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Microsoft completes $69B deal to buy Activision Blizzard
- teddyX 3y agoUKs opinions are meaningless today.
- beardyw 3y agoAll a bit embarrassing really.
- kdwikzncba 3y agoWhy? What did I miss?
- beardyw 3y agoThe deal was accepted by every country but UK. Now the climb down.
- blibble 3y agothe US FTC case is still ongoing, however unlike the CMA they don't seem to have statutory powers to prevent the merger if the FTC wins Microsoft would have to spin Activision out
- k12sosse 3y agoHopefully they can eat the IP and sell the shell
- maffydub 3y agoI have to confess I'm not really up to speed on the situation but, from the article... > However, last month the watchdog said a revised deal that included selling cloud gaming rights outside Europe to Activision Blizzard’s French rival Ubisoft had addressed its concerns, indicating the tie-up would be approved. Was this as a result of CMA's pressure, or would it have happened anyway? (If it wouldn't have happened anyway, it doesn't feel like a climb down to me?)
- SSLy 3y agoYes, it was concession caused by CMA's stance.
- thfuran 3y agoWhy? Microsoft is a trillion dollar company. If they want to compete, they can afford to.
- PretzelPirate 3y agoApproval isn't based on whether or not they can afford to compete without the acquisition, it's based on whether or not the acquisition will meaningfully reduce competition.
- sofixa 3y agoEach competition authority has their own criteria. But in this case, it will meaningfully reduce competition. For some reason UK's CMA only considered cloud gaming, which is a weird fixation. Maybe because it's an emerging market? If all Activison Blizzard games become Xbox exclusive will reduce competition and screw consumers, yet that was dropped as a concern for who knows what reason.
- rsynnott 3y agoLikely because they thought it was the one they were most likely to be able to win; these are usually pretty narrowly focused.
- Sakos 3y agoI just don't see how it meaningfully reduces competition. This barely moves the needle. If I look at the top sellers on Steam, the vast majority are not Activision Blizzard.
- k12sosse 3y agoYou mean the games that are sold on battle.net aren't being tracked by steam?
- Sakos 3y agoSo you'd rather just miss the point, ok. It doesn't matter how much revenue Battle.net makes for them. The multitude of developers and publishers that are successful on Steam show that AB is irrelevant to the market. If AB owned a significant number of the top 50, it'd be a different story, but they don't.
- foobar_______ 3y agoMicrosoft under Satya has really stepped up. Gaming is now larger than TV and Movies in terms of revenue. I know their cloud rollout didn't work as anticipated, but if they get this acquisition right they will have a money printer for the next decade.
- pjmlp 3y agoKind of true, however Microsoft under Satya really killed the Windows desktop, burned bridges with the Windows developer community, that now has decided to re-focus on Win32, Windows Forms and WPF, ignoring pretty much anything else. Windows is still the best alternative to expensive Macs (on mosty countries for common folks), or the Year of Desktop Linux right around the corner, but not thanks to Satya.
- Kranar 3y agoI'd say that Windows and Office are the two areas that Satya didn't really touch or influence in much of any way and mostly let continue on autopilot as he focused on every other area of Microsoft.
- pjmlp 3y agoDisagree on the Office part, he is clearly behind the push to bring everyone using the Azure version of Office, and the subscription model.
- HDThoreaun 3y agoSatya's entire strategy seems to be going all in on turning microsoft into the one stop shop enterprise productivity SAAS company. Office is their main product at this point. I don't see how you can say he didn't touch or influence it.
- mistrial9 3y agobrilliant leadership? considering that overall Games out-grossed Movies about 15 years ago.. that trend only continued when the largest Game rollout of all time beat the largest Movie rollout of all time.. that has happened multiple times in 10 years.
- izzydata 3y agoIt's strange to see some gamers praise this acquisition as if it will have any positive effect on some of the games they enjoy. In no world will Microsoft decreasing the competition going to be a good thing for consumers.
