Microsoft Buys Activision Blizzard

[Bluebird Hewitt]

As the title says, Microsoft have bought Activision Blizzard for almost $70bn if approved in 2023.

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2022-01-18-microsoft-near-deal-to-buy-call-of-duty-maker-activision-blizzard-report

Admittedly I've not read the whole thing from top to bottom but looking at this at face value, I can't say I'm a fan of this. Regardless of how cunty they are, Activision are one of the biggest publishers around and the likes of Call of Duty, Warcraft, Crash, Sypro and Candy Crush will be exclusive to Microsoft.

Just can't help but feel that this is the beginning of a potential monopoly in terms of home consoles. Probably me overthinking things though.

Thoughts?

[Cicero]

Does that mean Call of Duty will specifically only be on Xbox series?

[Spike]

1 hour ago, Cicero said:

Does that mean Call of Duty will specifically only be on Xbox series?

Unlikely, Minecraft isn’t.

[Spike]

Well it won’t affect me because I don’t play any of the shit published by Activision-Blizzard. Absolute rubbish company with more sexual assault cases than quality products

[Mel81x+]

I can't say him happy. I don't even personally think M$ will not keep those games cross-platform. The money from them is enough to help make that an easy decision. What does worry me is this.

In a Microsoft statement, the company also said: "Bobby Kotick will continue to serve as CEO of Activision Blizzard, and he and his team will maintain their focus on driving efforts to further strengthen the company's culture and accelerate business growth. Once the deal closes, the Activision Blizzard business will report to Phil Spencer, CEO, Microsoft Gaming."

Your company is about to associate itself with one of the biggest pieces of human filth in the gaming industry. The amount of devs/PR folks/people in the gaming industry that are reading this and wondering wtf is going on is probably big right now. 

 

[Mel81x+]

 

[Dr. Gonzo]

On 18/01/2022 at 14:03, Mel81x said:

I can't say him happy. I don't even personally think M$ will not keep those games cross-platform. The money from them is enough to help make that an easy decision. What does worry me is this.

In a Microsoft statement, the company also said: "Bobby Kotick will continue to serve as CEO of Activision Blizzard, and he and his team will maintain their focus on driving efforts to further strengthen the company's culture and accelerate business growth. Once the deal closes, the Activision Blizzard business will report to Phil Spencer, CEO, Microsoft Gaming."

Your company is about to associate itself with one of the biggest pieces of human filth in the gaming industry. The amount of devs/PR folks/people in the gaming industry that are reading this and wondering wtf is going on is probably big right now. 

 

I think the deal isn't expected to close for at least a year (and maybe 2 because of how massive Activision is). So Microsoft won't be able to make any changes to the structure of the leadership at Activision until the deal is complete.

I suspect Bobby Kotick's position is untenable long-term and ActivisionBlizzard are currently facing even more fallout today as they've announced they'll be ignoring some of their employees attempts to unionise (which might trigger a state led employment lawsuit into them).

I suspect long term they'll get rid of Kotick.

On 20/01/2022 at 20:10, Mel81x said:

 

I'm not surprised by this. While MS obviously makes hardware and their Xbox gaming hardware is probably among their best selling hardware... at the end of the day they're primarily a software company. I think they want to get as much of their software (and subscription services like Gamepass) onto as many devices as possible.

A few years back they entered into talks with Nintendo to bring gamepass to the Switch - but nothing has come of it yet (although I am dying for this to happen as a gamepass subscriber), I'm sure they'd love the opportunity to have gamepass on Playstation as well (although Sony probably hates this idea). Buying an industry giant like ActivisionBlizzard might make it more likely to make gamepass grow to other systems - as they've got a lot of leverage as they'll soon have the power to deny a lot of games to other systems that don't want to play ball with them (note how that tweet only specifically refers to Call of Duty & not other franchises).

And regardless, like Minecraft, this gives MS the opportunity to sell software they own to people who'd probably not be buying games made a Microsoft studio.

Between this and the Bethesda acquisition, MS has made some pretty massive moves recently. Phil Spencer's also talked about reviving some games from IP that Activision has long since acquired and abandoned - so I'm hoping we see some titles from Sierra Games given a new lease of life and introduced to a new generation of gamers.

[Mel81x+]

12 minutes ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

I think the deal isn't expected to close for at least a year (and maybe 2 because of how massive Activision is). So Microsoft won't be able to make any changes to the structure of the leadership at Activision until the deal is complete.

