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Game Companies Buying other Game Companies


Ryannumber1gamer

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A pretty surprising headline, Microsoft has bought Activision for 70 billion dollars, meaning everything that falls under that umbrella such as Call of Duty, Overwatch, WoW, Crash and Spyro, and much much more will be joining Team Xbox. Given all of the controversy that’s been hitting Activision in the past months, and how insanely large the acquisition is, to say it’s surprising is a understatement.

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I can only hope this new condition will make the lives of the staff better and that studios like Raven Software or High Moon will be free from the CoD mines and able to do other stuff.

Gamingwise, while it remains to be seen what's gonna be multiplat and what instead will be Xbox and PC exclusive, my biggest hope is that Microsoft will excavate Activision's old catalogue of games that these days have not been re-released on current hardwares like Pitfall or Vigilante 8 and give them justice. There's much more than one can expect, believe it or not.

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lol and people were acting like Sony had the money to throw at shit like this after Bethesda got bought.

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Capitalism sucks. Monopolization of this caliber sucks.
 

And the fact, there’s a real possibility Kotick comes out of this winning no matter what happens sucks 

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Been so for several years now, it's the reason why Crash on the Run was made by the same company.

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Even if Kotick gets fired, I find it hard to act like we “won” and that “the evil man was defeated” when this is what he’ll get, which is before we even talk about his shares/stocks 

 

 

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The "for cause" part of the contract does means Microsoft could easily be rid of him depending on the specifics of his role in the various scandals in the past year, though. The topic hadn't been even brought up since so many on the board were personally loyal to him (and presumably complicit in the various coverups that keep getting unearthed), but that fealty wouldn't extend to Microsoft.

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I’m just under no impression Microsoft is that “good” and noble, to gladly make Kotick suffer and leave with as little as possible. It’d be great to give him the finger, but this industry has not given me any reason to put faith in it to do the right thing. He’ll probably “get fired”/leave of his own accord, get a fat paycheck, and move on to becoming ceo of some other massive company. Plus isn’t he still on the board for a bunch of other companies like coca-cola?

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This is, uh, neat I guess?

But until there's some demonstrable change in Activision Blizzard's work culture, then I'm going to continue not bothering with their game. I don't really trust Microsoft to actually fix anything there.

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Nobility doesn't necessarily have anything to do with it. If they can rid themselves of him and his cronies (and he definitely wouldn't be there for long after Microsoft takes control regardless) for 1/100th of the price and there is strong reason to believe that he's done something that would allow them to do so, why wouldn't they pursue that? Nevermind the free press from places like Kotaku for "cleaning up the company" or whatever.

 

 

It's entirely possible that a good end result would come from this regarding Kotick getting thrown out on his ass even if Microsoft's intentions for doing so are laughably cynical and self-serving.

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Ultimately, like I said, it’s a “I’ll believe it when I see it” situation, since the game industry has time and time again made it clear it looks over the well-being of the elite more than anything, so my expectations are set by default pretty low. If they give him the finger and kick him out with as little as possible, he looses his shares and all ties with the company, great. If not, well, won’t shock me

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I'm honestly curious in terms of how Microsoft intends to handle the games under their umbrella. While it's easy enough to just assume everything's going exclusive from here on out, I don't think it's that simple.

Overwatch 2 had a promise made on announcement that it wouldn't be a full-on new pay for sequel, but instead, it would be a straight upgrade added to Overwatch 1, granting everyone access to the multiplayer component and not splitting off the fanbase. And while Microsoft could just say "screw that" and make it exclusive anyways, slicing up two sizable chunks of the playerbase with PlayStation and Nintendo players, as well as breaking not one, but two promises made, both for the original and for OW2 (In that the game would be constantly supported following release) wouldn't reflect particularly well on Microsoft in the eyes of an already dwindling playerbase.

Call of Duty, to me - it's really hard to see Microsoft making it fully exclusive. It's on the levels of a Minecraft terms cash cow. Even with Minecraft under the Microsoft umbrella for ages now, the game still regularly sees DLC on all platforms, the game is essentially 1:1 on most platforms, and Minecraft Dunegons, despite being a new title after the acquisition was still dropped on every single platform that the original was on. 

While they could make Call of Duty exclusive in the hopes that they'll draw over the playerbase from PlayStation, it still feels like a gamble to do so, especially when Warzone is the big free to play game that's getting consistent support, and that's on PS4/PS5 as well. I could easily be proven wrong, but I feel like COD is going to be a scenario where it still remains multiplatform, but the marketing and perhaps the DLC will be given exclusive benefits on Microsoft, + the day one releases on Game Pass.

