Microsoft To Buy Activision Blizzard for $68.7 Billion

[Razorice]

Yes. FFXIV is so terrible which is why it's having more and more players leave WoW to play it. It's so awful that there's still queues to play on every server even during off peak hours. Truly a failure of a game.

Sorry, should have put - in my opinion.

[Mojo03]

Honestly though the idea that Obsidian or even Bethesda could work on a Warcraft RPG is pretty exciting.

Imagine Azeroth setting with Elder Scrolls gameplay. Explore Azeroth the way it was meant to be explored.

They have great IPs and they’ve been criminally under used.

I do hope this opens the door for other studios to do things with the IPs.

Which is partly why I think this merge is mostly a good thing.

[draugril]

Microsoft took a huge shit on Rare, what are you talking about?

Sea of Thieves is one of the best games out there right now. They've been consumer-friendly with re-releases. A couple sequels have been great as well, like the new Battletoads.

Blizzard is now where Rare was. Their halcyon days are long past. People are going to blame the downfall on whatever entity steps in at this point when the blame lies with the developer itself, as it was with Rare. The best we can hope for is a good caretaker of what exists. Microsoft has done exceedingly well in that capacity.

[m4Zzo928]

I'd be up for it. As one of above posters said, monopoly is bad and thus I'm kinda afraid of what's gonna happen to gaming industry in the upcoming years but I'd definitely play a real rpg Warcraft game.

Do people know what monopoly means? It doesn't seem so. This isn't even remotely close to monopoly. If people wanted to say they don't like bigger corporations, then that'd make more sense, but not monopoly. It's like they polarized the idea way too much.

[Machismo]

Of course it is a you problem. You are the one arbitrarily deciding they couldn't recover based on nothing more then that being the narrative you want to push. That Microsoft spent a record amount for a gaming company that was failing and unable to recover. Microsoft buying it doesn't simply make the pipeline fill up, lol. If it was failing before it is still failing and doomed after the acquisition.

There is more saying your take is wrong rather then right.

You still didn't go back and read what I actually said.

Have a splendid day!!!

[Vasilisa]

Do people know what monopoly means? It doesn't seem so. This isn't even remotely close to monopoly. If people wanted to say they don't like bigger corporations, then that'd make more sense, but not monopoly. It's like they polarized the idea way too much.

You're right here. What I wanted to say that I don't like centralization of game studios within a single company. Less variety is always bad for customers.

[Soulwind]

This is actually why I view this as a horrible deal for Microsoft. Games with no set release date, IPs that are dead or dying. They basically made this deal for Call of Duty and Candy Crush. Plus this is at a time when the company itself is at an all time low. They could've gotten them for far less.

With the complete lack of productivity from Blizzard as you put, it will take decades to make back the 68 billion. And sure they can license out the IPs, but for what? Is anyone interesting SC anymore? Diablo? Warcraft? These games are all floundering atm.

They probably wanted to buy the house while it's on fire so that they could extinguish the flames and still have something left. If you wait too long, you risk those IPs losing all their value. Not to mention beating competitors such as Tencent or Sony, who would have also very much liked this purchase.

In any case, while Warcraft might be the most interesting IP Blizzard has to offer, and I'm sure they have some plans for it, it's probably not even in the top 5 reasons they made this purchase, let alone Starcraft or Diablo. Call of Duty and Candy Crush were definitely the priority here.

[Gadzooks]

This is actually why I view this as a horrible deal for Microsoft. Games with no set release date, IPs that are dead or dying. They basically made this deal for Call of Duty and Candy Crush. Plus this is at a time when the company itself is at an all time low. They could've gotten them for far less.

With the complete lack of productivity from Blizzard as you put, it will take decades to make back the 68 billion. And sure they can license out the IPs, but for what? Is anyone interesting SC anymore? Diablo? Warcraft? These games are all floundering atm.

You don't drop 70 billion dollars on the table for expectations of "more of the same".

I just read something that I haven't verified yet, that the board approved this deal, against Bobby's wishes. Which would make sense, Kotick's awful management led to this place, and the company being sold. I would expect that this deal has been in the works for a while, and that the higher ups at MS and the Xbox team have a plan being formed to right the sinking ship, not "Hey, let's spend 70 billion dollars to do nothing." They'll make changes, they're buying a lot of talent, especially with the art team, which is one of the best in the industry, and massive, tentpole IPs.

