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News Microsoft Finalizes Activision Blizzard Purchase

I

ILikeFeet

Warpstar Knight
even comes with a spiffy trailer



shitstain Kotick's words
newsroom.activisionblizzard.com

Bobby Kotick: A new chapter for Activision Blizzard

CEO Bobby Kotick writes that combining with Microsoft will enable Activision Blizzard to deliver more fun, more joy, and more connection to more players.
newsroom.activisionblizzard.com newsroom.activisionblizzard.com

Xbox's comments
news.xbox.com

Welcoming the Legendary Teams at Activision Blizzard King to Team Xbox - Xbox Wire

Today we welcome the teams at Activision Blizzard King to Team Xbox. It's a good day to play.
news.xbox.com news.xbox.com

games will be coming to Game Pass


and, of course, CoD will be coming to Nintendo. probably next year since they said they'll start work as soon as they sign the deal
 
Waiting to see how much Kotick’s parachute is worth.

Hopefully this leads to improvements at ABK and hopefully not a lot of talent is considered “redundant” in the near future
 
shoptroll said:
Waiting to see how much Kotick’s parachute is worth.

Hopefully this leads to improvements at ABK and hopefully not a lot of talent is considered “redundant” in the near future
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Oh, there will absolutely be a mess of restructuring. Bobby may be gone but now ActiBlizz is under an umbrella of studios Microsoft has yet to show they can competently manage.
 
Dark Cloud said:
People so glad and relieved this is over as if their livelihoods were impacted by a billionaire company buying another. Geez give me a break
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The people who spent dozens of hours reading/talkong about and watching this probably were having theirs lives impacted by it.
 
Sad news. Much more franchises to die with this acquisition compared to Bethesda. Microsoft has just spend an astronomical $70 billion, it's gonna be some time before they use what they got. And they'll never use some of the IP's.

I predict they'll try to make out the money they spend with CoD + Diablo 4 and King alone for 3-4 years. Their first AB new game release (that's not COD) should arrive in 2027 and should be StarCraft 3.

They need to sell Crash and Spyro to someone else.
 
I gotta say I don't love the smell of industry consolidation in the morning. But this was inevitable.

ngpdrew said:
Am I the only one who looks at that video thumbnail and thinks "all of these games are terrible; why did we care so much?"
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I wouldn't say terrible. But yeah, they don't do much for me, with the exception of Crash.

Now, on the day that Microsoft bought Rare, that was a day when my heart broke because I saw a lot of franchises I loved become exclusive to another company.
 
9-Volt said:
Yeah them too. But... I have a feeling they already did. Or leased them out. Nate did say there was a Banjo game in works, right?
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I don't care what Nate says. And even if one is in the works, it may never come out. Just like how the new Perfect Dark game sounds like possible vaporware.
 
9-Volt said:
Sad news. Much more franchises to die with this acquisition compared to Bethesda. Microsoft has just spend an astronomical $70 billion, it's gonna be some time before they use what they got. And they'll never use some of the IP's.

I predict they'll try to make out the money they spend with CoD + Diablo 4 and King alone for 3-4 years. Their first AB new game release (that's not COD) should arrive in 2027 and should be StarCraft 3.

They need to sell Crash and Spyro to someone else.
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implying they weren't dead already

Crash and Spyro will live on, methinks
 
Earthbounder said:
I gotta say I don't love the smell of industry consolidation in the morning. But this was inevitable.


I wouldn't say terrible. But yeah, they don't do much for me, with the exception of Crash.

Now, on the day that Microsoft bought Rare, that was a day when my heart broke because I saw a lot of franchises I loved become exclusive to another company.
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Oh, I didn't see Crash in the thumbnail. I just saw CoD, Overwatch, and some King game next to Halo and though...oh...neat?

Most of the Activision IP I've ever cared about are either long dead or with another caretaker now. Glad we can move on from this at least.
 
ngpdrew said:
Oh, I didn't see Crash in the thumbnail. I just saw CoD, Overwatch, and some King game next to Halo and though...oh...neat?

Most of the Activision IP I've ever cared about are either long dead or with another caretaker now. Glad we can move on from this at least.
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Oh yeah, you meant the thumbnail. I saw Crash in the poster and got both mixed up.
 
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Thank the stars there's an official trailer or I might not have been hyped up about corporate consolidation.

Hope the workers see improvements.
 
The only IPs they have that I love are Spyro and Overwatch... Spyro I'm fine with just remaining a legacy IP, maybe a Spyro 4 down the line. I am happy enough replaying the original trilogy.

Overwatch is a far more complicated situation and 2 has done a lot of damage to the brand reputation wise, even though it still makes money from the crazy shop prices. I don't think anything Microsoft does would overly help its situation. I log on every now and then and it's not terrible, but man it could be much better.
 
0
Hey maybe Tim Schafer can finally do a Brutal Legend sequel

Also all the id Software titles are back under one roof

And hopefully MS is a better custodian of the Sierra IP than Vivendi/Acti ever were
 
shoptroll said:
Hey maybe Tim Schafer can finally do a Brutal Legend sequel

Also all the id Software titles are back under one roof

And hopefully MS is a better custodian of the Sierra IP than Vivendi/Acti ever were
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My one (albeit very pipedream) hope from this is for the Quest games and other Sierra adventure games to maybe get some attention. I don't think it's likely, but something that has more chance to happen now than it did before (1% chance compared to 0%)
 
I guess COD will be in the Next Switch's reveal trailer then, like Skyrim was for the original Switch.
 