Things like Crash and Spyro on the other hand...no idea how they'll go. They're closely associated with PlayStation, and I'd say the market share for those two are on that platform. But platformers is also a niche that Microsoft is woefully behind on, so they could be exclusive in order to fulfil it. 

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There's no way Call of Duty or *probably* Overwatch would be exclusive. There's way too much money to be lost doing that; and stuff like that actively is the kind of thing that would definitely draw lawsuits from Sony/Nintendo and governments. It's almost certainly a play for Game Pass. "You can buy this on PS5 for $70 like an idiot, or you can buy a subscription to Game Pass and buy an Xbox and have it and many other games for $10 a month (or whatever Game Pass costs) and after only playing a few games you'll already have saved money even after buying a new console!"

 

 

 

In terms of the very small amounts of non-Call of Duty Mines content that Activision puts out, that stuff I would expect to become Microsoft exclusive (since I'm assuming Microsoft would utilize those dormant IPs more than Activision does now), though.

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Doesn’t Call of Duty currently have a contract with PlayStation still for getting dlc first or something, or did that expire already?

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I imagine the other big play is going to be the fact - let's face it - for the back catalog, this is definitely going to be the best way to play most of these games on consoles now. I can easily see not only these games being on Game Pass, but I definitely see the likes of N Sane Trilogy, Reignited Trilogy, and CTR receiving FPS boost features, and possibly a 4K uprez. 

The Game Pass attributes alone is going to be a huge bump for Microsoft, frankly. As someone who loved earlier versions of Zombies, having stuff like Black Ops 1 and Black Ops 2 on Game Pass alone is going to be a huge incentive for COD players, especially if Microsoft does the unthinkable, and finally go back and fix up the servers to clean out all of the modders/hackers, which the COD fanbase have basically been begging them to do for years. Having the entire COD back-library, plus all of Activision's 360 titles up their sleeve for Game Pass is also just going to be a huge boost. 

Just now, KHCast said:

Doesn’t Call of Duty currently have a contract with PlayStation still for getting dlc first or something, or did that expire already?

I believe so, but it's likely a yearly contract on a per game basis, I imagine it's done after Vanguard.

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Yeah, Microsoft said that were done with BC now, but I wouldn't be surprised if a bunch of lost Activision games make the jump to the various lists so they can also be added to Game Pass, or actual new rereleases.

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6 minutes ago, Tornado said:

Yeah, Microsoft said that were done with BC now, but I wouldn't be surprised if a bunch of lost Activision games make the jump to the various lists so they can also be added to Game Pass, or actual new rereleases.

It would absolutely be in their best interests to do so, especially if they've got access to the full libraries of some characters, even when they weren't 'owned' by Microsoft. While the games aren't the most well regarded, if Microsoft put up every Crash game from Wrath of Cortex, right up to Mind Over Mutant, they'd be able to boast right there and then that the entire mainline series is up on Game Pass for anyone to play, same with Spyro if they go from A Heroes' Tail up to Dawn of the Dragon (Enter the Dragonfly excluded). That's not even including the goodwill they'd snatch for putting out Twinsanity on a modern console, which is something the Crash fanbase has been clamouring for. 

To not take advantage of the deal and using it to add a heaping ton of titles to the BC library would just be nuts. There's a ton of value there for relatively minimal investment if they go for it, between Crash, Spyro, and COD alone, not even counting the numerous other titles Activision has published and has the rights to, still.

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Nash  makes a good point of concern, that this could negatively effect any union efforts employees at Activision have been trying to push for 

 

Also

 

Doesn’t sound like he’s leaving. And I fucking hate Koticks tone here in his email 

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3 minutes ago, MetalSkulkBane said:

It's probably non significant, but should I worry they now own Minecraft and Warcraft?

They've owned Minecraft for years. Warcraft isn't that big a deal because it's PC based. If I had to guess, if anything, it's better for WoW since it could mean the possibility of a console port, if Microsoft go that route.

In terms of the Blizzard games specifically, it's probably a net positive because Microsoft have more money to throw at them, and will have more of a reason to want to get them out the door ASAP. Plus, it's not unheard of for Microsoft to move teams around a little to help one another, bringing members from one team to another team for additional support. Overwatch could even possibly see some kind of support to tide it over until Overwatch 2, unlike the last few years where it's basically been left to die while they worked on OW2. 

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The wildest thing to me is that both of PlayStations two biggest former stars (Crash and Spyro) are now owned by Microsoft.

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Will say I find it funnily depressing how everyone seeing all these mascot fighters popping up, were wanting Sony to try one more time, in hopes they’d maybe be able to get Crash and Spyro in a PSASBR2…welp dreams dead lol

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