Will Dreamhaven buy out blizzard from Activision?

[Krastyn]

That's really not a flaw of Blizzard at all. Blizzard was getting boat-raced by GGG in terms of putting out new content vis-a-vis Diablo 3 vs Path of Exile. Its a big reason why PoE toppled D3. Major Overwatch updates have been terribly slow. If anything, they need to pump out content faster.

While all of that is in some form true, it's completely irrelevant to what I said, and what Dreamhaven has said.

If you're a public company, your boss is the shareholders (or any interest groups or companies controlling a large portion of the shareholders). As such your business decisions can be driven by those needs, and not necessarily what is good for the company long term. You could have an activist shareholder who controls a large portion of the share base who is demanding more MTX added to games to boost short term revenue.

If you're a private company, you can do whatever you want until the money runs out if you're the owner.

Dreamhaven has come out and explicitly said that they want to be in charge of the direction. That only happens if they stay private.

[XDurionX]

It might be good start, to develop a product to sell first. You know, the whole earn money to spend money thing. Maybe they can buy the rights to Rock'n Roll Racing or something.

[SirBeef]

He cant afford blizzard and he shouldve not sold the company in the first place.

Do you seriously don't know the situation and think Mike owned Blizzard and sold it off? My god the lack of understanding of public information is astounding. Blizzard has always been owned by someone bigger since 1994. They were bought by Davidson and Associates. Mike Morhaime, Allan Adham, and Frank Pierce had to sign off on that acquisition. Which back then, when they were Chaos Studios, previously Silicone & Synapse, they were only making console games pretty much. They needed a cash influx, and Davidson provided that.

Then they were sold to Vivendi, which was totally out of their control. Then Vivendi and Activision merged, again, outside of their control, created the holding company ActivisionBlizzard, which bought themselves out from Vivendi, also again, out of their control.

So if you are suggesting that Mike not being in a position to buy a company worth billions today, never should have sold to survive 26 years ago, you are insane.

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I don't think Activision is going to let go of a cash cow like blizzard very easy.

No shit. Anyone thinking this is a possibility clearly doesn't understand money.

[Acidbaron]

I would be very surprised given the state of decline of MMO's that they even attempt to create a new MMO.

[SirBeef]

Overwatch was created from the remains of Project Titan

Tons of debate on that. We know that the word Tracer was used for a class in Titan and the teleporting/time skipping aspect of Tracer in OW, may be tied to the class, or just something in the game. That is really all we have that is definitive. We have no idea if the world building of Titan made it into OW. I would assume yes. Since it was rumored to be a near future game with OW fits into. We never found out what perspective the game was played in, we do not know if it was a shooter or more traditional MMO combat game.

We can assume a lot of what we see came from the remnants of Titan, but we only know for sure is the Tracer name, porting/time skipping, and near future, are the only connections OW has to Titan.

[Sanguinerd]

The chances of Activision buying them up is higher than them buying Blizzard

The only thing Dreamhaven has going for it right now is the current hype, which just like with Bonfire will die down when you hear fuck all for years to come.

Maybe 10 years from now they'll release something which most likely won't be a MMO anyway.

[SirBeef]

I would be very surprised given the state of decline of MMO's that they even attempt to create a new MMO.

Much like WoW has been dying since 2004 and Nintendo is doomed 24/7, the state of the MMO genre has always been considered in decline. I heard it during the EQ days, after WoW launched, in the late aughts when literally 100s of MMOs were in development. Thing is it has always been a super niche genre, WoW just happened to show up at the right time with the right mix of accessibility and fun.

[Khain]

Much like WoW has been dying since 2004 and Nintendo is doomed 24/7, the state of the MMO genre has always been considered in decline. I heard it during the EQ days, after WoW launched, in the late aughts when literally 100s of MMOs were in development. Thing is it has always been a super niche genre, WoW just happened to show up at the right time with the right mix of accessibility and fun.

Lies! There was definitely an MMO hype after WoW release in 2004. I remember that every so often there was a new WoW Killer in sight but that stopped around 2014-2015 and after that none wanted to make MMOs anymore.

[SirBeef]

Lies! There was definitely an MMO hype after WoW release in 2004. I remember that every so often there was a new WoW Killer in sight but that stopped around 2014-2015 and after that none wanted to make MMOs anymore.

Which part? You seem to be in agreement with me. Except for believing the MMOs are niche. If they weren't, many more would have taken off instead of roughly 5-6 over the course of 20+ years.

[Mojo03]

I would be very surprised given the state of decline of MMO's that they even attempt to create a new MMO.

High chance it’ll be a strategy game of some kind, considering they have a small team and they’re mostly people from Blizzard strategy games.

MMOs take huge teams, so very likely won’t be anything like that from them at least for a while, if ever.

[Dhrizzle]

Are you coming from 2007? Blizzard and Activision merged. Mike will have to buyout Activision as well and there is no way in hell he will ever, ever get the funds to do that.

The more probable thing is for Activision to buy Dreamhaven.

It was Vivendi Games that got merged with Activision while Blizzard was a mostly autonomous subsidiary, some streamlining has taken place but for the most part Blizzard is still a separate package and could be untangled fairly easy.

[froschhure]

more likely they create a new world with where stockmarkets and their trades are not affecting the game

[Cloe]

Looks like they want detail at a lower budget. Blizzard will stay activision.

[PingPong]

need to make quality game like WildStar to make money first to buy blizzard back

[Zenfoldor]

Unlikely, but remember, "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet."

[Sangris]

Extremely unlikely. Considering most people of old Blizzard are already at Dreamhaven anyway, the only reason to buy it would be to get hold of their IPs. They will just create new ones instead. Also, it's highly unlikely they could even afford to buy Blizzard even if they wanted to.

[Zogarth]

Only slightly higher than me buying it.

[Acidbaron]

Much like WoW has been dying since 2004 and Nintendo is doomed 24/7, the state of the MMO genre has always been considered in decline. I heard it during the EQ days, after WoW launched, in the late aughts when literally 100s of MMOs were in development. Thing is it has always been a super niche genre, WoW just happened to show up at the right time with the right mix of accessibility and fun.

If you heard it during the EQ days than people were simply not knowing what they were talking about it was in increase in players over that period hence the wide range of MMO's after EQ's and the high level of investments, so i can't say i follow that statement.

I am not saying games like MMO's are dying i am stating that they don't warrant that much of high investments any more unless the format changes quite drastically Warframe is a good example of that and all sandbox mmo's that went ended with a small population also. What i am saying is that the online market since a few years have drastically changed as how people play games have changed.

I wouldn't call millions niche it was rather large for quite some time in comparison to overall online gaming and activity in general. Other formats have just taken it over now and sure compared to Fortnite and others it's fairly niche.

My point in case i was not clear, i don't see gaming companies like that launching an MMO to break through in the gaming industry. Also why would they want to make an MMO after almost working exclusively on one for over a decade.

[ONCHEhap]

Even if they had the money to do it,you've gotta remember that there's no Activision and no Blizzard

Activision-Blizzard is one company

[Krimzin]

It would be a shitshow unless he had serious backers.
Can you imagine, having the money to buy Blizzard back and then struggle on operating capital.