti-trust case, between Bethesda and Activision MS must almost have a monopoly on shit games by now.

[flipswitch]

The last Activision game I bought was the new Crash title. Besides that I haven't touched any of their games( have no interest) in years.

[guttermouth]

I wonder who's next on their list.......

Konami.....???

[Ambrose Burnside]

In before Sega rumours

[Candy Arse]

Sega, Capcom, Konami IP....Nintendo?

[Ambrose Burnside]

A big one that's not on Game Pass (yet?) is Ubisoft.

[Mavy]

You'd think Sega would be a no brainer unless their books just don't balance. Or maybe the only way to buy them is a hostile takeover. Sega's Market Cap is under $4B, EA's is under $40B, Take 2's under $20B. Could have had all three and some money left over for a new graphics card.

Reminds me so much of Disney's buyout of Fox. They just wanted X-Men and some content for D+.

Really would like Ubisoft in games pass though but not interested in paying for their pass separately.

[guttermouth]

A big one that's not on Game Pass (yet?) is Ubisoft.

It was announced last week that Ubisoft+ is coming to the xbox, but will be a separate from gamepass and have its own fee.

[t0mby]

Heh. The image on their own announcement. 4 Blizz games, 1 Acti, and 1 King.
Overwatch - Dead.
Diablo - who knows? Lets see how much damage immortal does to the franchise when it comes out. Can 4 save it?
COD - Will always be a monster, but is in decline and will likely never be what it once was.
WOW - Serious decline. Will never again be what it was.
Candy Crush - ugh, whatever.
Starcraft - Dead.

Out of those games I haven't played CoD since the original Modern Warfare back in 2007-2008 and haven't played StarCraft since I was PC gaming early 2000s so none of their games bother me. Tony Hawk would be the only Activision game I've played.

Fuck read this last night and then the power instantly sent out in my suburb such was the tactical nuke of this. Anyone who thinks cods not becoming a Xbox exclusive is dreaming, for 69 billion they are gonna exclusive the shit out of everything they can eventually. This makes Game Pass a must have now, I'm with Twisted, haven't bought their games for years but hey if it's on Game Pass I'll get back into some of them. I need to look at the full list of what IPs are effected here.. didn't see this coming after Bestheda.

No way, MS are set to make more money by keeping the game multiplatform, it's no different to them owning Bethesda which they said games would still be available on all consoles. It's financial suicide to stop all the revenue coming in. All they need to do is release a week later on other consoles to get a few people jump over.

[Ambrose Burnside]

No way, MS are set to make more money by keeping the game multiplatform, it's no different to them owning Bethesda which they said games would still be available on all consoles. It's financial suicide to stop all the revenue coming in. All they need to do is release a week later on other consoles to get a few people jump over.

You must have missed this:

Following months or speculation, Microsoft definitively confirmed on Sunday that Bethesda’s eagerly anticipated Starfield will be exclusive to platforms that support Xbox Game Pass.

https://www.videogameschronicle.com/new ... clusivity/

Games like Deathloop came out on PlayStation because of existing agreements before the buyout (it's not even on Xbox!), but going forward they're going Xbox/PC exclusive. I expect CoD etc to be no different.

[Mavy]

They originally said they were going to make it a game by game assessment regarding exclusivity. i.e Cherry pick.

But if there's money to be made releasing it on PlayStation then why not. It's probably only gonna be the new IPs with a large amount of buzz around them that will be exclusive as they'll bring in new customers.

I see these purchases as MS ensuring the games are released on Xbox rather than ensuring they're not released on PlayStation.

[Ambrose Burnside]

The way i look at is that if releasing your own games on competing platforms made so much sense, then exclusives wouldn't be a thing.

One of the biggest criticisms of Xbox has been a lack of exclusives outside Halo/Forza/Gears, and now that they own Activision-Blizzard (and Bethesda), it's suddenly better for them to continue to have no exclusives and release the games they own and spent a shitload for on their competitor's machine? Which has all the exclusives?

Meanwhile Spiderman etc can stay exclusive to PlayStation?

[Mavy]

Yeah though not every game needs to be exclusive. This just increases the number of possible exclusives they'll have at the ready.

Don't worry about Spiderman, just wait till MS buys Sony.