The Gamers Arms

https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2022/01/18/ ... ft-gaming/

Just crazy, such a huge amount of money, ten times the Bethesda deal.

The fuck? Maybe the company is holding less value these days, but that's because it's a poisoned chalice.

"Exclusives Are ‘Completely Counter To What Gaming Is About,’ Xbox’s Phil Spencer Says" July 2020

This seems like a crap use of money with how limited portfolio they have though I'm not sure what comes on the publishing front. WoW is weaning, Overwatch seems to have lost its popularity so its CoD, Diablo and Candycrush? For 70billion?! The worst part is little piggy boy Bobby is going to make out big time here.

Presumably these talks were ongoing prior to all the bad press Acti-Blizz had late last year. Still, not a great look if they just sweep all the issues under the carpet and don't do some major restructuring of teams and smoke out all the bad eggs.

I was kind of hoping that Microsoft would fund some more interesting studios and bring them onboard as first party titles to make their exclusive lineup more interesting. Just wholesale buying companies who really didn't need a buyout and who put their games across multiple platforms beforehand is a really scumbag way of getting exclusive titles.

I wouldn't be surprised if we saw a Game Pass price increase within the next year or so. They'll be able to justify it by the way they're aggressively sweeping up huge portions of the industry and locking it behind their paywall.

That has to be a monopoly case now surely.

Alan wrote: ↑

Tue Jan 18, 2022 2:02 pm

"Exclusives Are ‘Completely Counter To What Gaming Is About,’ Xbox’s Phil Spencer Says" July 2020

This seems like a crap use of money with how limited portfolio they have though I'm not sure what comes on the publishing front. WoW is weaning, Overwatch seems to have lost its popularity so its CoD, Diablo and Candycrush? For 70billion?! The worst part is little piggy boy Bobby is going to make out big time here.

I don't see them pulling CoD from PlayStation, it makes too much money.

The thing that is often forgotten because of Blizzards struggles to get games out is that Activision Blizzard still make a ton of money, see this from their last quarterly report.

The biggest gains were reported by the King division, which saw its flagship app Candy Crush grow 20% year-over-year while its segment net revenues rose 22% to a new quarterly record of $652 million.
Blizzard segment net revenues were also up 22% to $478 million, driven in large part by the launch of Diablo 2: Resurrected.
However, the Activision segment dominated by Call of Duty posted net revenues down 17% year-over-year to $641 million

Whenever Blizzard manage to get something out people rush to buy it and there are IPs at both companies that are not being leveraged right now because Activision are focused on specific IPs and don't have many studios. Microsoft have the studio capacity to take advantage of some of those IPs and then alongside that you have all the service games that rake in a lot of money each year.

Then you have the added value that this acquisition brings to Game Pass.

Listen guys, COD is the second biggest game in Europe, after FIFA and its the biggest game in the US. $70B is approx 2x the actual worth of Activision but Microsoft is buying 3 things from them

- King. Mobile gaming is growing exponentially and King is among the top 4 mobile game developers.
- COD
- Blizzard. It may be in trouble now but the revigorated Blizzard could be a boost for PC gaming
- GamePass security. When COD becomes available day 1 on GamePass - it will position Xbox as the premier service

Is this why Bobby Kotick didn't resign I wonder, he knew he was in for a fucking massive payout.

Every single thing Bobby Kotick has done in the last few years has been to give him a fucking massive payout.

bad guys win all the time, it doesn't bother me anymore

Jeff Grub -

OK. Fine. I'll do the damn discourse. Warzone will remain multiplatform, but I think main Call of Duty games go exclusive. Microsoft already ran the numbers on every scenario with Bethesda and it determined exclusivity to Game Pass is the best way to drive its goals.

Kotick is out once Microsoft acquisition closes, reports say. Unsure on the exclusivity, Call of Duty does massive numbers on the Playstation platform and much of the newer content has always been released there first and foremost.

I agree with Jeff. Minecraft is MS owned but is multiplatform, but Minecraft is a different calibre of game compared to COD. I think COD full priced game will go exclusive within the next 4 years. Microsoft will spend $68 Billion to acquire Activision....with cash. That tells me they do not need COD PlayStation revenue.

The whole point of doing this is to acquire King and COD. The whole point of acquiring COD is to have leverage over PlayStation.

There's now a rumor that Sony and Nintendo are going to merge which has to be the fevered dream of some disgruntled Playstation owners. Interesting article on why it probably won't happen.

https://www.shacknews.com/article/12838 ... tion-deals

that will never happen. Nintendo is too independent and it has a wholly different market to PlayStation. This is pure bullshit.