Oh, don’t EVER get the impression I was being serious. The all-caps was pure mockery!
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Microsoft's acquisition of Activison Blizzard
- Thread starter Darth Vader
- Start date
To me, that’s the clear sign the mods are paid off by Xbox PR.
at first most of these "pro consumers" where cheering ms making cod exclusive for xbox,they still cheer starfield going that route,but when i was clear the deal wasnt that easy peasy,the changed to "good ms will make the game for everyone,even sony systems"
they are the fucking masters of moving goalposts and lie every two sentences,at least some of these idiots are honest sometines and want ms to destroy competition using the war chest
Didn't matter as he always had the next big thing right up his pocket and ready to go. As Guitar Hero was going out, Skylanders was going in. It only fell apart when his "next big thing"s failed to become big.
Ok then, what replaced Skylanders and Guitar Hero, then?
Fuck all so far, from as far as anyone can see. Activision killed those golden geese and are working on killing COD as well. When that’s done, it’ll be a zombie brand like Atari.
Did you read all three sentences of my reply, or only the first two?
Anyways, it was supposed to be Destiny but it didn't end up working out for them, whether GaaS just ended up lacking the mass appeal they wanted or their own greed with wanting annualized/bi-annual sequels while Bungie disagreed.
edit: They also bet big on a Guitar Hero reboot, which failed, Tony Hawk reboot (which did okay, but not great enough), the retro PS1 reboots which they have continued on with even making new games when they ran out of Crashes to remaster and also stuff like Chivalry and White Night that failed to catch on.
Edit 2: To directly answer your question, when Guitar Hero fell off Skylanders was taking off, when Skylanders fell off Destiny was supposed to be taking off. But they were all just some of the many bets that Activision used to make. Eventually in the PS4 era they had so many duds, and CoD started needing more resources, that they kind of stopped trying to innovate in gameplay.
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They did a disappointing remaster of the levels from Tony Hawk 1 and 2, while fucking up the career mode entirely, and it sold in mediocre numbers, years after killing the franchise with the insanely rushed and terrible Pro Skater 5. I mentioned THPS in my post. It’s dead, Activision killed it long ago.
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I never thought about it before but @KiryuRealty is right. Acti have run their franchises into the ground; THPS, Skylanders, Guitar Hero and, if it wasn't for fortnite/PUBG offering a new genre of multiplayer, COD would have been toast as well.
Overwatch has been damaged beyond repair. Outside of the most die-hard fans who refuse to let go, the game is dead
Diablo 3 was a disaster at launch, only saved by the good PR generated from the console versions. While D2 was a competent remaster, having to sit in a fucking queue to play a single player game is bullshit and hurt the franchise further. Diablo 4 will be infested with lootboxes and "just cosmetics that totally don't change the game" MTX.
Activision mis-managed Bungie so badly that they ran as soon as they could.
WoW remake was panned critically and has become a bot-infest lootbox/mtx fest.
Does anyone even play candycrush anymore?
What's left for them to destroy?
Overwatch has been damaged beyond repair. Outside of the most die-hard fans who refuse to let go, the game is dead
Diablo 3 was a disaster at launch, only saved by the good PR generated from the console versions. While D2 was a competent remaster, having to sit in a fucking queue to play a single player game is bullshit and hurt the franchise further. Diablo 4 will be infested with lootboxes and "just cosmetics that totally don't change the game" MTX.
Activision mis-managed Bungie so badly that they ran as soon as they could.
WoW remake was panned critically and has become a bot-infest lootbox/mtx fest.
Does anyone even play candycrush anymore?
What's left for them to destroy?
As much as the merger should not be allowed to happen for proper reasons, it is kind of funny to consider that MS would likely end up spending $80 billion and ending up with dust in the box they are handed.
they've already cost sony money, $2 million in legal fees and counting.
And they're are directly involved with delaying a PS showcase that would excite us PS5 owners, too. So they are kinda fucking us as well.
First procedural dispute between Sony and Microsoft in Activision Blizzard FTC proceeding: Sony suggests it will cost many millions of dollars to answer Microsoft's questions
We're now witnessing the first legal--albeit only procedural--dispute between Sony and Microsoft in connection with the latter's acquisition...www.fosspatents.com
big company, sure, but $2 mil is a lot of fucking money and time wasted when sony has no business with this shitty & illegal deal other than being screwed over and having their biggest 3rd part partner taken off the market by ms.
MS is acting like a spoiled baby and want to sabotage Sony in the process.
Something stuck out to me on that website when I read this part:
So apparently the person writing the blog can't see why it's unreasonable for Microsoft to request content licensing agreements Sony has with 3P partners for the next 11 years...really? I can understand on some level why they want to find it reasonable: if those agreements are substantial, they can argue that Sony does not in fact need COD and therefore should not be against the deal.
But that works against Microsoft, too: when they first started talking about these discussions they stated that COD would remain multiplat. Why do you need to see content deals between Sony & 3P publishers/developers to determine the validity of an argument that Sony don't "need" COD, if you were always planning to make COD available on their platform in the first place?