- eigenket 3y agoMostly its because Activision/Blizzard is such an obviously shitty terrible company that any deal that sees cool IPs taken out of their hands is seen as a positive thing.
- jnovek 3y agoCame here to say this. Activision has been such a poor steward of Blizzard's properties that I find them largely unplayable. It may be unlikely that Microsoft will course correct away from data-drive, engagement-focus mtx games, but I know Activision never will.
- AlexandrB 3y agoRumor is that Bobby is stepping down once the acquisition closes, which is a good start.
- NekkoDroid 3y agoHe is gone on the 01.01.2024, until then he remains CEO
- izzydata 3y agoMaybe from an artistic perspective, but not from a financial one. It will inevitably mean gamers will spend more money for less game. They might hide it will with their game renting service and microtransactions, but if this was not the case there would be no reason for them to acquire Activision Blizzard in the first place. They see some way to profit by reducing competition.
- als0 3y agoI hate how Microsoft bribe and bully their way to success, despite all their third rate software.
- nerdjon 3y agoWe likely won't see any real effects of this until the next generation of consoles, but I think in 3-4 years it is going to be very interesting to see what happens with gaming. Putting Nintendo aside since they really don't compete, they are kinda just in their own "Nintendo" space and that isn't a bad thing. But Sony having some real competition is a good thing. Sony has a bad tendency of anti-consumer tendencies in their gaming space when they are the leader and they get cocky. They did it with the PS3 and they are repeating some of that with the PS5 generation. Not that Microsoft hasn't engaged in some of their own practices, but at the moment we have a basically unchecked Playstation and that is bad for the gaming industry. We need real competition in the gaming space. We can argue all day that Microsoft could have built their own studios, but IP is also very important. So are established developers with a certain style of game associated with them. Will this actually be good for the gaming industry? I don't know. But I know that the current situation isn't good either.
- manuelabeledo 3y ago> But Sony having some real competition is a good thing. Sony has a bad tendency of anti-consumer tendencies in their gaming space when they are the leader and they get cocky. They did it with the PS3 and they are repeating some of that with the PS5 generation. I'm curious about which "anti-consumer practices" Sony is responsible for, that Microsoft isn't. So far it seems to me that Sony did acquire some gaming studios, but mostly smaller ones. Microsoft has recently bought two big studios with massive franchises, of which some are already not available for Sony platforms.
- pjmlp 3y agoPS2Linux, the way PS3 Linux was a downgrade to PS2Linux, and later removed via firmware update, for example.
- manuelabeledo 3y agoThat's hardly on their "gaming space", like OP said.
- ChrisArchitect 3y ago[dupe] More discussion over here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37867334 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37867334
- segfalt_ 3y agohttps://archive.ph/ekMsw https://archive.ph/ekMsw
- mrweasel 3y agoAnd what is Microsoft going to do with this purchase? Seriously, Microsoft is buy all these game studios and fail to utilize them probably. They own all the IP required to do a followup to Fallout New Vegas and NOTHING.
- mcpackieh 3y agoThey'll start making nostalgia bait cash grabs soon enough when they think gamers are ripe for it.
- delecti 3y agoThat they don't already think gamers are ripe for it shows how bad they are at making games people want to buy/play.
- Night_Thastus 3y agoMicrosoft will likely just let them keep operating as they do now, providing money and reaping any profits. They'll only step in directly if the studios are having problems they can't handle themselves, or performing very poorly. They want the profit, not as much to direct everything on a micro-level. EDIT: They will of course make more titles Windows/XBox exclusive too, which makes sense considering the investment.
- southwesterly 3y agoUntil enshittification. And then they’ll be hollowed out.
- Night_Thastus 3y agoVery unlikely. Again, MS just wants the profits. If a studio is doing well, they don't want to touch it. They want a steady revenue stream. They'll only step in if the studio is floundering and their couple releases have been flops. Then they'll offer direction, and shut them down if they can't fix it. That's what we've seen from MS so far, and it makes the most sense from their perspective.
