Sad times for everyone that still believed in antitrust.
Honestly I’m okay with this one, but it’s mostly because Activision Blizzard has great IP with some seriously awful management … and Microsoft actually has been doing much better in that department for games.
Yeah… In practice, every time a company gets anything that even slightly resembles a captured market, they stop investing in quality and starting shafting consumers.
Make no mistake, that is Microsoft’s end game. And that’s why they’re buying Blizzard.
Microsoft even with Activision Blizzard would not have a captured market. Valve, Crytek, Sony (which now holds Bungie), Epic, Electronic Arts, CD Projekt Red, Take-Two, and Ubisoft are all still quite potent AAA capable studio just in the PC space … along with tons of independent studios (e.g., Ghost Ship Games, Shiro Games, Hello Games, Re-Logic).
The Microsoft internal doc leak said they’re mostly after King Games (mobile games) anyways. I’d wager at worst Microsoft will let the traditionally Activision & Blizzard studios do their things… at best they’ll clean up the executive teams and let the devs “play” a bit more with the IPs.
Mojang has flourished under Microsoft.
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I mean, it’s had plenty of success with its own IP… Heard of Starfield? Minecraft … and it’s nth successful Spinoff? Forza Horizon 5? Sea of Thieves? Flight Simulator 40th Anniversary Edition? Age of Empires IV? Age of Empires XYZ DE? Fallout 76?
The only major “flop” I can think of that wasn’t corrected (at least so far) is Halo Infinite and … that largely seems to be a 343 issue. There’s also Redfall, but that was a new IP in an over saturated space … it’s not like they’ve stopped developing IPs, fixing games, and trying new things.
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Go look at Fallout 76’s reviews, it was unpopular at launch (IIRC) but it’s doing very well now … and that’s the point, they kept the lights on until the majority of players were happy.
Minecraft has had several games derived from it, that were entirely different games set in the Minecraft universe.
Microsoft bought Bethesda 3 years ago. To say that they had no ability to influence and/or didn’t take a risk on Starfield is … lazy at best.
And yes, they own Redfall as well, time will tell if they fix that one or it’s just a straight up failure.
One good thing to come of this (hopefully) is the chance to clear the C Suite people from AKB. I hope all of the AKB employees get what they deserve, which is a new set of higher ups that aren’t sexist dickbags.
There goes the competition.
Can someone recommend a good indie game? Better spent money than feeding these vampires.
Hades, Into the Breach
Terraria is pretty fun
