If you think someone at Microsoft is going to call Blizz and say “Hey, people really don’t like this Pathfinder thing and it should probably go…” you’re deluding yourself.
This is about putting the squeeze on Sony and bringing as much gaming content under the Microsoft umbrella as possible, straight out of the Microsoft “Our only mission in life is to ruthlessly and completely extinguish all competition” playbook.
I’d suspect that they’ll have Blizzard pump out more frequent games/expansions. Right now, they do their WoW expansion ~2 years and a new game every 3-5 years. That’s not going to be good enough for Microsoft. They’ll likely throw more funding or staff in to help pump out more games.
Microsoft usually does well with studios and doesn’t get too involved unless things aren’t going well.
Unfortunately, nobody will really know how good or bad this is for a few years. The acquisition itself will take over a year to go through the legal rounds and from there it’ll be a few years to see significant change; it’s not something that happens over night. OW2/D4/D:I/Next WoW expac are too far into development to be affected much/at all by this acquisition. It will be future titles that will dictate if this is good or bad.
I think it’ll be good overall for Blizzard games, but it will take 5+ years to see anything.
I’m in the lmao stage at the moment.
Nobody can say for sure what things will/will not happen, but you can use other acquisitions and a dash of common sense to make solid guesses/assumptions.
Let us fix one very common misconception…MS is NOT new to the gaming space. In fact, they are one of the oldest and biggest entities in the sphere. MS is also not typically one to be a bull in a china shop when it comes to companies.
With that said, here is my prediction for the future…
Short term (rest of SL and up to next expansion) - Nothing really. Past that, we’ll likely see WoW ported over to Xbox. The top MMO, FFXIV, works well on both PC and consoles and it has way more keybinds than WoW does so the argument “muh wow is so much harder for a controller” doesn’t fly. In fact, FFXIV is a harder game at the low and casual level but that is beside the point.
Anyone who hates modern WoW and the e-sport and go go go game style may as well quit now…not only was it unlikely to ever go back to “the good old days”, but with MS owning them, that dream is all but dead and buried now. MS, Like Activision, is very much on board with microtransactions and competitive games/arenas. You can very much expect this to continue.
As for the corporations themselves, the current executive leaderships at Activision is pretty much dead. They’ll stay on as to not rock the boat but will either be forced out subtly or paid hefty sums to leave gracefully. The spotlight will be on Kotick and if his ousting is public and shameful or if he’ll get to leave with dignity and “on his own terms”. There also likely will be shakeups at the upper and middle layers of office staff and such but you won’t hear too much about them, if at all. MS is pretty good at keeping themselves out of the spotlight unless they want said spotlight.
My nephew was telling me he was reading that the purchase has something to do with this metaverse silliness everyone was talking about a few weeks back.
Can’t think of a single microsoft game I ever played so I don’t know if they have a good track record, but maybe they will finally start hiring writers that know what they are doing.
Yeah, I saw that metaverse comment in the press statement. Is that a thing? The Microsoft Video Game Universe?
Inconsequential in these types of dealings. And there isn’t enough information to even answer your question. Microsoft has never made a purchase of this kind before so absolutely anything anyone says is pure speculation based on nothing.
Oh, of course it is.
I’m not sure I’ve come across a vapid, buzzspeak, marketing virus more nauseating than “metaverse.”
I mean if its a bad deal whats the difference? They continue going downhill? Might as well give it a shot at this point. At the very least maybe the employees will get a better deal. Im certainly not expecting everything to instantly turn around. Likely more of the same. Maybe i’ll be surprised, we’ll see.
I think it will be an improvement. Maybe Microsoft can clean house management wise.
From what I can see, MS has mostly been a net positive for the studios it has acquired. Lord knows, Rare has cranked out a stinker or two over the last 20 years, but MS still keeps their lights on.
hard to say, it will likely be years before we start to see its effect.
Personally, I’m not a Microsoft fan so I’m leaning towards a net negative but who knows.
Time will tell but I rarely see big monopoly take overs as a good thing, especially by microsoft.
One corporate overlord gone, new corporate overlord takes its place. My guess is you won’t even notice.
Maybe we’ll finally get a StarCraft MMO?
Nothing can be worse than the fire thats already happening
Bobby Kotick will continue to serve as CEO of Activision Blizzard, and he and his team will maintain their focus on driving efforts to further strengthen the company’s culture and accelerate business growth. Once the deal closes, the Activision Blizzard business will report to Phil Spencer, CEO, Microsoft Gaming.
Probably not the news you wanted to hear. But, looks like Bobby stays.
You have a bigger overlord now so saying you won’t notice is kinda premature at best, naive at worst.
Yup Microsoft announced they’ll be keeping Kotick on. What changes is that the Gaming Microsoft guy calls the shots.
Bad.
It is just one more layer of corporate overlordship that required more money to maintain and will give even less care to the product.