- xinayder 3y agoBobby Kotick will remain as CEO until the end of 2023 and get a huge check for this purchase. He's getting rewarded for building a toxic, fratboy workspace, sexually and psycologically harassing women. I wonder if Microsoft can be held accountable for allowing a sex predator like him to continue working.
- paradoxyl 3y ago[flagged]
- benced 3y agoI suppose literally anything is legally actionable in the sense you can write anything on a lawsuit and pay the filing fee - but you’d be highly unlikely to come even close to winning on these grounds in the US.
- xinayder 3y agoBobby Kotick threatened to have his former assistant killed [0] Activision CEO Bobby Kotick Knew for Years About Sexual-Misconduct Allegations at Videogame Giant [1] Activision's Bobby Kotick Didn't Just Know, He Also Was Shitty To Women [2] Activision Blizzard CEO Brushes Off Company’s Harassment Issues—Argues There Is No ‘Systemic’ Problem [3] [0] https://www.businessinsider.com/activision-ceo-bobby-kotick-reportedly-threatened-former-assistant-killed-2021-11 https://www.businessinsider.com/activision-ceo-bobby-kotick-... [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/activision-videogames-bobby-kotick-sexual-misconduct-allegations-11637075680 https://www.wsj.com/articles/activision-videogames-bobby-kot... [2] https://kotaku.com/report-activisions-bobby-kotick-didnt-just-know-he-al-1848066600 https://kotaku.com/report-activisions-bobby-kotick-didnt-jus... [3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2023/05/31/activision-blizzard-ceo-brushes-off-companys-harassment-issues-argues-there-is-no-systemic-problem/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2023/05/31/act...
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- AirMax98 3y agoGod damn man. How is this not an antitrust violation? The only answer is that we live in truly corrupt times. What is our answer to this?
- spacephysics 3y agoI’m convinced we’ve always had corruption, it’s just seeing more of the light today. I mention this to my Eastern European friends and they laugh at the level of corruption the US complains about (compared to what they’ve had for decades+)
- ffgjgf1 3y ago> this to my Eastern European friends and they laugh at the level of corruption the US These days I’m not that sure that the case (only talking about the Eastern European countries in the US)
- xxpor 3y agoBut that's a big part of why the US is as successful as it is. A culture against corruption. It's very hard to get rid of it once it entrenches itself, which is why people complain about it.
- e63f67dd-065b 3y agoWhere is the corruption here? I agree that there are many corrupt parts of government, especially in procurement, and especially in regional and local governments, but in this specific case it's pretty clear that the law is on the side of Microsoft here.
- VirusNewbie 3y agoWhat is the antitrust behavior here?
- gainda 3y agothe antitrust behavior is two of the largest players in the gaming space combining. how is that going to promote competition? it's just going to make it easier for them to outspend and outlast and eventually ingest it's competition Sony's gaming revenue is ~26 B 8 % of MSFT's revenue is from gaming = ~15 B Nintendo 12 B ABK 8 B EA 7.5 B ( and that isn't including tencent and netease. i didn't bother trying to find figures for them but they are in the running here too )
- aktuel 3y agoWhy not just merge all nasdaq 100 and be done with it?
- TheRealDunkirk 3y agoThe idea that there's a "fair" market left in the US is an abject joke. At BEST, there are a handful of companies divvying up a market collusively. At worst, and increasingly commonly, we have effective duopolies that juuuust skate the currently en vogue legal definitions to create 2 different walled gardens. Name for me a market (of financial significance) which isn't currently dominated by two mini-monopolies, and I'll show you a private equity firm which is leveraging its ass off to try to capture it, and make it so.
- yowlingcat 3y agoI would say healthcare. With that said, many sub-verticals of the industry are in fact quite dominated by duopolies or triopolies.
