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

[Solaris17]

Saw this last week related to EA buying Zenga, but it applies here too

https://twitter.com/x/status/1480812605300109312

absolutely wild lmao.

 

[dirtyferret]

Not at all, I still doubt it. Id love to see any kind of data on it instead of what a game studio says.

you can pull up countless independent studies that all say the same thing, the industry is huge and remember many count gambling as a form of gaming. That said games like candy crush and words with friends are huge in popularity rivaling many top AAA video games. I personally don't play games on my phone but my daughter does constantly on phones/tablets

 

[Dragokar]

To be honest, it can't get much worse in regard to Blizzard games.

 

[Vayra86]

Never cared much for Activision. And Blizzard is just a shadow of the company that brought us Warcraft and Diablo.
So yeah, a big meh from me.

This could be a saving grace for the mobile oriented Activision board room. And the franchises. MS is just going to push all buttons. Looking at their PC-first games, not the worst outlook imho...

They might even recognize the value of Blizzards portfolio better and bring it back to glory. I mean, MS does want to have diverse offerings for all market segments, because thats where the userbase needs to come from. Given the variety of what they acquire... this can go lots of good ways.

To be honest, it can't get much worse in regard to Blizzard games.

And this

 

[lexluthermiester]

What?

Yeah, that was my reaction too...

I stopped, it is a big battery killer, charge, dead, charge, dead etc

That's only one problem..

Remember back around 2002-2008 when the three B's (Bioware, Bethesda, Blizzard) could do no wrong in the eyes of PC gamers?

Good times. Sadly gone..

See, you play casual games on your phone, so you belong in that 95 percent

On my phone? No. There are no games even installed. Now if we're counting ALL types of mobile devices, even ones that have no "phone" or communication specific features, then yes. I have several gaming focused tablets powered by Android. But I consider that "portable" gaming, not mobile gaming. There is a subtle difference..

Will this suffice?

Number of mobile gamers worldwide by region 2021| Statista

As of 2021, Asia accounted for over 1.29 billion mobile gaming users, more than a 48 percent of global mobile gaming audiences.

www.statista.com

No, it's paywalled. No way to examine the data and sources.

Granted, I'm not going to argue that mobile gaming is big. But like Solaris, I give a raised eyebrow to the numbers stated. Console gaming alone has a huge numbers.

 

[Solid State Soul ( SSS )]

That's a massive acquisition, but a very questionable one, Activision Blizzard have been reduced to jus call of duty and world of warcraft for a long time now, they don't make divers games like they used to do in the 2010s days, i think this just boils down to call of duty exclusivity for just xbox, which is crazy.

I would say EA is a much better option, they make lots of cool games still and they have lots of IPs hat rivel call of duty like battlefield and medal of honor

And the timing of thing accusation is not good, they should have waited at least a year, because let's not kid ourselves nobody other than microsoft or maybe apple would have so much cash to buy activation anyway

hmmmmmm

 

[dragontamer5788]

That's a massive acquisition, but a very questionable one, Activision Blizzard have been reduced to jus call of duty and world of warcraft for a long time now, they don't make divers games like they used to do in the 2010s days, i think this just boils down to call of duty exclusivity for just xbox, which is crazy.

Overwatch and King (aka Candy Crush + all those other mobile games) are huge.

They don't make games like they used to, because games today are largely on mobile devices with shitty microtransactions. King/Candy Crush like games are huge these days.

 

[seth1911]

Bad for the market, now only 5 Players hold very much IPs.

Microsoft
Sony
EA
Take 2
Ubisoft

To be honest, it can't get much worse in regard to Blizzard games.

it can, cause Microsoft can bring Windows (Store) or Xbox exclusive.

 

[Deleted member 24505]

Will this suffice?

Number of mobile gamers worldwide by region 2021| Statista

As of 2021, Asia accounted for over 1.29 billion mobile gaming users, more than a 48 percent of global mobile gaming audiences.

www.statista.com

Now find mobile gamers by device.

Yeah, that was my reaction too...


That's only one problem..


Good times. Sadly gone..


On my phone? No. There are no games even installed. Now if we're counting ALL types of mobile devices, even ones that have no "phone" or communication specific features, then yes. I have several gaming focused tablets powered by Android. But I consider that "portable" gaming, not mobile gaming. There is a subtle difference..

Yes mobile gaming, is on a phone, hence mobile. Things like a switch or DS etc are different.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Bad for the market, now only 5 Players hold very much IPs.

Microsoft
Sony
EA
Take 2
Ubisoft

Yeah, and they all need to be broken up except Sony.

 

[dragontamer5788]

Bad for the market, now only 5 Players hold very much IPs.

Microsoft
Sony
EA
Take 2
Ubisoft

The lack of Tencent (aka: League of Legends and 40% owner of Epic Games, 80% of Supercell/Clash of Clans) on the list shows how obsolete your mentality is to modern gaming.

The world of gaming has changed in the past 10 years. There are new players, new games, new strategies. That list you had is seriously a 10-year-old mentality. Tencent is #1 in terms of gaming revenue, largely because of that huge and growing mobile market.

It is in light of mega-gaming corps like Tencent which is encouraging Microsoft to buy up things like Activision/Blizzard, in hopes to compete against Tencent.

 

[Chrispy_]

Blizzard are dead, just like King is - since being ruined by Activision.

