General Gaming News and Discussion

While mergers never seem to be worth their price tags, that's especially true here.

Blizzard ain't worth shit anymore. Hell, if WoW falls under GamePass, then there won't even be box sales every two years (?)

Call of Duty still has some cachet, mostly due to their competition imploding, but that means that CoD's biggest competition for non-Battle Royale... is the same company (Halo)? Same deal here, are Battle Passes Game Pass?

I can't imagine anything King related gets Game Passed, but then again King's MTX might be the most profitable part of the acquisition.

As Vandyn mentioned, I would fire up some COD campaigns if they're (Game Pass) free, but its hard to imagine people not having heard of Acti-Blizz's products until they are now on Game Pass.

Hopefully Microsoft moves all their shit to the Battle.net client. I can't stand the Xbox app. I really think the entire deal is bad for the industry. It really has to make Sony sweat.

Regime said:

Kinda like when you join Brahma and my squad.

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Wombat said:

Words

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MS has been sitting on like 165 billion in cash and ATVI is roughly 2% of their size.

ATVI make billions per year even if they do nothing which has basically been the last 5 years+.

If they gut the existing work culture and rebuild they have a slew of franchises that people will pour cash into.

Literally the only thing close to them after this merger is Tencent. Easy win for MS.

Utnayan said:

I would actually be surprised if the deal gets approved. Either way though, they just swallowed up some IP's maybe they can do something with that Activision wouldn't. With that said, there is literally ZERO talent there any more so hopefully MS culls the fuck out of the place.

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Disney got approved to buy Fox. Our government no longer cares about stopping monopolies.

Wombat said:

While mergers never seem to be worth their price tags, that's especially true here.

Blizzard ain't worth shit anymore. Hell, if WoW falls under GamePass, then there won't even be box sales every two years (?)

Call of Duty still has some cachet, mostly due to their competition imploding, but that means that CoD's biggest competition for non-Battle Royale... is the same company (Halo)? Same deal here, are Battle Passes Game Pass?

I can't imagine anything King related gets Game Passed, but then again King's MTX might be the most profitable part of the acquisition.

As Vandyn mentioned, I would fire up some COD campaigns if they're (Game Pass) free, but its hard to imagine people not having heard of Acti-Blizz's products until they are now on Game Pass.

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What's ironic is by the time this does get fully approved, it'll be just in time for Overwatch 2 to land on Game Pass (assuming that's still a thing).

CaughtCross said:

Disney got approved to buy Fox. Our government no longer cares about stopping monopolies.

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Pretty much my thoughts exactly. There are so many companies now that should have been torn apart in the last 15 years that it makes me wonder if they even care. Now theyre so big, so globalized, that they couldnt stop them even if they tried.

Utnayan said:

here is literally ZERO talent there any more

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Can't say I blame 'em. Being someone with actual talent at a company like Blizzard is just asking to get reported to HR for "harassment".

pornhub buying nintendo?

Sony announces their worthy Gamepass-like service.

Chimney said:

MS has been sitting on like 165 billion in cash and ATVI is roughly 2% of their size.

ATVI make billions per year even if they do nothing which has basically been the last 5 years+.

If they gut the existing work culture and rebuild they have a slew of franchises that people will pour cash into.

Literally the only thing close to them after this merger is Tencent. Easy win for MS.

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Gonna be interesting to see if this one looks like a good value in hindsight 10 years out. Its easy to argue that this is a good time to make an acquisition like this with excess cash because of all the inflation and the fact there are not many good places to put cash (so much already overvalued). What else can you do with so much cash? But wow that's a big price tag.

I think it was just 7 or 8 years ago they bought Minecraft for 2 billion, and at the time a lot of people thought that was nuts. In hindsight now, easy to say that was a stellar acquisition.

Bethesda at 7.5 billion seemed like a reasonable deal last year. Bolster game pass with a lot of great IP at a reasonable fraction of excess cash. Practically pocket change.

Activision IP is obviously a lot more valuable than Bethesda, but is it 10x more valuable? I think part of the difference is due to all the recent inflation, but still... this seems like a really long term play to starting getting to net positive from this deal. Microsoft had already been making bigger bets than anybody already on "Netflix for gaming," and they kind of just had an all in moment on that bet. Yes, the company will be fine even if Game Pass turns out to be a failure, but this is a huge investment that has to now be able to grow Game Pass in some significant way.

I'm super curious if they will put WoW on Game Pass. Haven't looked at WoW numbers in ages - looks like they still have 4 mill subscribers or so ? That's a lot of already recurring revenue to give away. They must already have some idea on how many WoW subscribers already subscribe to game pass, possibly not too much overlap there so they think bundling WoW into game pass wouldn't destroy too much subscription revenue, and mostly give potential to create more. Maybe the best way to look at it is like this - WoW can be used to easily hook millions more on Game Pass - and instead of WoW subscribers jumping in and out of subscriptions with new expansions etc., it'll be much easier to keep them paying year round with all the other content they have for the times they get bored of WoW?