Microsoft To Buy Activision Blizzard for $68.7 Billion

[rhorle]

YIPPEEE YIPPEEE HIPPHIPPHOORRAAAY “This major corporate consolidation is awesome because I’m a good little consumer who benefits from it in the short term” Oh my god WAKE THE FUCK UP

It was bound to happen one way or another and is something that Activision Blizzard has stated they were discussing as they realized long term plans would require a lot of stuff they didn't currently have the capacity for. https://venturebeat.com/2022/01/18/b...ith-microsoft/

It really is no different then steam being the "go to" place for game sales. Getting such huge value out of the game pass is a huge deal and might have even come without ownership stake since Microsoft already has a great deal with EA that includes EA play access at no extra cost.

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Microsoft has very little incentive to let them continue operating so independently, since the main point of this was to buy the IP. Reports are largely meaningless, and don't speak to autonomy.

They have no choice about making quarterly reports available for the company regardless of how much they micro manage if it is still a publicly traded company. Don't get side tracked.

[cityguy193]

Wat.

WoW is definitely not a drop in the bucket.

It might not make the most money out of Blizzard franchise. But if you think that it won't be missed profit wise you are sorely mistaken. Hell, it is literally a constant source of income every month guaranteed. And shadowlands was the best selling PC game before cyberpunk took the record away.

WoW makes money, a lot of it. Sure, it makes less than other ABK properties, sure. But by no means is irrelevant.

They straight up said that WoW is the largest franchise that blizzard have in the last investors call.

out of the 3 IPs (COD, Vs Candy Crush vs. Wow), wow makes the least. Wows 400-500mil revenue is going to absorbed into microsofts 40 something billion. It will be much easier for MSFT to close down a failing project if its just 1% of its revenue, than ATVI closing down a project like 25% of its revenue.

Think of it this way, a smaller company such as ATVI would rather let wow stagnate for several expansions. Microsoft would actually shut it down to clear way for more profitable games.

[Machismo]

It was bound to happen one way or another and is something that Activision Blizzard has stated they were discussing as they realized long term plans would require a lot of stuff they didn't currently have the capacity for. https://venturebeat.com/2022/01/18/b...ith-microsoft/

It really is no different then steam being the "go to" place for game sales. Getting such huge value out of the game pass is a huge deal and might have even come without ownership stake since Microsoft already has a great deal with EA that includes EA play access at no extra cost.

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They have no choice about making quarterly reports available for the company regardless of how much they micro manage if it is still a publicly traded company. Don't get side tracked.

They will still report revenue.

Microsoft is like 20 times larger than Activision/Blizzard. Quarterly reports are much less important, and don't speak to any actual autonomy. They can still do revenue reports, and not have any actual autonomy. It's little more than an accounting difference at that point.

This is like learning about Hearthstones individual revenue, as compared to Activision. They still have the same bosses.

[cityguy193]

Hilariously naive comments like this are why I'm continuing to refresh this thread. Please don't ever try to get into a position of leadership in any company, with your current mindset/ignorance, because you will cost people their jobs.

WoW is not a "drop in the bucket". WoW, despite it's issues and failures, is still the only franchise Blizzard has that's paying for all of their salaries and keeping the lights on for that division, and is still a profitable franchise, they're not actually losing money, they're just not making what they could/should be.

Axing the game at this point would make no sense. Blizzard as a whole is at least a quarter of the income ATVI makes. You don't succeed in business by throwing a quarter of your profits away. (Regardless of how they make it - the cash shop is a big chunk of that income, and as detestable as it is from a player perspective, it's money generation is acceptable from a business standpoint. Profit is profit.)

To prove my point, Blizzard is 24% of ATVI's profits.

https://www.investopedia.com/how-act...-money-4799286

Yeah, real big drop in that bucket. It's just pocket change, for reals.

I'm no fan of WoW, or current Blizzard games right now, god knows I love watching the slow train wreck WoW has become, and I've mostly given up on Diablo 4, they have a long ways to go to convince me to buy it, but from a purely business standpoint, it would be a unmitigated foolishness to ignore the income from Blizzard, from MS's position.

A clown completely misunderstanding what I wrote, must be nice to speak like you are on a high horse.

Im taking from the point of view of microsoft, not ATVI. Thats the point of this thread right? To discuss that ATVI is going to absorbed into MSFT

[rhorle]

Think of it this way, a smaller company such as ATVI would rather let wow stagnate for several expansions. Microsoft would actually shut it down to clear way for more profitable games.

What "more profitable game" is WoW standing in the way of? 400 to 500 million might be a drop in the bucket for Microsoft over all but it is still a big deal for a studio to have. It can also help pay for and fund other projects.

[Jastall]

out of the 3 IPs (COD, Vs Candy Crush vs. Wow), wow makes the least. Wows 400-500mil revenue is going to absorbed into microsofts 40 something billion. It will be much easier for MSFT to close down a failing project if its just 1% of its revenue, than ATVI closing down a project like 25% of its revenue.

Think of it this way, a smaller company such as ATVI would rather let wow stagnate for several expansions. Microsoft would actually shut it down to clear way for more profitable games.