- micromacrofoot 3y agohealthcare has its own special kind of regulatory capture too
- yowlingcat 3y agoAbsolutely. I would go so far as to say healthcare is essentially operated by regulatory capture given how deeply the Medicare market leads where the rest of the market directionally goes.
- e63f67dd-065b 3y agoThere are many such markets -- real estate, construction, financial services (banking, mortgages, credit cards, etc), agriculture, retail (no, walmart is not a monopoly), oil, automotive, air travel, I can name many more. The only big national industries that are dominated by monopolies I would say are telecommunications, utilities, silicon, pharmaceuticals, rail, and even most of these have a few more companies than two. Granted, 3 telecoms is not much of an improvement over 2, but nevertheless your claim is broadly speaking false. Are there private equity firms trying to consolidate? Sure, but in any of the above they haven't really met with much success.
- JohnMakin 3y agoNormally I'm against such huge mergers - but Activision Blizzard is one of the most hostile companies against their users and employees I have ever seen. I can't imagine this being a bad thing for game fans.
- tonmoy 3y agoMS could decide to prevent resale of next new game to be release on the PS like they did with Starfield. However, they are still significantly better than Sony, so can’t complain too much. This acquisition is probably a good thing for the game developers tho
- taf2 3y agoI wonder if a lot of the hostility was the result of cost cutting to prepare the company for sale?
- ReliantGuyZ 3y agoBy all accounts the sale agreement came together rapidly in the light of dark revelations about the state of Blizzard's work culture. I think the company has just been authentically bad without that pressure
- JohnMakin 3y agoHow the AVB board did not immediately fire Kotick when it came out that he not only knew about the horrific culture of sexual harassment and hazing in his workplace, but that he withheld it from them, is absolutely baffling to me. Maybe that's what spurred this on.
- greenthrow 3y agoLooking forward to revisiting this quote in 5 years.
- AlexandrB 3y agoOne thing you learn as you get older is that things can always get worse.
- m3kw9 3y agoMS has been making some really mediocre games in the past 5 years. What have they made that was good or won awards/Acclaim? I think they buy studios and the execs then put their finger prints all over it and f up the games. Just look at Starfield, hyped af but mid af
- RadixDLT 3y agotrue, I wonder what will happen co COD
- blizdiddy 3y agoAge of Empires 4 is the best yet, so is flight simulator.
- hypercube33 3y agoI was absolutely bored by age 4. I really like age 2hd however. where is hellbender. hover 95. ski free?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ToucanLoucan 3y agoI really don't get the complaints about Starfield being mid. What did people expect? Skyrim, Fallout 3/4, Starfield are all basically the same things with visual retouches along the way. This is not a slam in the slightest mind you: I'm currently in the midst of my fourth playthrough of Fallout 4. I'm looking forward to picking up Starfield in a year or so once the modders have made it more awesome and Bethesda's fixed the more egregious issues. But apart from that, it's the Bethesda formula: big ass world, a lot of stuff to do in it, none of it particularly mindblowing but all of it generally sitting atop a standard of quality you expect. You go to the places, you shoot the bandits, you collect shit, you sell most of the shit and then get a new point on the map to check out. This is The Loop. Like I just don't understand what people expected. It's Fallout/Skyrim in space. It has a ton of the exact same mechanics, the exact same weak points, the exact same strong points. I'm sure I'll enjoy it, I'm just not chomping at the bit to have it right now and so will pick up the Game of the Year edition with all DLCs included for like $20 in a year or two. If you like Bethesda games, you'll probably like Starfield. If you don't, you won't. I personally enjoy them, they're excellent "brain off" entertainment for me and at the same time I understand why some people don't like that, and that's also completely fine but I just don't get why people are flipping their lids in either direction. By all accounts (bearing in mind I haven't played it) it is exactly, 100% to the letter what I expected it to be.
