At least a part of this is how phone apps monetize these days. It’s a shift in paradigm from the approach to native applications, and a lot of companies would love to use this approach to some extent.
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No, I personally think it will just be monetized further than it already is
I would expect more monetization. As to how much, it’s hard to really say. They tend to be pretty hands off if something is successful enough.
I think it will improve leadership at the top. When you have a CEO paid obscene amounts of money who doesn’t actually seem to see anything beyond the numbers, it’s not good for the games.
Microsoft’s gaming division understands how gaming companies sre supposed to work, and this is good for studios that are part of that environment. You’ll be unlikely to see direct intervention into WoW, but you’ll see Blizzard in a more healthy environment.
The same way Microsoft improved Starfield?
Everything I’ve heard indicates they’re going to leave Blizzard to their own devices. Which is, in theory at least, an improvement from Kotick (who was the one pushing for microtransactions in everything). Actual developers usually don’t want that garbage. In Bethesda’s case it made no difference. In WOW’s case it will probably be a slight positive for those reasons.
Another thing they will do that will affect WOW indirectly is severely changing both HR (getting rid of the really bad “certain % of employees get a low performance review” system) and actually paying people fairly.
Companies like Microsoft do layoffs all the time. It’s been going on since the 1990s. As business changes they have “too many of these” and “not enough of those” so they layoff the people they don’t need and add the ones they do need.
After mergers you often see layoffs because of duplication, particularly in support areas. Also some times it’s just a way to “thin out the dead wood”, i.e. people who they feel are not pulling their weight.
One company I worked for layed off thousands of engineers then hired most of them back as contractors simply because “head count” was taxed differently and contractors didn’t add to that number.
It could mean anything.
MS isn’t directly running Activision, they just own it as a subsidiary. Very little will change about how it’s run.
I think microsoft ownership is going to nothing wow. The fact that we still exist as a subscription game in the current year is highly unusual and anything which threatens active subs will lose more money than a few whales could gain back so I’m fairly confident they’re not going to push blizzard to do more than they’re already doing with wow. Their other games though…
If Kotic goes maybe.
There are a couple of former employee interviews that shed some light on how his office affected development. Mostly in pushing monetization and it’s mostly his office in control of Battlenet. At least if the interviews are to be believed.
It’s going to take way more than Kotick being gone to improve WoW.
The entire leadership caste has to go in order to effect any meaningful change. Otherwise it will be business as usual.