Meaning the intent has now transformed from beyond what was normally openly stated, and that it actually contradicts stuff they've said in the Zenimax acquisition proceedings, too. In those proceedings, with the EC, Microsoft are on record stating that games or IP with no prior multiplat history or of smaller scale to where it "financially made sense" to keep them exclusive, would be such games to be made exclusive to their platform. Well, COD obviously doesn't fit in either category, so why are requesting content licensing agreements from Sony to support an argument that Sony doesn't need COD, unless the intent behind that angle of an argument is to eventually remove COD for PlayStation platforms after all in spite of what's been said in the past, and what was even said to EC regulators in the Zenimax case?
Not even to mention the possibility of those agreements being leaked and getting through the grapevine, getting out in the public well before Sony and 3P partners are ready and potentially negatively affecting messaging control for the brand and even causing certain deals to potentially fall apart (again, looking back at when 3DFX were in court for something in the '90s, they ended up revealing they were working with SEGA on the Dreamcast before SEGA wanted and, apparently, that's a big reason SEGA went against working with 3DFX and chose NEC for the GPU instead).
Picked up on that too after reading Bodycount's link for a few minutes. If Microsoft really wanted pertinent information, they could just ask for budgeting costs of Sony's previously released games and marketing costs for specific 3P games already out on the market or coming to market soon that they have known marketing or publishing deals with.
They simply do not need 11 years worth of future Sony & 3P exclusive content licensing deal agreements or upper management employee performance reviews. At that point, they're getting ridiculous.
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Nah, @Gediminas put it well. They want to not pay for a game they claim to say they want, yet not enough to pay for it. So they'll abuse $1 Game Pass trail deals, abuse region switching tricks to keep getting free Game Pass deals, load up on MS Reward points to pay off for months of Game Pass, to access the game (and other ABK games) for "free".
That's the real reason they argue so vehemently in favor of the deal while talking about how "pro-consumer" it is for gamers (themselves, individually).
Rare to see a post on Reset critical of MS/Xbox and doing so in a respectful manner (as in, not antagonizing other users or personally insulting anyone).
Reset's been extremely protective of MS/Phil Spencer criticism for a good while now, especially after the Jim Ryan email stuff (where, again, all he was saying IMO was that as adults you have to tolerate differences in opinion but still work with people to get tasks done...which is a real-life fact) where IMO a lot more openly obvious and even hostile criticism against Sony/PlayStation was tolerated after that.
But I think after the "culture of cancellation" Phil Spencer comments (which was weirdly phrased if it's just about games getting cancelled because....I don't think there's a culture for that xD) and MS laying off 10K employees when Satya & others were getting private Sting concerts, they're maybe KINDA loosening up and more open MS/Xbox/Phil Spencer criticism is becoming somewhat more tolerated. They're still obviously protective of a lot of BS though and it doesn't help some of the mods and media who are there lean MS/Xbox (to the point of protecting it and/or allowing obvious anti-Sony/PS stuff proliferate for way too long).
Generally though it hasn't seemed as "protect MS/Xbox/Phil at all costs!" there the past 3 or so weeks as it has in the past, from my POV anyway. I was trying to find the Doctor Avatar person in the thread but it's too many posts to spot. Interestingly Jason Schreier is in there and very much against the acquisition; obviously there are quite a few questioning his reasons why but he hasn't been warned, thread-banned or banned despite clearly not being in receptive favor of the deal.
Granted, Reset don't want to ban a well-known name, but that's another topic.
Interesting that Jason Schreier isn't in favor of the deal. I would have figured he'd be leaning towards Xbox given all the semi hit pieces he's written on Playstation this gen.
I also imagine that they wouldn't ban him for takes like that because they want industry people to stick around and give their forum more legitimacy.
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Apparently Activision did really well last year. If some want to argue that Playstation doing well last year means the deal should go through, Activision doing well should factor against it going through by the same logic. Company performance shouldn't be the sole factor for deciding the legitimacy of a deal, but I think this does help underscore how much MS have been downplaying the massive boost/advantage this deal would potentially give them.
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Provisional decision, huh? Seems like negotiations for remedy didn’t work out.
Yes, structural or behavioral. Many saying structural would be most likely in this situation if it isn't blocked.
They were in negotiations for remedy terms already, and there was that massive PR offensive over the weekend, so it looks like talks broke down Friday and we are about to get the word that the deal is killed.
Provisional Decision in government language usually means that the government body has put an end to negotiations and is imposing their decision without further talks.
Also, MS has made it known they don’t feel that they should make any meaningful concessions, so any conditions that the authorities wish to impose will be deal-killers.
Structural would be a good compromise if they don't go for a full block.
CMA could look at it as a win win situation if they give them King and Blizzard and make them divest Activistion. Which will give MS what they say the are mainly doing this acquisition for mobile(we know this is bullshit), and also make the CMA look they are taking a strong stance on big tech and address their concerns about subs services and cloud.
But yeah who knows they may go for behavioral remedies.