Microsoft has money enough to revive AoE 4 even if the RTS genre is stale at best, but they'd look at a game reliably raking in half a billion/year and go "na, too expensive man, shut that bad bitch down"?

Sure, the main target for this buyout was Call of Duty and Acti-Blizz's major mobile gaming portfolio like Candy Crush, but WoW's a part of the pie as well, and is as safe as it'll ever be. If Phil Spencer was in the mood to shut down profitable MMOs for the sheer lulz of it (protip: he's not) he'd have started with ESO a year ago.

[rhorle]

They will still report revenue.

The topic before you tried to derail it was about seeing quarterly reports based on Activision Blizzard, or specifically WoW, performance. If Activision Blizzard is kept as a separate publicly traded entity those reports can not be just a line item buried on the Microsoft reports. Autonomy has nothing to do with it. The difference between being privately owned by Microsoft and publicly traded but owned by Microsoft do.

Because it determines how the SEC required documents get reported.

[Machismo]

The topic before you tried to derail it was about seeing quarterly reports based on Activision Blizzard, or specifically WoW, performance. If Activision Blizzard is kept as a separate publicly traded entity those reports can not be just a line item buried on the Microsoft reports. Autonomy has nothing to do with it. The difference between being privately owned by Microsoft and publicly traded but owned by Microsoft do.

Because it determines how the SEC required documents get reported.

And I answered you.

At this point, I think it's just time to stop even trying to engage with you. Feel free to have the last word.

Bye.

[OokOok]

LOL RIP!
YES BLIZZARD IS FINALLY DEAd

Microsoft is one of the most liberal companies in the world, get ready for 0 slut mog cause it offends all the blue hair dye of the world, get ready for lots of fruit paintings and no more memes.

microtransactions is about to BOOM!
BLIZZARD FINALLY KILLED ITSELF! it's over, back to ffxiv

[Gadzooks]

out of the 3 IPs (COD, Vs Candy Crush vs. Wow), wow makes the least. Wows 400-500mil revenue is going to absorbed into microsofts 40 something billion. It will be much easier for MSFT to close down a failing project if its just 1% of its revenue, than ATVI closing down a project like 25% of its revenue.

Think of it this way, a smaller company such as ATVI would rather let wow stagnate for several expansions. Microsoft would actually shut it down to clear way for more profitable games.

Wishful thinking on your part. No rational company closes down a segment of their company that's making half a billion dollars for them. But you'll just clap your hands over your ears and bellow "NAA NAA I CAN'T HEAR YOU" regardless.

And, to put it in perspective, Blizzard was 27% of ATVI's income as of Q3, 2021. King was 34%.

Note that Blizzard isn't losing money. They made half a billion dollars in profit. Even a child can understand that distinction, but you seem to be unable or unwilling to grasp that.

If MS shuts down WoW with that level of profitability, the investors should rightly call for those who made that decision to be fired and/or replaced.

But, you'll keep clapping your hands over your ears and bellowing "NAA NAA I CAN'T HEAR YOU", because that's the level of childishness you're bringing to this thread. Love WoW or hate it, nobody throws away half a billion dollars in profit. Nobody.

[rhorle]

And I answered you.

There was nothing to be answered. Us being able to see quarterly reports depends on if Activision Blizzard will be kept public or if will be private and rolled into Microsoft. Discussions of how much autonomy AB would have, even if it remains publicly traded, has nothing to do with seeing SEC required financial stuff.

[OokOok]

LOL at people thinking microsoft spent 70 000 000 000 just for candy crash and cod.

"Despite being in its eighth year on the market, the original Candy Crush Saga is still the leading game in the series, generating revenue of 473 million U.S. dollars in the United States between January and September of 2020."

Candy crush made more in 1 year than wow has in 10 years. Yes....they did

[Gadzooks]

"Despite being in its eighth year on the market, the original Candy Crush Saga is still the leading game in the series, generating revenue of 473 million U.S. dollars in the United States between January and September of 2020."

Candy crush made more in 1 year than wow has in 10 years. Yes....they did

Patently false. Blizzard made 24% of profits in 2020, compared to King's 27%.

https://www.investopedia.com/how-act...-money-4799286

But I guess it's fun to make things up, online? I guess?

[Sluvs]

out of the 3 IPs (COD, Vs Candy Crush vs. Wow), wow makes the least. Wows 400-500mil revenue is going to absorbed into microsofts 40 something billion. It will be much easier for MSFT to close down a failing project if its just 1% of its revenue, than ATVI closing down a project like 25% of its revenue.

Think of it this way, a smaller company such as ATVI would rather let wow stagnate for several expansions. Microsoft would actually shut it down to clear way for more profitable games.

Thats is a surface level reading. The operational costs of WoW and other blizz properties is way smaller than King(And historically Blizz operating margin tends to be smaller). So the gap is a lot smaller than people think.