Also, have a look at this:

Overwatch is the only thing on that list that is new from this triple-company merged corp.
The last Diablo game killed the franchise, almost abruptly with Activision's shoehorning a RMAH in there.
COD is stale - there's been nothing new or innovative in them for decades and their biggest successes are in ripping off other games now.
WOW - enough said. All of the positive aspects of WOW were pre-Activision and that team doesn't exist any more.
Candy Crush - Massively popular pre-Activision and now just a meme that gets dumped on everything like unwanted McAfee Antivirus trials.
Starcraft II was ruined by Activision. Wings of Libery was amazing and mostly completed before the merger, then the following two expansions under Activision were a write off. We don't talk about that any more.

Microsoft, the soulless megacorp have just acquired the studios that were already acquired by another soulless megacorp. Each acquisition removes any spark of talent or original game design that little bit more.

 

[seth1911]

Tencent is a garbage company worser than Take 2 with GTA Online, thats the reason why i dont list it.

 

[dragontamer5788]

WOW - enough said. All of the positive aspects of WOW were pre-Activision and that team doesn't exist any more.

Hearthstone as a sub-property under "Warcraft" was pretty recent and largely well received. I wouldn't be surprised if Hearthstone is one of Activision/Blizzard's biggest mobile game properties.

--------

I don't think anyone denies that Activision/Blizzard's culture is terrible and in a state of atrophy right now. But they've got some good properties.

 

[grlfbremastered]

as a huge fan of Mr Phil Spencer, I'm a bit disappointed. They should have bought EA instead. A/B has like what, 10k employees?!?!?! For candy crush and cod ... hahaha that's hilarious. In my country we'd call this a huge employment hanger LMAO. Or a sand castle if you like. EA would have been much better, not only better company but a wider variety on its portfolio. They buy A/B and miss Bungie?!? Really hard to fathom. Anw, I still like Phil, though I "Phil" a bit sorry for Them

 

[Rahnak]

Strange move from Microsoft. Paying way, way too much for this dumpster fire of a company. And keeping Bobby? Missed opportunity to do some good in the world.

All in all, Microsoft lost some points in my book.

 

[Aquinus]

At least it's not Skype ($8.5 billion) which they have almost written off as it's been nothing but a money drain. Luckily it's still alive but not kicking really. Had they added registration using a phone number like all other popular messengers do, Skype could have been a real contender in the IM market. Nowadays barely anyone uses it.

That's because these days it's called Microsoft Teams. They made it "better" with Sharepoint integration.

 

[bonehead123]

I'm soooooo glad I don't do gamming, but for those that do, you betta hope they don't turn AV/BZ into 1 big advertising clusterfuck like they did with LinkedIn, which used to be a highly-rated career/job board/networking site, now it's just a messy, conglomerated shill platform for whoever pays MS the most $$ for their ad placements....

 

[Pumper]

Strange move from Microsoft. Paying way, way too much for this dumpster fire of a company. And keeping Bobby? Missed opportunity to do some good in the world.

All in all, Microsoft lost some points in my book.

They just announced the deal. MS can't do anything until they are the owners, which will happen at best mid 2023, not to mention that Bobby will get compensation in hundreds of millions from both the deal and as a severance package, in case you thought that he'll cry about losing the job.

 

[MrDweezil]

Overwatch and King (aka Candy Crush + all those other mobile games) are huge.

They don't make games like they used to, because games today are largely on mobile devices with shitty microtransactions. King/Candy Crush like games are huge these days.

To add on to this, King just had a record quarter and brought in more net revenue than either the Activision or Blizzard wings of the company.

 

[Rahnak]

They just announced the deal. MS can't do anything until they are the owners, which will happen at best mid 2023, not to mention that Bobby will get compensation in hundreds of millions from both the deal and as a severance package, in case you thought that he'll cry about losing the job.

Well, obviously they can't fire him until they own it, but initial reports have MS saying he's staying as CEO. Some reports say he's only staying until the operation is complete. Imo they (MS) should have said from the beginning that he's leaving once the deal is done.

I don't really care what that asshole feels or do, I just want him gone from the industry.

 

[Chrispy_]

I don't think anyone denies that Activision/Blizzard's culture is terrible and in a state of atrophy right now. But they've got some good properties.

No denying they have strong IPs, but those IPs are dying from neglect and lack of original new content.

Hearthstone was conceived in 2008 by "Blizzard Team 5" as a response to pre-Activision blizzard realising that their cashflow was only coming from big, slowing franchises that cost too much to make.

It is possibly the last thing to get developed without Activision ruining it; if you followed the devblogs and vlogs at the time it was very much a delicate time for Activision as the hated megacorp and they pretty much left Team5 to do what they wanted autonomously because it was the first new game in ages and Activision didn't want to be accused of stifling innovation like they had for everything else.

To add on to this, King just had a record quarter and brought in more net revenue than either the Activision or Blizzard wings of the company.

Yeah, a buddy of mine works for King in London. I've been to his office and a couple of work socials and they are rolling in it.

 

[TechLurker]

Now Sony should just buy out Bungie and get Square Enix to properly rebuild Destiny for D3, building off the same success they had with FFXIV:RR, and run it properly instead of this half-assed coding that forces Bungie to constantly vault things to make space for new things.

 

[dir_d]

Am I the only one that thinks this might be best for Blizzard. Maybe they can hire help and have the cash backing to push D4 and OW2 out the door.

 

[dragontamer5788]

Am I the only one that thinks this might be best for Blizzard. Maybe they can hire help and have the cash backing to push D4 and OW2 out the door.

Activision/Blizzard doesn't need money. They need a revamp of culture.

Microsoft ain't the best when it comes to programmer/developer culture, but they're likely better than Activision/Blizzard was.