I’m torn, because normally I wouldn’t want a company like microsoft to buy such a big publisher, but what Activision did to Blizzard was so bad that Microsoft would be an improvement.
When, in the whole history of gaming, has an acquisition improved on the company they bought?
Bethesda.
And in this case it would help reduce the Sony dominance in the market.
Most of the studios Sony bought?
Microsoft bought Bungie and that gave us Halo. Valve has bought a number of studios that went on to produce great games. Those are more the exceptions than the rule though, and I agree it usually goes poorly.
Bungie was already making Halo before that acquisition, they were just making it for the Mac.
Very much in the same boat. Can’t stomach their shitty policies and their garbage CEO aynmore. If MS purged these people after buying, I could finally think about going back to their products. And I don’t see that happening without MS. Even with MS it’d be only a tiny chance.
Right, I was actually hoping it would go through so I could potentially lift my boycott of ActiBlizz that I started during the Blitzchung incident and only solidified as more information came out about the horrible things going on at Blizzard with some of their employees. Weirdly enough, I really want to play Heroes of the Storm again.
This is exactly my take. I can’t in good conscious buy a Blizzard game right now, so I kind of wanted this to go through.
Every other part of me did not want this to go through. With how popular game pass is, and how many studios they’re buying, this is just a recipe for a bait and switch and a bad situation for gamers down the road.
Microsoft might improve Blizzard and the rest of Activision, but it will be a net loss for the industry. Microsoft has too much power in the market already, and that will only grow over time as they use their power from other segments to take over more. I see it in the business world already. They basically took over the entire market for business email, then pretty much dropped their self hosting options, leaving most business with only the option of M365. Which is great, until they decided to change partner terms on a dime and increase prices and there wasn’t a damn thing we could do to stop it. Our options are either leave for Google(who’s business tools absolutely suck), or look to FOSS, which has a rather high maintenance cost. Microsoft has that industry captured, and it is almost impossible to break out of.
I’m not sure Microsoft could really save Blizzard at this point in time. Microsoft also does not have the greatest trackrecord of buying other game publishers. Instead of it becoming a toxic environment, it often just slowly becomes less and less of what made it unique and fun in the first place. So yeah. torn as well. I really like your take.
And unfortunately, we just need to take a look at Mojang to see how they’re starting to fall from grace lately.
I think Microsoft as a company is trying to pivot away from game development and instead becoming game publisher. Which all things considered, isn’t a bad thing. WIth improvements to AI, I imagine being a game creator is going to become much easier, so much easier, that AAA game studios just won’t be able to compete.
So being in charge of the marketplace is a good business strategy in that context.
Let’s hope it doesn’t happen. I don’t know why some people get excited. Monopolies are never a good thing and Microsoft is ONCE again getting too big…
Except Microsoft is in a distant third place in the gaming market - Sony has had the crown for that for years, and has actually used its market position in the past to make things worse for competitors and for gamers in general.
Kinda like Nintendo back in the day.
Sure, i don’t like monopolies, but pushing Sony of his comfort zone and making things a little better for users in the way.
except we need Microsoft to get bigger to stop Sony from being a dominating monopoly.
Sony buying everything is just as much a problem as MS doing it. I think the main difference is that they’ve stayed under the radar by doing smaller purchases, but I want someone to push the brakes on them equally as much.
Microsoft can do that by actually competing. Throwing money around solely to take things away from people who don’t buy their products to entrench themselves in the market is anti-competitive. Allowing that sort of thing means any behemoth can come and muscle their way into any market they want to. This is a bad future.
ms releases everything on console AND pc though.
MS releases everything on both of their platforms? Oh, how charitable of them.
and steam
And windows isn’t a platform that benefits them in that way anyway.
Sony still does not
Throwing money around solely to take things away from people, like Sony does? So it’s fine if it’s small enough and affects less people (Xbox users)? Or the other illogical line of thought of “they’re both not okay but don’t let them do what the smaller guy who controls more of the market does”.
Microsoft is only bigger because Xbox isn’t separate, they’re not even second biggest after the purchased.
So it’s fine if it’s small enough and affects less people (Xbox users)?
No.
Slightly pains me to say that this is a good thing. As much as I hate what’s happened to Blizzard but especially Crash and Spyro, monopolies are only going to end up making things so much worse.
I think this is a good thing. I’m not at all a fan of activision-blizzard, but I just can’t see any benefits from microsoft buying them.
Activision won’t be leading that mess anymore, that’s positive. But fuck monopolization
Good.
I am happy to hear that. Microsoft hoarding all major publishers under one umbrella is extremely bad for a customer on a long run. We need competition.
Except they really aren’t merging into the biggest market player, not even second. Do you force someone with bigger budget to buy a Vios because this other guy can only buy the same? “Well Microsoft needs to make better games”.
Duh?! But they can also buy what they can afford to buy without shit regulators blocking stuff because “cloud gaming” or aome shit about COD. Sony is blocking 3RD PARTY GAMES from going to Xbox, fuck that shit and fuck you!
The Xbox subs in shambles.
(I own both current gen consoles)
