Microsoft buys Activision Blizzard

[Baron Dupek]

This is like Disney announcing they bought the Epstein Island

 

[Alphons]

This is like Disney announcing they bought the Epstein Island

Microsoft already owned ActiBlizzard ??

 

[Basshead]

https://www.shacknews.com/article/127765/head-of-xbox-phil-spencer-condemns-activision-blizzard

Merely a month ago.

Xbox is "evaluating all aspects of our relationship" with Activision Blizzard.

 

[J1M]

Context for casual gamers: He was an Xbox VP before he was head of Blizzard.

 

[KateMicucci]

70 billion for starcraft and calloduty lol

And lucas sold star wars for 4b

Nobody is even pretending that money means anything anymore.

 

[markec]

 

[markec]

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

I wonder if this becomes a big in for Microsoft in South Korea. It seems Blizzard is still huge over there anyways. I hadn't even really thought of it at first, but South Korea is like this giant market, it seems to be where companies like Tencent are making their money. It's like one day you'll hear about something like Dungeon Fighter Online and it's like: Oh what's that...oh, it's the biggest money making game in the whole world right now, OK. While there's definitely a whole lot of fucking money to be made here with Blizzard games and Call of Duty, I wonder if getting Blizzard is part of a strategy to really make some cash in Korea.

Was looking at the Call of Duty studios, or at least the ones I could remember. It'd not realized ol' Visceral Sledgehammer Games wasn't a main CoD studio anymore. So here's the studios that make CoD, and it seems sometimes they've got four of them on one: Infinity Ward which had Neversoft merged into it, Treyarch, Sledgehammer Games, Raven Software, Hight Moon Studios, Toys for Bob, and Beenox. I'm going to guess most of these studios (at least Sledgehammer Games, Raven Software, Hight Moon Studios, and Toys for Bob) aren't doing Call of Duty games every year, or maybe even ever again, after this. If your model is Call of Duty for Xbox Game Pass you kind of don't need a new one every year. And you definitely don't need a new one every year when you're also publishing all the other major first person shooters. But you do need content to flesh out your Xbox Game Pass, so maybe, hopefully, they've got those other guys going back to what they were doing before.

Also this merger has to be the end of Activision. I mean, I don't think there's any developers that develop under the name Activision. Activision is just the overall company name they publish under. Well, there's not exactly any good will with that name, and there's no point in Microsoft publishing a select few titles under a Activison brand, so I guess once this merger is final next year that's the end of Activision.

Would also be interesting to see what happens to Vicarious Visions; they seemed to just be coming into their own recently, but were merged into a Blizzard support role like Activision does with all those CoD guys.

It's kind of funny how Microsoft now basically owns every major PC property of the '90s. It's like you thought they forgot about them when they started up Xbox and then kind of all at once 20 years later they bought them all up in a couple fell swoops.

I do wonder though how many of these properties will just go unused by them. Microsoft is the studio that owns MechWarrior and Shadowrun and they personally do almost nothing with either. Then again they now own a whole fucking lot of studios to do stuff will.

 

[vonAchdorf]

With the sexual harassment scandals the Activsion share price apparently dropped 40% this year which probably made it an attractive target for acquisition, although at $70 billion I did have to check if it was April Fool's Day or not when I woke up this morning.

The SEC should look into this :fabolouslyoptimistic: - it would be interesting to see if he made those statements (November) before or during their negotiations.

My scale is that Star Wars was worth 4 billion. Theres been horrible inflation since, but I don't see it being over 16 times as big a prize.

Star Wars didn't have consistent revenue comparable to Activision. CoD alone has 3 times the life time revenue of Star Wars (within less than half the time).

The concept of buying a service company has always been wild to me. What are you even buying? Do they really value the IPs as being worth $67 billion?
Houses of cards built upon houses of cards.

Activision traded for a lower earnings multiple than Microsoft while it was growing faster - for Microsoft the acquisition should be hugely accretive. For Microsoft it also caps almost two decades of trying to force themselves into gaming at considerable costs.

 

[Ryzer]

Nobody worries about the fact that Microsoft will soon control everything and have more power than the US government itself.

 

[Jarpie]

Context for casual gamers: He was an Xbox VP before he was head of Blizzard.

Finns are getting flashbacks.

 

[KateMicucci]

Any idea what the price-earnings ratios might be on these? Are they as inflated as everything else?

 

[Catacombs]

The future for Activision-Blizzard is fabulously optimistic

"As a Queer Indigenous, non-binary Two Spirit Warrior Queen" -- Candi Brings Plenty

 

[Caim]

For context, the first three combined are worth a bit more than the Actiblizz deal, and the rest combined a bit less.

 

[Demo.Graph]

Come on, people! Less steaming, more memeing!

