Microsoft Now Owns Blizzard?

Finally Microsoft have purchased blizzard and is now part of Microsoft, the real Question is do you think it will ever recover now and become the old blizzard from the late 90's to early 2000's?
Or will blizzard still make dog ***decisions?

Asmonbald

Nope. Microsoft have plans that are not aligned with WoW fanbase desires.

Am I the only one finding it terrifying how rapidly these megacorporations are assimilating one another? Constantly adding more layers of management between the people at the top and the labourers at the bottom, reducing competition in their industries.

I know Sony isn't innocent, and a lot of people are happy that Microsoft is sticking it to them. But I don't even see how this is a win for any consumers at all. It's not like Xbox players are going to get any more games than they had before, it's just going to potentially create more exclusives, which just means more people are going to be incentivized to buy an Xbox. But that doesn't mean anything good for Xbox players, it just means more money for Microsoft.

EDIT: I just skimmed the Asmongold video. Surprisingly his opinion seems to align with mine on this particular topic. Is this the end-times?

The OP writes like someone that does not deal with MS Support.

Good luck!

No, I am equally as terrified and I work in M&A and VC. But I am pleased its the devil I know, versus the one I don't; China.

You can thank globalization and hyper-consumerism for all our woes. We went from contained micro-economies based on value-adding benefits to communities, that were based on freemarket rational dynamics and economics, to basically "CHINA IS COMING!!!GET READY!"

China has all the perks and benefits of existing within a global Freemarket capitalist system, with little to none of the constraints (regulations, governance, human rights and common sense to name a few).

Microsoft would be perfectly content with its current operations. It's doing phenomenally well.

But tomorrow's threats are being pivoted against today.

If the market, industry or sector is experiencing an accelerated
rate of consolidation, it's because a player within that market, sector, or industry has triggered it and now everyone is reacting to secure their position or survive to continue to stay in the game.
When the rival is so well entrenched in their position, and guarding their market share, the only way to grow (grab market share) is to buy your rival.

Do some research on the chinese shopping spree of 2008-2016 in the west.

You're from Canada so I'm sure you can see visible evidence in your everyday life to the takeover.

Anyways if you want to know how all this ends, read Schopenheuar and Nietzche. Those guys were pretty damn on-point. Almost like they were time travelers from the 21st century.

Not quite yet: FTC files to appeal Microsoft/Activision Blizzard merger

So, still some legal battles to play out before the the official merger can happen.

Ten years ago this would have been a big deal, but Call of Duty isn't what it used to be. It still has a large marketshare, sure, but its been in decline for years. Blizzard is almost exclusively PC games, so nothing is going to change. Still, it's good that the government did its due diligence and went to trial, so we have Microsoft on the record about its intentions. And the gaming industry can finally wave goodbye to Bobby Kotick.

I know this is *** move but everytime I see Assmongold I remind myself to add dove body wash to my amazon cart.

He just went from "unimaginably rich" to "rich beyond all dreams of avarice" and his ego has to be driven around in a special van. He now has nothing but time on his hands and enough money to pursue any new venture he would like.

There is a zero point zero percent chance we have heard the last of him.

Not I. A lot of people like to frame MS as some kind of unbeatable mega corp from a dystopian sci-fi fiction because they dominated PC OS market. Truth to be told, PC OS market monopoly isn't a history that can be replicated easily because of the uniqueness of PC OS as a platform.

For most other business MS that tried to enter in the past, they couldn't accomplish market monopoly. If I remember correctly that is.

Just FYI, MS entered console market more than 2 decades ago since 2001 with xbox, ever since then they've been spending endless money in this market and even today they are still losing by a very big margin.

Xbox sales:24m
PS2:155m
GC:21.74m

Xbox360 sales:84m
PS3 sales:87.4m
Wii:101.63m

Xbox one sales:58m
PS4 sales:117.2m
Switch sales:125.62m

PS5 sales:38.4m
Xbox X/S:21m

Not only xbox lost the console war against every other competitors in every generation, it's currently 45% behind sony and 83% behind Nintendo. Their market share in console game is abysmal at this point. If anything MS gaining an advantage is evening the playing field, not the other way around.

The only gaming market that MS is currently gaining a slight advantage is gaming subscription service at 60%. But subscription service is very small portion of video game market, not all of the market. Subscription based market is currently only 9.94 billion, in a 200+ billion video game industry. This is hardly monopoly.

Besides console game market, MS also rarely gain a strong advantage in other business that isn't PC OS. Their surface computer currently only has less than 3% of the market share. Other brands like Lenovo has 25%. Their Edge browser has 5.28% of market share, but chrome has 62.55%. Their cloud service is only 22%....etc. So it's not like MS is a super successful business in every single area in the field of business.

So I have no idea why people fear MS more than other company tbh. Their market value is the 2nd largest in the world thanks to PC OS monopoly, that does not mean they can easily dominate every other market that isn't PC OS by spending large amount of money. Real world business doesn't work this way. Achieving Mega corp monopoly is not as simple as dystopian sci-fi fiction story.