If you think they're not going to try and fix whatever the hell is wrong internally at Blizzard, I don't know what to tell you, because you're incapable of thinking rationally about this.

You have to keep in mind how hard a LOT of people have been pleading and asking for a better game from Blizzard, across all of their titles. I can guarantee you MS has that as part of their dataset - the demand is there, and the leadership at Blizzard has failed to respond to it. That will change. 70 billion dollars is a pretty big motivating factor to change anything and everything at Activision, King, and Blizzard, so they can recoup that investment and make profit, going forward.

[TheRevenantHero]

Sea of Thieves is one of the best games out there right now. They've been consumer-friendly with re-releases. A couple sequels have been great as well, like the new Battletoads.

Blizzard is now where Rare was. Their halcyon days are long past. People are going to blame the downfall on whatever entity steps in at this point when the blame lies with the developer itself, as it was with Rare. The best we can hope for is a good caretaker of what exists. Microsoft has done exceedingly well in that capacity.

Sea of Thieves is typically polarized. People either like it or hate it. But there are far more horrendous titles with Perfect Dark Zero, Banjo Kazooie Nuts and Bolts, Killer Instinct, and Battletoads being pretty horrendous.

[Wadrak]

In any case, while Warcraft might be the most interesting IP Blizzard has to offer, and I'm sure they have some plans for it, it's probably not even in the top 5 reasons they made this purchase, let alone Starcraft or Diablo. Call of Duty and Candy Crush were definitely the priority here.

Maybe WoW is not doing well now but isnt WoW game which make the most profit in history of gaming ? 10mil subs 10dollars per month, 100mil per month for long time. Also the wow shop transactions and all that.

With Classic Vanilla, TBC and retail subs combined numbers may still be 3-5mil subs.

And potential to get many subs back is still there.

I would say WoW is among the reason why Microsoft bought Activison Blizzard.

Candy Crash ? Its making lot of money but is it that good ?

Call of Duty ? Its good game I play many of them.

Like just the fact you can make WoW 2 would get lot of attention and make good profit.


It may be close and Candy Crush and Call of Duty are good brands but the top reason may still be WoW due to subscription of millions of players.

[m4Zzo928]

You're right here. What I wanted to say that I don't like centralization of game studios within a single company. Less variety is always bad for customers.

In certain situations I agree. In this merge, I just see wins. Microsoft over time will work to restore community relations. Its something Phill Spencer is very good at as a CEO, something Bobby Kotick was very bad at. Microsoft also promotes autonomy. They expect a healthy work environment, but don't tinker with the creative process. Something Activision was really bad with, you could see it in Wow soon after Activision bought out Blizzard. In this specific instance, it's a good move all around, but if maybe Blizzard was doing just fine and was on the upswing, I tend to agree there's no need to merge, and it'll likely cause issues very similar to Activision acquiring Blizzard.

[MoanaLisa]

Yes. FFXIV is so terrible which is why it's having more and more players leave WoW to play it. It's so awful that there's still queues to play on every server even during off peak hours. Truly a failure of a game.

Yes, after most of FFXIV was made free to play, nothing to buy, no subscription price. It's a fine game and I'm happy to see it doing well but come on: going from its former revenue model to being free except for the new expansion has something to do with its recent success. It's dishonest to leave that out.

Of course, people are going to give it a try. It was bad planning on Square Enix's part not to have provided capacity for the new players so they could play without long queues (even during off-peak hours) but I suppose that's forgivable if your company isn't named Blizzard.

[TheRevenantHero]

Yes, after most of FFXIV was made free to play, nothing to buy, no subscription price. It's a fine game and I'm happy to see it doing well but come on: going from its former revenue model to being free except for the new expansion has something to do with it. It's dishonest to leave that out. Of course, people are going to give it a try. Bad planning on Square Enix's part not to have provided capacity for the new players so they could play without long queues (even during off-peak hours) but I suppose that's forgivable if your company isn't named Blizzard.

FFXIV is free to play only up to a certain level. So using that as part of your counterpoint is just you purposely leaving out crucial information. The only person being dishonest is you. But I guess it's ok since it's ok for you to be dishonest and wrong while claiming to be stating facts.