 

[Ravielsk]

I see what MS is trying to do here but I suspect its not going to play out like they think it is. I suspect its going to be a repeat of what they did with RARE or more recently what Disney did with star wars. Run them all into the ground. Microsoft was unable to push out games for xbox one when they had 1 or 2 studios so I fail to see how increasing that number is going to help anything. FFS they could not finish that phantom dust remake nor Scalebound and Halo infinite had to be restarted at least twice and is still only half the game Reach was. Unless there is some ultra major shake up in the management(by which I mean they replace everyone with racist white shitposters) the chances of them doing anything of value with these studios is right next to 0.
They will probably just burn billions only to run their flashy new properties into the ground and leave them in their IP vault.

 

[vortex]

Let's talk about potential single player Arcanum and Diablo game Obsidian, Bethesda or Inxile can make now.

 

[Zarniwoop]

I see what MS is trying to do here but I suspect its not going to play out like they think it is. I suspect its going to be a repeat of what they did with RARE or more recently what Disney did with star wars. Run them all into the ground. Microsoft was unable to push out games for xbox one when they had 1 or 2 studios so I fail to see how increasing that number is going to help anything. FFS they could not finish that phantom dust remake nor Scalebound and Halo infinite had to be restarted at least twice and is still only half the game Reach was. Unless there is some ultra major shake up in the management(by which I mean they replace everyone with racist white shitposters) the chances of them doing anything of value with these studios is right next to 0.
They will probably just burn billions only to run their flashy new properties into the ground and leave them in their IP vault.

Nigga they can't even make Windows these days. The only reason they are still in business is because of their cloud shit and because people keep buying Office 365 because what else are you going to do?

The reason they bought Actiblizz is the same as they always did, to kill it on purpose.

'member Netscape Navigator? And its cheap clone Internet Explorer? No one does.

'member Skype?

'member Hotmail? (ok that sort of still exists but it's Outlook.com now)

FASA interactive?

Ensemble Studios?

etc

 

[markec]

Let's talk about potential single player Arcanum and Diablo game Obsidian, Bethesda or Inxile can make now.

Even if they are made at best they will be mediocre games like Wasteland 3.

Not something I'm really excited about.

 

[Zarniwoop]

Let's talk about potential single player Arcanum and Diablo game Obsidian, Bethesda or Inxile can make now.

Even if they are made at best they will be mediocre games like Wasteland 3..

You wish.

They'd be shit cash-ins like Age of Empires 4 or inexplicable re-re-releases like The Bard's Tale Remastered Yet Again.

 

[Storyfag]

Have the kwan anti-monopoly laws been stripped so much over the decades that the FTC can't stop the merger? Honestly MS will get too fucking big with this.

Too big... to fail.

 

[Hobo Elf]

I see what MS is trying to do here but I suspect its not going to play out like they think it is. I suspect its going to be a repeat of what they did with RARE or more recently what Disney did with star wars. Run them all into the ground.

Blizzard has already been run into the ground and Activision has never made anything of value.

FFS they could not finish that phantom dust remake nor Scalebound

To be fair on Microsoft, Scalebounds fuck up was entirely Platinum's fault. They repeatedly failed to meet their milestones and once the gameplay was finally shown it had an extremely poor reception. Pulling the plug on it was the correct thing to do.

 

[vonAchdorf]

The future for Activision-Blizzard is fabulously optimistic

"As a Queer Indigenous, non-binary Two Spirit Warrior Queen" -- Candi Brings Plenty

I told you that Microsoft is by far the wokest Big Tech company out there. They also do "land acknowledgements" and other crap (but of course don't have the intention to return the land to the warrior queens).

 

[Zarniwoop]

I see what MS is trying to do here but I suspect its not going to play out like they think it is. I suspect its going to be a repeat of what they did with RARE or more recently what Disney did with star wars. Run them all into the ground.

Blizzard has already been run into the ground and Activision has never made anything of value.

FFS they could not finish that phantom dust remake nor Scalebound

To be fair on Microsoft, Scalebounds fuck up was entirely Platinum's fault. They repeatedly failed to meet their milestones and once the gameplay was finally shown it had an extremely poor reception. Pulling the plug on it was the correct thing to do.

Strong disagree. Activision gave us some of the all-time greats:

Dark Reign

Interstate '76

Civilization Call to motherfucking power

The first (and only good) Call of Duty

Rome: Total War

Each one of those had a massive impact on gaming history.

 

[Cross]

I see what MS is trying to do here but I suspect its not going to play out like they think it is. I suspect its going to be a repeat of what they did with RARE or more recently what Disney did with star wars. Run them all into the ground.

Blizzard has already been run into the ground and Activision has never made anything of value.

FFS they could not finish that phantom dust remake nor Scalebound

To be fair on Microsoft, Scalebounds fuck up was entirely Platinum's fault. They repeatedly failed to meet their milestones and once the gameplay was finally shown it had an extremely poor reception. Pulling the plug on it was the correct thing to do.

Strong disagree. Activision gave us some of the all-time greats:

Dark Reign

Interstate '76

Civilization Call to motherfucking power

The first (and only good) Call of Duty

Rome: Total War

Each one of those had a massive impact on gaming history.

Dark Reign and Rome: Total War were published by Activision, but made by external developers. That's like crediting Activision for making Bloodlines.