- SeenNotHeard 3y agoAs a side note, this means that Microsoft now owns the copyrights to all of Infocom's interactive fiction: Zork, Enchanter, Deadline, HHGttG, etc.
- hypercube33 3y agoQuake, Wolfenstein, elite force* *may have paramount cbs locking that up but Raven comes back to the family with id now
- burnte 3y agoThey already owned those when they bought Zenimax, who bought id (except for the Trek games).
- WorldMaker 3y agoAlso, Sierra (King's Quest, Space Quest, Gabriel Knight, etc), Knowledge Associates (lots of ancient Edutainment IP, including Mario Teaches Typing and Mario is Missing!), Davidson (Math Blaster and other Edutainment IP), and more. Activision was a massive M&A shop of classic PC games history.
- DerekL 3y agoNot HHGttG. After a time, the rights reverted back to the author of the original work (Douglas Adams). Same for the Shogun adaptation.
- havblue 3y agoSo, granted, one big company is buying another big company and consolidating a decent chunk of the market for multiplayer fps games. Fewer platforms means fewer people play a certain kind of game with the benefit of less development for lower quality ports. Other than the fact that AAA companies can cut costs from this I'm not so sure about what people are negative on this one. So if you don't want to buy a PC or get an Xbox, but you really like CoD, you might be out of luck eventually. I would think that what we're really concerned about is whether indie studios can get off the ground and create new experiences.
- Retric 3y agoActivision is a lot bigger than CoD with Warcraft, Diablo, StarCraft, etc each have huge followings. So not only does it impact players of a huge chunk of game series, plus any potential future series by Activision but also the viability of alternative platforms. Thus, even pure indy gamers are being harmed here. Worse it’s yet another sign that US regulators have no intentions of limiting monopolistic behavior.
- duped 3y agoRoughly 82% of their revenue comes from Call of Duty, Warcraft, and Candy Crush. I'm not sure what the actual breakdown is from there, but they're not exactly diversified. https://www.axios.com/2022/03/03/embattled-activision-facing-increased-attrition https://www.axios.com/2022/03/03/embattled-activision-facing...
- Retric 3y agoThat ~20% varies by year but is still ~1.5 Billion dollars per year which is a major studio representing a long tail of properties that come out infrequently. More importantly you need to consider future franchises not just their current properties: Caesar, Crash Bandicoot, Diablo, DJ Hero, Empire Earth, Gabriel Knight, Geometry Wars, Guitar Hero, Gun, Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm, Hexen, Interstate ’76, King’s Quest, Laura Bow Mysteries, The Lost Vikings, Overwatch, Phantasmagoria, Pitfall, Police Quest, Prototype, Quest for Glory, Singularity, Skylanders, Solider of Fortune, Space Quest, Spyro the Dragon, StarCraft, Tenchu, TimeShift, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, True Crime, Zork, and probably a few others I missed.
- Thaxll 3y agoSo Basically only EA and Ubisoft remains as big publisher.
- pbjtime 3y agoWhat, that's not enough competition for checks notes the whole fuckin planet?
- NekkoDroid 3y agoMe when I learn about the music industry
- kcb 3y agoSquare Enix, Embracer, Capcom, Take-Two, Sega, Bandai Namco,
- SSLy 3y agoSony?? Tencent?
- impulser_ 3y agoRiot Games, Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, Capcom, Sega, Bandai Namco, EA, Valve, Square Enix, Nexon, Ubisoft, Konami, Embracer, and some others. Not including all the Chinese publishers.
- tester756 3y agoCD Projekt Red? 2 of the biggest games ever belongs to them (Witcher and Cyberpunk)
- joering2 3y agoanyone can point me to a decent list of what exactly these objections were?