If anything, Nintendo is the one who is dominating console market, not MS.


He is a streamer, his job is to generate clicks with his video. Analyzing and predicting the the future of this industry accurately isn't his job. There are plenty of industy vet or market experts that I would go to for industry forecast before watching a streamer for his opinion about this.

What you are listing here is hindrance of economic growth, not perks.

China is currently entering deflation with 20%+ youth unemployment rate and this number is still growing. Their way of dealing with economy doesn't work that well at all.

Curious how much of this had to do with RRoD. It's almost as if 30M people changed from Xbox to PS.

As an owner of xbox 360 who also own a ps4 and never want to buy another xbox ever again, I can tell you RRoD didn't affect my decision, it was fixed fairly soon.

The lack of Japanese games and that terribly huge xbox 360 power adapter is the main reason why I regretted my xbox 360 purchase, and never want another xbox again.

I also feel MS doesn't care about Japanese market that much even though they tried in early xbox360 days. They just give up completely now.

I think he is done. He will get his golden parachute and no company will want anything to do with him. He isn't a developer, we aren't dealing with Hideo Kojima here. Closer to Peter Molyneaux. Radioactive.

Zip. It was Don Mattrick and his disastrous Xbox One launch. Always online, mandatory Kinect, no reverse compability, and telling people to buy an Xbox 360 if you wanted old, offline games. This was when everyone built up their digital library, and Mattrick chased away a huge marketshare that would never look back. Microsoft fired his ***, but it was too late.

more games onto gamepass

It all depends on game availability, people don't purchase a console just to own a console, they do it to play a specific game. Nintendo's are pretty crap but they have a bunch of exclusive titles that happen to be popular, and that drives console sales. Sony makes good consoles but not as many popular exclusives, so if someone doesn't want or need a Nintendo only game they usually go with PS. That leaves MS in a weird position, again not as many exclusives to drive sales and consoles are hit and miss depending on generation. Halo isn't what it used to be and people can buy multiple consoles, so we say 30m people who just didn't have a reason to buy a Xbox one.

I've really been into indi-games lately, doing Afterimage now and wow that game is gorgeous. Dungeon Rats was another super fun game to play.

Microsoft 'not' owning A-B-K didn't mean games wouldn't be on the Game Pass. Lots of non-exclusives are on the Game Pass. It's a choice. Them suddenly being owned by Microsoft isn't going to inherently change that. It might be forced now, but at A-B-K's (and by extension, Microsoft's) financial loss.

more games = more value and more sign up for it.

Exclusivity doesn't mean one platform gains more games, it just means other platforms gain fewer. Xbox owners aren't going to get more games than they had before.

I get it: Sony's been a real jerk about this whole thing. It's good to see them lose. But their loss isn't our win. It doesn't benefit anyone who already owns an Xbox, it just sucks for anyone who doesn't already own one. The only "winner" in this scenario is the Microsoft Corporation, and cheering for a company worth $2.3 trillion USD getting more money is just asinine.

Especially when the losses include: A-B-K's already limited control over their own IPs, everyone except for the 21 million Xbox Series X/S owners worldwide now having to buy a $500 console or else be time-gated or entirely excluded from games, and the industry losing a fragment of its competitive market.

XBox might not get more games but at least the ones they were already getting will be on Game Pass!

Sony didn't lose anything though, they were just called as witnesses. The FTC is the one that brought this trial about. Call of Duty is still gonna come to Playstation and Nintendo. And that is the only console game worth talking about under the Activision umbrella.

It's a choice but Blizzard choose not to have their games on gamepass.



Like Pokemon and Zelda are exclusive on switch, never seen people complain about it.

MS isn't even as bad as Nintendo as their games are often on PC.


Not sure what's wrong with a company making money if no other unethical practices are involved. It's not like MS stock isn't available to buy for you or me.

I'd rather see MS make money more than any other privately owned company anyways. At least MS's profit goes into many average people's retirement fund instead of a few random individual's pocket.

I actually dont and i own both ps 5 and xbox one s

Zelda, smash bros and Mario pretty much.
I've owned every nintendo since 1985. Skipped PS4 and PS5. Never owned an Xbox and don't see a reason to, since I think I can play all games on PC.

I only play on pc, so gamepass getting more games would be a + for me

Cries in Bloodborne

never played that, or darksouls or even elden ring.
when Ninja gaiden got too hard, I called it quits to everything except RPGs.

Why on earth would this be a factor in anything? It was external and made the console lighter...

It's not like its going to be any worse. Microsoft will keep a lot of the talent and programmers but send out a bunch of feelers to the gamebase and make their own whatever decisions that will work or not. Blizzard is not the same as it was 20 years ago in terms of vision. It got scaled all to hell.

It's not like WoW will dissapear. Blizzard/Microsoft meh either or they are the same essentially now.

What would be badass is if Microsoft (or anybody) bought FFXI.