Not only that, this is not the dissolution of ATVI, they will still exist, just like treyarch and Bethesda. So why would they axe a huge money maker of one of their companies? Why they would buy basically a pleothora of IPs and axe one of their most profitable ones? Why would they shut down an objectively important and profitable game for the company? Thinking that is only a drop in the bucket is only right when you increase the scope so much that it becomes irrelevant, but that is not how you run a company. Sure, the members of the board MIGHT not care, but I REALLY doubt that. If a company I invest in simply deleted 1~ billion dollars in income every year, there would definitely would be some eyebrows raising.

We tend to minimize the amount of money that WoW brings(because we love to complain about the game). Solely based on the monthly fees its gargantuan. Shadowlands brought 220 Million dollars in sale alone(And I am lowballing it hard). And god knows how much the cash shop brings in. WoW is absurdly profitable.

To call it a drop in the bucket in Microsoft is only right in the most technical sense possible, when you bundle up with so MANY different sectors that it does not make sense. From a business perspective its a cashcow that every 2 years shits a golden egg.

I'm not saying they wont shut wow down. They might if WoW stays on the decline. But to put it into perspective. WoW brings ~1Billion dollars/year. The profit of the ENTIRE Microsoft company revenue in 2021 was 61 Billion dollars. In 2020 it was 44 billion.

If you tell me it only takes 61 drops to fill a bucket, I would tell that it is a pretty small bucket or a pretty big drop.

[Kithelle]

Bye bye Bobby, hope things will get better once he's gone

[PsychoSe7eN]

I laugh every time I see MS gobble up another studio. If anything says "we have no faith in our own studio's skills" like needing to buy up every major publisher to entice people to buy your garbage console more than this, I don't know what does.

This is like the rich, douchebag kid in high school. He has a few friends that hang around because of what his name empowers him with, but otherwise, they would bail too. He sees all the kids eating at a popular restaurant, so in his warped mind, he knows how he is gonna get more popular. He has mommy and daddy buy the restaurant, and then only allows his "friends" to eat there.

AKA: If you have to buy out every major studio in an attempt to starve out Sony and Nintendo, you're not showing how strong your console is. You're showing how afraid of them you are.

Also, if any of the other studios being snapped up are any indication, be ready for already slipping standards to slip MUCH lower. Employees working on Starfield were told there would be no more delays, that they have a "fiscal quarter to help". That is how we ended up w WoW now during Acti. It will be much worse, and every game will have a crappy Xbox port. Oh, and good luck finding console matches of OW2 or the next CoD. No one wants to play against PC people on a console (better m/kb controls, option to cheat), so you'll have a whole one console to match with now.

Look out everyone, this moron sucked on a lemon and now his whole attitude is sour.

You are such a fucking hypocrite. Esp since Sony is doing the same thing following in Microsoft footsteps (gamepass likeness, snatching companies). Go fuck yourself.

[CrittenMitten]

Best news I've heard all year so far. I might just actually resub once we see a MS led WoW expansion.

Go Bobby!

[Zodiark]

I guess maybe the silver lining here is that maybe, hopefully, WoW gets an Xbox port, which means maybe we'll get controller support in the style of FFXIV's controller support. Yoshi-P said he didn't patent their cross hotbar configuration because he hoped that other MMOs would utilize it.

Or maybe Microsoft sees WoW as a sinking ship and cares for the other goodies in this buy, like Call of Duty.

I think WoW as an IP still has some value. With the right leadership and development, a few good expansions under their belts, you would be surprised at how quickly memories of bad times fade.

[Niwes]

I have extremely bad feelings about this. Activision burried Blizzard really deep...and I feel like Microsoft is going to bang the final nail in its cofin.

yep. at least for WoW, or „Blizzard games“, as we know it. Microsoft is not the company making WoW great again. MS is a company that just wanna be widely and broad setted up. and as they already mentioned, focusing on cloud gaming and gaming on every platform.

expect more of a „many games for many different ppls and platforms“ philosophy from MS, than a „high quality WoW game, dedicated to a specific audience“ philosophy.

imo this is the beginning of the end … of World of Warcraft. at least as we know or want it. mark my words.

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Here's hoping Microsoft sever Blizzard from the rest of that entity and allow them to work autonomously again. Can you imagine!

in your dreams. or: in the same way ATVI did not change ex Blizzard Entertainment (Vivendi) since 2012.

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I can't stand Microsoft. Every company they buy they turn to crap. Everything they put out is pretty much generic "meh". That said, Blizzard is SO BAD that Microsoft can't possibly make them worse (like Bethesda). So my thoughts on this are "who cares, I'm not playing their garbage anyway".

thats the problem. generic meh stuff. MS aims at a wide mass audience. they wanna have many generic stuff on many fronts. they are NOT the company that do some dedicated target audience high quality games and focus specifically to that.

this means MS is definitely NOT the company that makes WoW great again.

the ppl that dont like ATVI wow retail today, will dislike it x 20 in a few years. it will become even more superficial, simple, „modern“ aka generic meh. a high quality niche product with specific target audience… is simply not what MS does.

so yeah, a sad day for ppl that hoped, since years, for wow retail becoming more of its old greatness again. for many this day will mark the end of their (rather long) wow career.

[Devilyaki]

Maybe it will be a good thing. A little bit of hope now.