Well Microsoft will still continue doing business, making deals and buying/acquiring companies after this ActiVision | Blizzard + King fiasco.
Yes they will, but this isn't over. They can still acquire Activision.
They are only doing it because from what i read they are trying to reappeal in the UK. But everywhere else, it is kinda a done deal now, that they will acquire Activision | Blizzard + King.
Yes, it looks like agreement has been reached behind the scenes and they are now playing out the formalities for it to go through by UK law and the regulatory body’s processes.
www.theverge.com
news.xbox.com
newsroom.activisionblizzard.com
Welcoming the Legendary Teams at Activision Blizzard King to Team Xbox - Xbox Wire
Today we welcome the teams at Activision Blizzard King to Team Xbox. It's a good day to play.
Kotick will leave at the end of the year.
Bobby Kotick: A new chapter for Activision Blizzard
CEO Bobby Kotick writes that combining with Microsoft will enable Activision Blizzard to deliver more fun, more joy, and more connection to more players.
Welcoming the Legendary Teams at Activision Blizzard King to Team Xbox - Xbox Wire
Today we welcome the teams at Activision Blizzard King to Team Xbox. It's a good day to play.
Kotick will leave at the end of the year.
Bobby Kotick: A new chapter for Activision Blizzard
CEO Bobby Kotick writes that combining with Microsoft will enable Activision Blizzard to deliver more fun, more joy, and more connection to more players.
Yeah, no. Sony is going to do just fine. They have been in this longer than Microsoft and haven't had to rely on buying out third party IP to shore up their content. Microsoft has shown time and time again how often they bungle their aquisitions and I doubt this is any different.
If anything its a problem for the market in general.
Yup.
And yet here some want Sony to buy Ubisoft...
That is the bigger problem: the market shrinks and the gamers (literally) pay for it. And Sony has COD for at least a decade and given the market volatility, COD may not even be COD in ten years time. It might be something else entirely that Sony owns or that's truly third party.
Ditto. Raven Software were also behind some of the SW Jedi Knight games (Jedi Academy still has the best lightsaber battles; don't @ me). Also, with the retro shooter renaissance, I'd love to have a new Hexen/Heretic game and a new Soldier of Fortune as well.
100% disagreed there. I would love to be wrong, but Microsoft is now in control of PlayStation's long term best selling franchise. That already spells doom, gloom, and disaster to me.
Sony may have been in this longer than mS, but they have never had and never will have the buying power of the latter. Unless they muster up everything they got to throw at Take Two, which I made a thread about in the Sony section.
It's certainly different than anything Sony has ever done. They've only ever acquired studios. Microsoft went and bought two publishers in three years, many more times the size of any acquisition Sony's ever been capable of. And they're not stopping here.
Sony has far more Franchises in the Chamber that they can rely on.
Not a single one of Sony's own first party franchises in the chamber has ever sold like a CoD title. Not even close.
what makes you think it would be so easy for them? according to Sony themselves, no game can match CoD for competition. They even said so themselves when comparing CoD to Battlefield, which has been the former's competition for a while:
www.theverge.com
oh yeah, everybody's buying a Ps5 now that it's actually in stock. I should have been clear that I don't think the damage will be done to the playstation brand immediately, but the burn will be felt overtime as the generation goes further into its lifetime. And of course mS said they lose to Sony...they said every possible thing they could say to make their argument that they should have the right to buy Activision. And it worked.
That's not really a concern for mS. This was literally the biggest acquisition they ever made. I don't think they're even interested in making profit, they are only interested in gaining marketshare. and since they didn't try to do so with all of the talent they already had, they decided to buy the biggest piece of marketshare that could possibly be bought, the publisher Activision Blizzard King.
Like I said, I don't think we/they will feel the burn right away, but overtime this generation the burn will be gradual and then dramatic. Right now, CoD will still sell more on Ps5. But eventually, mS will just offer CoD on gamepass and more and more of the fanbase will take notice. As the value proposition of playing CoD on a paid subscription service over paying $70 gets more and more conspicuous, more and more of the fanbase will likely jump ship to Xbox because of it.
That's a separate point. They have had more studios than Sony even before this acquisition, and somehow they were allowed to still proceed. But from their previous acquisitions, they have released two games this year, Redfall & Starfield. While the former was a flop, the latter was a big hit for them.
Yep, I can definitely agree with you there. I have a huge backlog of games to play and the vast majority of them are still Ps4 games. There doesn't seem to be very many AAA releases from this generation overall.
what makes you think it would be so easy for them? according to Sony themselves, no game can match CoD for competition. They even said so themselves when comparing CoD to Battlefield, which has been the former's competition for a while:
Sony throws Battlefield under the bus as it fights Microsoft’s Activision purchase
Sony says it can’t compete with Call of Duty.
Over??? Are you kidding me sir??? Last year's CoD was the MOST successful launch they ever had! CoD's bestselling status isn't going anywhere!
How do you figure that? If what was said meant little, then Sony wouldn't have been fighting so hard tryna block the merger in the first place.
Yes, and mS ended up winning...so everything mS said mattered more to those in power than what Sony said.
I'm not sure what you mean by ego shooter, but personal opinion about CoD doesn't take away from the fact it is in the top 3 best selling games almost every year. I myself have had CoD as my go-to multiplayer game for over a decade.
If Sony felt like they didn't need CoD, then they wouldn't have signed a 10 year contract with mS. They even said their business might never recover when/if the merger goes through.
Yeah, I really would love to be wrong about everything that I am saying, but I just can't see it happening any other way. I would much rather mS run CoD into the ground and make the whole fan base move to another game rather than have the vast majority of the fan base migrate to Xbox and have playstation deserted.
In the long run yes mS is interested in making profit, but in the short term I think their goal is just forcing their way into more of the marketshare. You're absolutely right, they want to benefit from existing franchises by ruining the industry instead of building from the many resources they already have. Which is why this consolidation should have never been allowed.
The colloquial definitely we have for system seller, is a game that a gamer will potentially buy a whole platform for just to play. CoD has been the best selling franchise on playstation for three straight generations, so I definitely think it has been a system seller. It doesn't matter that it's multiplatform, since the majority of console players have been playing on playstation.
Horizon 2 came out last year, not this year. A DLC doesn't count as full fledged AAA release.
Only for the time being. Activision is the biggest publisher in the industry, and now they belong to mS. Like I said, as time goes by...you will see deadly the blow is. But again, I hope I am wrong.