[MoanaLisa]

Maybe WoW is not doing well now but isnt WoW game which make the most profit in history of gaming ? 10mil subs 10dollars per month, 100mil per month for long time. Also the wow shop transactions and all that.

With Classic Vanilla, TBC and retail subs combined numbers may still be 3-5mil subs.

And potential to get many subs back is still there.

I would say WoW is among the reason why Microsoft bought Activison Blizzard.

Candy Crash ? Its making lot of money but is it that good ?

Call of Duty ? Its good game I play many of them.

Like just the fact you can make WoW 2 would get lot of attention and make good profit.


It may be close and Candy Crush and Call of Duty are good brands but the top reason may still be WoW due to subscription of millions of players.

Revenue reports show that of Activison/Blizzard's three divisions Blizzard is a rather distant third in terms of revenue and monthly active users. It's true that it makes a ton of money so it's a win for whoever owns them but one shouldn't minimize the fact that King Software/Candy Crush far, far, far outstrips Blizzard in terms of raw revenue.

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Yes, after most of FFXIV was made free to play, nothing to buy, no subscription price. It's a fine game and I'm happy to see it doing well but come on: going from its former revenue model to being free except for the new expansion has something to do with its recent success. It's dishonest to leave that out.

Of course, people are going to give it a try. It was bad planning on Square Enix's part not to have provided capacity for the new players so they could play without long queues (even during off-peak hours) but I suppose that's forgivable if your company isn't named Blizzard.

FFXIV is free to play only up to a certain level. So using that as part of your counterpoint is just you purposely leaving out crucial information. The only person being dishonest is you. But I guess it's ok since it's ok for you to be dishonest and wrong while claiming to be stating facts.

Stop lying about what I write.

[Machismo]

Revenue reports show that of Activison/Blizzard's three divisions Blizzard is a rather distant third in terms of revenue and monthly active users. It's true that it makes a ton of money so it's a win for whoever owns them but one shouldn't minimize the fact that King Software/Candy Crush far, far, far outstrips Blizzard in terms of raw revenue.

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Stop lying about what I write.

Never underestimate the purchasing power power of women playing video games whilst they poop.

[jackoff]

By that logic no one has ever had an MMORPG as successful as WoW. I rather imagine that they'll leave Blizzard mostly alone since Blizzard's CEO, Mike Ybarra, worked for Microsoft for a long time and is a known quantity there.

Yes exactly no one had that longest success in MMORPG history i wont go into details its all known. I am not fankid i just talk by numbers and facts. I dont know whats going to be next nobody does, but if they leave blizzard alone its still good for WoW s sake, atleast they wont be under pressure of activision anymore. Lot of things going to change for sure, we will see in time. I rather blizz go back to times before activision. They had more creativity than die try on money milking.

[Machismo]

Yes exactly no one had that longest success in MMORPG history i wont go into details its all known. I am not fankid i just talk by numbers and facts. I dont know whats going to be next nobody does, but if they leave blizzard alone its still good for WoW s sake, atleast they wont be under pressure of activision anymore. Lot of things going to change for sure, we will see in time. I rather blizz go back to times before activision. They had more creativity than die try on money milking.

The problem is that all those guys are basically gone. Blizzard will never go back to that.

And yes... it's a damn shame.

I do have hope with this buyout, because Microsoft has plans. We may not know what those plans are, but they aren't doing this for nothing.

[m4Zzo928]

The problem is that all those guys are basically gone. Blizzard will never go back to that.

You can bring in new people who are similar. Yes, it will never be those guys, but close would still be leagues better than what's going on now.

[Machismo]

You can bring in new people who are similar. Yes, it will never be those guys, but close would still be leagues better than what's going on now.

And you can hope that Microsoft will do that. Activision and Blizzard sure as shit did not.

[Wadrak]

Revenue reports show that of Activison/Blizzard's three divisions Blizzard is a rather distant third in terms of revenue and monthly active users. It's true that it makes a ton of money so it's a win for whoever owns them but one shouldn't minimize the fact that King Software/Candy Crush far, far, far outstrips Blizzard in terms of raw revenue.

.

Monthly active users ?

Well WoW definitely has users which plays more hours then King's users.

Candy Crush may have more users but WoW users are more active.

And I saw another report which says revenue Is almost equal between Candy Crush and WoW i dont know where you saw distant third.

Candy Crush is fun game but with WoW you have lot more potential. Much more.