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Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard to Bring the Joy and Community of Gaming to Everyone, Across Every Device

TheLostSwede said:
In this case, it seems to be a mercy killing.
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yes, I agree with this, M$ should have held out for a lower share price honestly. cause Activision is crashing and burning of late, I actually don't see this becoming profitable for M$, Diablo 4 doesn't look impressive imo, too many indie games of th same genre have even surpassed D3 in quality, Warcraft 3 reforged was an absolute joke treatment of one of the greatest games ever made, WoW is crashing and burning hard and fast thanks to superior FFXIV, CoD sales won't last forever, I think that base post-covid will actually surprise the industry a lot, because even those types of players wake up one day and decide life is short and they want some variety. overwatch never even made a dent in the e-sports arena, in fact last I heard it had to cancel events.

honestly the only thing that might bring activision back is maybe like a Starcraft 3 rts and warcraft 4 rts set in a new story/realm but with references to the older games as a mythology so to speak. starcraft 2 co-op was amazing, but they never had enough maps for it, and they never allowed modding for making maps... I don't know the company has been overrated for a very long time now.

windwhirl said:
I'd bet the games would be made available through the Microsoft Store. And only through there.
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all activision blizzard games on xbox game pass possibly too? still 95 billion... seems like a huge mistake imo. i bet they lose a lot of money on this in ten years.
 
Ravenas said:
I don’t like Microsoft buying up a bunch of IPs so they can load literally every game in to game pass “games as a service”.
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I don't mind multiplayer titles being service since the servers for hosting the matches need to be maintained. Similarly to how we rent courts against a fee for sports like tennis/badminton/basketball/soccer/football. I do agree with you that single player titles shouldn't be a service. I bought Prototype (a 14 year old game) recently off Steam for like 3$. I have a lot of memories playing it. I don't want to buy a 2022 single player campaign game and have it disappear on me in 14 years.

Ravenas said:
It’s pushing the market, rather than the market deciding naturally it wants to go there.
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The market is going there naturally in my opinion. What are you going to do with a multiplayer title if the servers hosting its games don't exist? I do think a middle ground can be reached though. Let's take the example of Halo Infinite. Campaign + Multiplayer can stay on Gamepass for 2 years. And if anyone wants to play Infinite's single player campaign in 2025 they can pay for only the campaign and play it. Multiplayer will be discarded as the servers move on to the next Halo game. Is this not what is happening? Or do you wish that multiplayer games gave you the ability to host your own servers?

I am not very knowledgeable about all this since I am the only one in my friend/family circle who plays video games so I focus exclusively on single player campaigns.
 
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The Wall Street Journal reported that, according to sources familiar with the plan, Kotick will be leaving the company once the Microsoft acquisition is complete. Let's hope this sticks

Bobby Kotick, Activision’s longtime CEO, is expected to leave after the deal closes, according to people familiar with those plans. Microsoft had said in its announcement Tuesday that Mr. Kotick “will continue to serve as CEO of Activision Blizzard,” and that after the deal closes “the Activision Blizzard business will report to Microsoft gaming chief Phil Spencer. ” But the companies have agreed that he will depart once the deal closes, the people said. - The Wall Street Journal Jan. 18, 2022
 
Naito said:
The Wall Street Journal reported that, according to sources familiar with the plan, Kotick will be leaving the company once the Microsoft acquisition is complete. Let's hope this sticks

Bobby Kotick, Activision’s longtime CEO, is expected to leave after the deal closes, according to people familiar with those plans. Microsoft had said in its announcement Tuesday that Mr. Kotick “will continue to serve as CEO of Activision Blizzard,” and that after the deal closes “the Activision Blizzard business will report to Microsoft gaming chief Phil Spencer. ” But the companies have agreed that he will depart once the deal closes, the people said. - The Wall Street Journal Jan. 18, 2022
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leaving with a golden parachute I imagine too. lol

it won't matter if they change who is at the helm, their offerings just aren't good enough to compete anymore. I guess they can try their hand at some new IP's, but eh that's really really hard to pull off. that is one thing Sony is an expert at, M$ could try to model Sony on this front, but something tells me they won't pull it off based on history.

take god of war on pc now for example. massive massive margins on overwhelm pos reviews on steam. M$ just has not been able to pull that off for a single player game, and this is a 4 year old Sony game, lol
 
blanarahul said:
I don't mind multiplayer titles being service since the servers for hosting the matches need to be maintained. Similarly to how we rent courts against a fee for sports like tennis/badminton/basketball/soccer/football. I do agree with you that single player titles shouldn't be a service. I bought Prototype (a 14 year old game) recently off Steam for like 3$. I have a lot of memories playing it. I don't want to buy a 2022 single player campaign game and have it disappear on me in 14 years.



The market is going there naturally in my opinion. What are you going to do with a multiplayer title if the servers hosting its games don't exist? I do think a middle ground can be reached though. Let's take the example of Halo Infinite. Campaign + Multiplayer can stay on Gamepass for 2 years. And if anyone wants to play Infinite's single player campaign in 2025 they can pay for only the campaign and play it. Multiplayer will be discarded as the servers move on to the next Halo game. Is this not what is happening? Or do you wish that multiplayer games gave you the ability to host your own servers?

I am not very knowledgeable about all this since I am the only one in my friend/family circle who plays video games so I focus exclusively on single player campaigns.
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At what point was the market “naturally” going there? I don’t remember MS picking up moderate amounts of subscribers until they purchased Bethesda and then pairing that with a service that looks ridiculously cheap when compared to an Xbox Live subscription alone.

How many subscribers would they get minus Bethesda and minus Activision, and if Xbox didn’t require a subscription to play games online (subscription to play online is already a horrible proposition).

The actual Game Pass service is pushed so much when purchasing an Xbox it’s almost as if you didn’t know there was another option.