- gardaani 3y agoUK regulators were objecting the deal because they were concerned that the takeover would reduce competition in cloud gaming. Microsoft gave game streaming rights to Ubisoft, which made the Activision deal possible: https://techcrunch.com/2023/10/13/why-microsoft-had-to-relinquish-activisions-cloud-gaming-rights-outside-europe/ https://techcrunch.com/2023/10/13/why-microsoft-had-to-relin... "For Ubisoft, this deal means it has full and exclusive cloud-streaming rights to all current commercially available Activision games, as well as those released in the next 15 years." !!! Ubisoft is the real winner here.
- w0m 3y agowell, assuming there's actually a cloud gaming market. A fact that's still up for debate I think.
- WorldMaker 3y agoRight. Microsoft is just about the only player left in cloud gaming because Sony, Amazon and Google all tried and gave up in different ways, in part because none of them really found a market nor an audience. I heard Sony is trying again but leasing some cloud servers from Microsoft Azure's white box version of xCloud, ironically. That last part is also why I think the Ubisoft deal is probably funny. Rumors are Ubi is also leasing much of their cloud gaming from Azure's white box version of xCloud, so Microsoft is likely still going to get paid for people playing Activision things through Ubi's so far unfinished cloud gaming app.
- wlesieutre 3y agoNvidia still has GeForce NOW https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce-now/ https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce-now/
- giancarlostoro 3y agoDoesn't EA still have theirs?
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- addajones 3y agoPeople are so excited for cloud gaming, and Xbox Game Pass growing now... The price will continue to go up up up up up up. I remember when YouTube TV was $35/mo now it's $73/mo. Game Pass and all cloud gaming will slowly cost more until it's close to 1/2 the price a month of a game, and slowly creep up from there. Sad.
- koromak 3y agoI'm not even worked up about gaming specifically. I just think the FTC is failing horrifically at its job of protecting consumers from monopoly. The SEC is failing on its end too. Everything will just get slowly worse.
- xxpor 3y agoWhich is why the FTC should break up Sony.
- surgical_fire 3y agoWith Microsoft track record of poorly managing its acquisitions, I don't think anything will get meaningfully worse.
- chii 3y agoif nothing is getting meaningfully worse, why is it considered a poorly managed acquisition then? At best they are neutral and is only changing where the profits of said acquisition flows, rather than changing the acquisition.
- Sebguer 3y agoI think this is a bit unfair, there's a real significant FTC upswell happening, but they're contending with decades of atrophy and an antitrust lobby that is extraordinarily powerful, not to mention the number of monopoly-friendly judges that are sitting in some of the most vital courts.
- lapetitejort 3y agoAnd this upswell can easily be squashed in just over a year's time. We are fortunate that any sort of effort is being made.
- paulddraper 3y agoAtrophy of.....the FTC
- 3y ago
- rollcat 3y agoI keep my fingers crossed for the revival of the StarCraft franchise. I grew up with the game, and it's kinda sad to see the current state of SC2: old bugs, new bugs, community trying to take over the processes but having a very bumpy ride, opaque decision making (de-facto spokespersons/community figures under muddy NDAs), and unfortunately all our 2010 fears (no local/LAN play!) coming true, when server outages are hitting during in-person tournaments. SC2 is still the best RTS there is. Immortal, Stormgate, and ZeroSpace are all showing great promise, but none of these is even at the public alpha stage. So SC2, with all of its problems, it is.
- tonyhart7 3y agoAge of Empire is thriving under microsoft, its not biggest esports out there but the game is pretty stable and receiving seemingly endless content updates I expect starcraft would be the same, maybe cant go back to it former glory but atleast it would be alive especially if make it to gamepass
- fphhotchips 3y agoNot only is AoEII doing really well under Microsoft, it's doing so despite taking a couple of goes to get it right in the modern era. Most other companies would have given up when HD edition got a bit of a middling response.
- biomcgary 3y agoI really wish they would update Rise of Nations, which MS also published. Obviously not as popular, but I loved the tech tree and the territory system.