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9-Volt said:
Sad news. Much more franchises to die with this acquisition compared to Bethesda. Microsoft has just spend an astronomical $70 billion, it's gonna be some time before they use what they got. And they'll never use some of the IP's.

I predict they'll try to make out the money they spend with CoD + Diablo 4 and King alone for 3-4 years. Their first AB new game release (that's not COD) should arrive in 2027 and should be StarCraft 3.

They need to sell Crash and Spyro to someone else.
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? there's a significantly greater chance of MS using their back catalog of IPs. Activision has basically only made COD and the occasional remaster for the last 15 years.
 
Hailinel said:
Because Microsoft has been so consistent at using Rare's back catalogue?
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recently it's been better. Killer Instinct, Perfect Dark, 007, Rare Replay Collection, etc. the kinnect era was just shit, before and after it's been alright

activision's IP utilization literally cannot get any worse than it is now, it's already rock-bottom as they're essentially a COD factory. Crash 4 + remasters have been the only highlights in over 15 years, it really cannot get much worse without stretching logic.
 
Octavian said:
recently it's been better. Killer Instinct, Perfect Dark, 007, Rare Replay Collection, etc.

activision's IP utilization literally cannot get any worse than it is now, it's already rock-bottom as they're essentially a COD factory. Crash 4 + remasters have been the only highlights in over 15 years
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Killer Instinct was a decade ago, Perfect Dark may be vaporware, GoldenEye wasn't possible without an agreement with Nintendo and other parties, Rare Replay was, like KI, also a 360 game.

Don't expect Activision to suddenly resurrect Vicarious Visions from Blizzard Support Hell and put them on a new Crash.
 
I believe Kotick will remain in ABK for the next two years.

It won’t be that easy to absorb such a big company.
 
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Hailinel said:
Killer Instinct was a decade ago, Perfect Dark may be vaporware, GoldenEye wasn't possible without an agreement with Nintendo and other parties, Rare Replay was, like KI, also a 360 game.

Don't expect Activision to suddenly resurrect Vicarious Visions from Blizzard Support Hell and put them on a new Crash.
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obviously. but my original point was activision's IP utilization is already rock-bottom that Microsoft will likely do a better job by default.
 
Hailinel said:
Killer Instinct was a decade ago, Perfect Dark may be vaporware, GoldenEye wasn't possible without an agreement with Nintendo and other parties, Rare Replay was, like KI, also a 360 game.

Don't expect Activision to suddenly resurrect Vicarious Visions from Blizzard Support Hell and put them on a new Crash.
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I think you mean X1 games rather than 360? Perfect Dark is in development hell for sure, but it's an IP that's being used in some capacity - plus they also did stuff with the Battletoads IP a couple of years back.

Anyway, I think slightly better than zero chance is better than zero.
 
doodlewhizz said:
I think you mean X1 games rather than 360? Perfect Dark is in development hell for sure, but it's an IP that's being used in some capacity - plus they also did stuff with the Battletoads IP a couple of years back.

Anyway, I think slightly better than zero chance is better than zero.
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Ah, right, X1. My mistake.

And the Battletoads game was...well, it exists? Other than that, I've not heard a single positive thing about that revival.
 
0
Excited for COD on Switch. I boycotted the series after Wii so this is like a homecoming. :)
 
0
Fantastic news, good for the industry.

One less evil megacorporation is a big win for me.

(Yes this is slightly facetious, but I've seen so many people decrying consolidation because Microsoft is an evil megacorp, yeah like ABK was a critical indie darling that it's a great injustice to see it go)
 
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Forks said:
Everyone trying to frame this as a positive for employee unionizion efforts on the other forum are going to be in quite the shock when Microsoft eventually announces the layoffs.
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Yeah. There will be layoffs, and Microsoft and Activision are likely having active planning discussions over which teams, how many, and when.
 
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ngpdrew said:
Am I the only one who looks at that video thumbnail and thinks "all of these games are terrible; why did we care so much?"
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No, I said from the beginning, like how great would it be if Microsoft bought CoD and made it exclusive to the smallest console. It would finally give so much space for alternatives to flourish in the market if that monopoly was forcefully broken. But those silly Brits completely misread the situation and ensured another ten years of CoD hegemony.
 
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Microsoft won’t close any studios but will eventually fire the tech support and publishing and marketing people from Activision fwiw.

Expect a lot of layoffs, but probably not of game devs except for maybe QA.

This is not good obviously, but just being precise with the form layoffs are likely to take due to redundancy.
 
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Forks said:
Everyone trying to frame this as a positive for employee unionizion efforts on the other forum are going to be in quite the shock when Microsoft eventually announces the layoffs.
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It can be both. Layoffs can and probably will happen (as we've seen all over the industry this year anyway), but we don't really know when they will hit here, and which areas. I'm trying to remember if there were immediate layoffs after the Bethesda purchase, or if late 2022 (18 months after completion) was the first batch of them?

But back to unions - in the US at least, MS are legally neutral towards them now which is a lot better than under Activision. Will it protect people from layoffs? Likely not, but it'll still benefit employee rights in other areas and potentially lead to better packages being offered when and if the axe does fall
 
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