The PC storefront is pathetic in its current state. Many of the games have bugs at launch which aren’t present on Steam. Graphic APIs have no access to the executables because they are hidden behind the garden. The features are minimal at best, among those are modding and many many more.

I never said Subscription based games shouldn’t be allowed, but I am against forcing the entire market by buying developers and publishers out so they are forced to comply and convince customers it’s what they should do as well.
 
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MarsM4N said:
Death: $252.244.488

It's absolutely disgusting how money circulates in the upper sphere. :shadedshu:
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Kotick could retire in multi-million mansion with a large sum in his bank still, and take that 252 million parachute, and divide it equally among all 9800 activision employees, for a one time bonus of 27 grand for each employee. that would allow everyone to buy a brand new 23 grand toyota corolla hybrid and give them reliable transportation for next 15 years while helping environment (just as a random example)

and Kotick would still be able to live a very comfortable multi-millionaire lifestyle on top of that.

what a ******* joke this world we live in is. lol, oh well. mother Earth will have the last laugh within two decades, wait and see. :)
 
lynx29 said:
Kotick could retire in multi-million mansion with a large sum in his bank still, and take that 252 million parachute, and divide it equally among all 9800 activision employees, for a one time bonus of 27 grand for each employee. that would allow everyone to buy a brand new 23 grand toyota corolla hybrid and give them reliable transportation for next 15 years while helping environment (just as a random example)

and Kotick would still be able to live a very comfortable multi-millionaire lifestyle on top of that.

what a ******* joke this world we live in is. lol, oh well. mother Earth will have the last laugh within two decades, wait and see. :)
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The mega rich don't give a fuck about no one but themselves. Between them all they could probably solve most poverty problems on this planet.
 
Tigger said:
The mega rich don't give a fuck about no one but themselves. Between them all they could probably solve most poverty problems on this planet.
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or at least put more money into RND to help solve climate issues, if nothing else.
 
lynx29 said:
or at least put more money into RND to help solve climate issues, if nothing else.
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They don't care. Musk is in the works to build himself and his rich buddies a new place on Mars leaving this dead husk of a planet for us plebs. Reminds me of the movie Elysium.
 
Good. I hate how Activision and Blizzard force everyone to use Battle.net for all their games.

Maybe now their games will be listed on other clients.
 
Regeneration said:
I hate how Activision and Blizzard force everyone to use Battle.net for all their games.
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Why? I've never had a problem with the Battle.NET client.
 
Regeneration said:
I prefer to have more options like Steam, Epic Games, Amazon then just Battle.net.
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Well, if this deal proceeds you'll likely not have to worry about Battle.net "for too long".

I imagine Microsoft is impatient to make it all exclusive to Xbox and Microsoft Store anyway.
 
windwhirl said:
Microsoft Store anyway.
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You see, now that I wouldn't mind! Most of the time updating programs that have been downloaded and installed from the Windows Store is so easy and quick that I have to wonder why other developers don't adopt a similar way of doing things. Even the largest program that I have (iTunes, don't ask) updates in mere seconds as versus anything else that takes forever (comparatively speaking, of course).
 
trparky said:
You see, now that I wouldn't mind! Most of the time updating programs that have been downloaded and installed from the Windows Store is so easy and quick that I have to wonder why other developers don't adopt a similar way of doing things. Even the largest program that I have (iTunes, don't ask) updates in mere seconds as versus anything else that takes forever (comparatively speaking, of course).
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Eh, an amount of people don't like it because it's walled off and is kinda a ghost program. You know you downloaded it, you know it's in your storage, but you can not touch it because it's in a system protected area and on top of that it's encrypted (or so I've heard).
 
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Yeah, but Microsoft has updating programs from the Windows Store down to a freakin' science. As far as I can tell, it does what's commonly referred to as a delta patch where it examines what you already have and only downloads the changed parts whereas most other update routines requires a download of the whole freakin' package.

These developers really need to start understanding that not all of us have superfast Internet connections with unlimited data caps. Granted, I have unlimited data and 100 Mbps downstream to my house but not everyone has the luxury of living within 800 feet of an AT&T uVerse lawn fridge (VRAD). I have my Internet provided by two VDSL2 lines bonded together to provide 100 Mbps downstream.
 
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windwhirl said:
Eh, an amount of people don't like it because it's walled off and is kinda a ghost program. You know you downloaded it, you know it's in your storage, but you can not touch it because it's in a system protected area and on top of that it's encrypted (or so I've heard). That also means things like the Radeon profiles for games don't work.
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They work

1642559384217.png
 
windwhirl said:
Well, it seems that I was wrong. Edited my comment.


Actually, one question? If you have a custom profile for a game, do you need to remake it every time the game receives an update?
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I haven't used any custom profiles with any Game Pass games, but I have noticed that sometime a new driver install will wipe out game history (time played and FPS history). I'll set something up for a game pass game and see if the settings are wiped when the game updates.

To be honest, I wasn't a big fan of the Game Pass model when it came out. Because it includes EA Play now in addition to the other assortment of games, it's actually a fair deal for me.

Microsoft also makes their exclusives (Halo, Forza, Flight Sim) available at launch through Steam now.

**Edit** - I was wrong, I do have some custom settings per game, just not sure when the last time was the game updated. I'll keep a watch on it
 
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Ravenas said:
I don’t like Microsoft buying up a bunch of IPs so they can load literally every game in to game pass “games as a service”. It’s pushing the market, rather than the market deciding naturally it wants to go there. This could be the only reason regulators shoot this down.
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I don't see this being any different from how Neflix came about. They're just copying that strat but instead of movies it's video games.
 
What will happen to uPlay? Everybody who loved it will miss it dearly. All 4 of them.
 
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