- eric-hu 3y agoAs a StarCraft 2 fan, I’m actually quite happy with the current game balance. The last two rounds of balance patches from the community were far better for the playability and fun of the game. It was alarming when Blizzard cut funding for GSL and it looked like the Korean scene was practically done, but Afreeca and the community pulled together and kept that prize pool interesting enough for the Korean pros.
- viscountchocula 3y agoElon only wishes
- ynab5 3y ago[flagged]
- robotburrito 3y agoThis must be terrible for people that work in gaming. What if you don't work at one studio, and then there are only 3 others you can realistically go to and make enough $ to earn a living? Will that number just continue to decrease over time?
- c0pium 3y agoThere are like 20 game publishers that are worth over a billion dollars. Gaming is much, much bigger than you think, this is just rearranging the deck chairs.
- r0uv3n 3y agoNote that the unions representing Activision developerd (part of the CWA) supported the merger because Microsoft was more willing to work with the union than Activision and signed a labour neutrality agreement (whereas Activision repeatedly used union-busting tactics)
- holografix 3y agoFunny I thought capitalism was anti-monopolistic. Wtf is going on with the institutions that are meant to prevent this? It’s the death of ownership. Everything you consume is now a subscription. Gamepass will be the new norm.
- agentgumshoe 3y agoI still don't get how $69B is a reasonable deal. Acti-Blizzard have been making 7-8B net the last few years, so it will take MS 10 years assuming constant returns just to break even. Why is it a good deal, especially in gaming. What does MS want with the customer base?
- martinky24 3y agoThis is a very naive way of looking at M&A activities.
- sho_hn 3y agoWhat I've gathered over the past year (e.g. press coverage of documents uncovered during these proceedings) is that the Xbox ecosystem is falling behind Sony by quite some margin. This is presumably just to protect the business they already have, by scaling out and adding IP and content. They need it for customers to keep coming to Xbox.
- yreg 3y agoIs 10 years for break even supposed to be a lot? MS has some obvious synergies with ATVI.
- signal_space 3y agoI wish they would finish starcraft ghost
- keithalewis 3y agoFlashing lights on a screen and noise from a speaker have never been so valuable. Who'd of thunk there were so many people willing to pay good money to waste their time?
- TillE 3y agoYou could literally write the same comment, word for word, about the film industry, but for some reason the disdain on HN is reserved only for videogames. It's not the 80s anymore, so it's really weird to be treating games as an embarrassing hobby for boys, rather than part of the multibillion dollar entertainment industry.
- keithalewis 3y agoAgreed about the film industry. The writer and actor strikes are making it clear how vile the people running that are. There are wonderful and worthwhile films and games, but not the majority of them. The best way to exploit people is to convince them they want to be exploited. That takes multibillion dollar investments, but it seems to be down to a science now. Edward Bernays was a pioneer.
- Blackstrat 3y agoExpecting Microsoft to reinvigorate the various Activision/Blizzard franchises seems like wishful thinking to me. The priority would more like be optimizing the games for the XBox platform. IMO, the rise of the gaming console has been a net negative for deep, complex games on the PC, examples like Crusader Kings notwithstanding. The earlier generation of PC gamers grew up on Avalon Hill strategy games, Strat-o-Matic, D&D, chess, and the like. We were used to complexity and looked for it in games. Recent generations, generally, are less depth focused. Since retiring, I don't have a staff of 20 something programmers to keep me apprised of gaming developments. Most of what I get is from here and other reading. Yes, there are exceptions. Folks here have stated that Paradox tends to make games that verge on obtuse complexity. I'm sure there are some new original games out there, but generally clones and remastered oldies seem to dominate the market and the headlines. Personally, I wouldn't expect much from Microsoft. And sooner or later, companies generally will realize that the cloud is not their friend.
- hydrok9 3y agoI forsee a big surge in RTS and other strategic games once they invent something easier to use than a keyboard and mouse :)