I suspect Bobby Kotick's position is untenable long-term and ActivisionBlizzard are currently facing even more fallout today as they've announced they'll be ignoring some of their employees attempts to unionise (which might trigger a state led employment lawsuit into them).

I suspect long term they'll get rid of Kotick.

I'm not surprised by this. While MS obviously makes hardware and their Xbox gaming hardware is probably among their best selling hardware... at the end of the day they're primarily a software company. I think they want to get as much of their software (and subscription services like Gamepass) onto as many devices as possible.

A few years back they entered into talks with Nintendo to bring gamepass to the Switch - but nothing has come of it yet (although I am dying for this to happen as a gamepass subscriber), I'm sure they'd love the opportunity to have gamepass on Playstation as well (although Sony probably hates this idea). Buying an industry giant like ActivisionBlizzard might make it more likely to make gamepass grow to other systems - as they've got a lot of leverage as they'll soon have the power to deny a lot of games to other systems that don't want to play ball with them (note how that tweet only specifically refers to Call of Duty & not other franchises).

And regardless, like Minecraft, this gives MS the opportunity to sell software they own to people who'd probably not be buying games made a Microsoft studio.

Between this and the Bethesda acquisition, MS has made some pretty massive moves recently. Phil Spencer's also talked about reviving some games from IP that Activision has long since acquired and abandoned - so I'm hoping we see some titles from Sierra Games given a new lease of life and introduced to a new generation of gamers.

I think Kotick's got something at Acti that no one really knows about and probably shouldn't either. Keep in mind this is the guy who pretty much started that whole "bro" culture out there and some stories are pretty horrid. I can't see him staying long there either and once the deal materializes he'll take his payout and move on. Rumor going around the mill is that he has another company off-shoot idea in the works but how that would work considering most of the folks that work on the famed IPs are all Acti-Blizz employees is all sketchy. 

I can't see Nintendo bending over backwards for Microsoft in this deal, Sony maybe considering they'd have to find a way to get CoD and whatever else Microsoft revives from their deal on their platforms but at some point it may be the other way around where M$ decides its best to let some things go. What is interesting to note in all of this is that this now has shone a light on another company that is seriously in need for an overhaul and that is "Ubisoft". I'd like one company and only one company to get them and that's Nintendo. What they could do for what they've done to destroy Prince of Persia could be undone with the right team behind the project.

If Nintendo went after Konami in all of this and said we'll help and Konami accepted would also go a long way to balancing this weird scale that is being built in Microsoft's favor right now. While I like them as a company they aren't on the same level as Sony and Nintendo with original IPs and games. 

[Dr. Gonzo]

5 minutes ago, Mel81x said:

I think Kotick's got something at Acti that no one really knows about and probably shouldn't either. Keep in mind this is the guy who pretty much started that whole "bro" culture out there and some stories are pretty horrid. I can't see him staying long there either and once the deal materializes he'll take his payout and move on. Rumor going around the mill is that he has another company off-shoot idea in the works but how that would work considering most of the folks that work on the famed IPs are all Acti-Blizz employees is all sketchy. 

I can't see Nintendo bending over backwards for Microsoft in this deal, Sony maybe considering they'd have to find a way to get CoD and whatever else Microsoft revives from their deal on their platforms but at some point it may be the other way around where M$ decides its best to let some things go. What is interesting to note in all of this is that this now has shone a light on another company that is seriously in need for an overhaul and that is "Ubisoft". I'd like one company and only one company to get them and that's Nintendo. What they could do for what they've done to destroy Prince of Persia could be undone with the right team behind the project.

If Nintendo went after Konami in all of this and said we'll help and Konami accepted would also go a long way to balancing this weird scale that is being built in Microsoft's favor right now. While I like them as a company they aren't on the same level as Sony and Nintendo with original IPs and games. 

I'd love Ubisoft to be bought out... by anyone other than Sony. I like a lot of their franchises, even if they aren't all consistently good games (Ass Creed, Far Cry) and some of the old franchises they've seemingly killed off would be cool to see revived (like Prince of Persia, which btw... is the original on Steam? Because the original was one of the very first games I ever played and I loved it).

But sadly, for as big of a name as Nintendo is in gaming... I don't think financially they've quite got anywhere near the resources as Sony or Microsoft (which isn't surprising because even Sony is a dwarf of a company compared to M$). I dunno if Vivendi are still part owners of Ubisoft... but they're awful owners of publishers/studios (they used to own ActivisionBlizzard, I believe are responsible for killing off great studios like Sierra) - but if they are, I'd like to see Ubisoft freed from their influence.