Activision-Blizzard Shareholders Approve Proposed Microsoft Transaction

[Vayra86]

It's interesting Microsoft is so committed to the gaming space. I wonder what kind of data they are collecting and selling?

Gaming = tying new generations of customers to your brand

Windows/Azure/Cloud is only one step further with a foot already in the door. If they cant have smartphone market share, they can have the content. Hardware agnostic...

from that POV its pretty likely the content wont suck, too.

 

[big_glasses]

WARNING TO ALL GAMMERS: Get ready for the massive advertising attack to begin in ALL your blizzard games once this is finalized... just like what happened on Linkedin after they bought it.... it used to be filled with job listings, trade-related articles, and skills improvement sessions... now it's just one gargantuan billboard now, with 3-4 job postings thrown in for good measure

Fun times await you !

Not like battle.net launcher doesn't have ads already :/

I doubt MS can (or will) run the Blizzard part of the ActiBlizz trio any worse than how it's already ran... I'm guessing a massive clean-up there
the other 2 parts will probably be semi-left alone

 

[dir_d]

Am i the only one that is actually looking forward to this

 

[Count von Schwalbe]

HALO seems to have survived a fair amount of Microsoft. It is not necessarily terminal to be purchased by Microsoft, unlike, say, EA.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

HALO seems to have survived a fair amount of Microsoft. It is not necessarily terminal to be purchased by Microsoft, unlike, say, EA.

Except Bungie made Halo, and was going to release it on the desktop before MS bought them and made it a timed exclusive of sorts. Bungie eventually broke free of MS, but had to leave Halo behind and 343 took it over. while the IP survived, it’s hard to say it was the best deal for gamers, since it limited when and what you could play it on. MCE has been an off and on disaster since it rolled out on both Xbox and PC. I never could get it to run on the PC through Gamepass. It’s the only PC game I ever had showstopper issues with. So while yes, Halo has survived, it’s because it was selected as a franchise title from the start. Xbox and Halo are linked.

 

[Count von Schwalbe]

Except Bungie made Halo, and was going to release it on the desktop before MS bought them and made it a timed exclusive of sorts. Bungie eventually broke free of MS, but had to leave Halo behind and 343 took it over. while the IP survived, it’s hard to say it was the best deal for gamers, since it limited when and what you could play it on. MCE has been an off and on disaster since it rolled out on both Xbox and PC. I never could get it to run on the PC through Gamepass. It’s the only PC game I ever had showstopper issues with. So while yes, Halo has survived, it’s because it was selected as a franchise title from the start. Xbox and Halo are linked.

For sure. I wasn't saying that Microsoft improved Halo, just that Microsoft is not always fatal to games/franchises/whatever.

 

[Vayra86]

For sure. I wasn't saying that Microsoft improved Halo, just that Microsoft is not always fatal to games/franchises/whatever.

Not to franchises but Microsoft has historically been fatal to gaming on the PC under their own brand. GFWL, Xbox on PC, Store, UWP, its one big fail show. This is them getting serious at last, as they did for their Xbox console brand by buying into studios big time and just pulling content into their house. Nobody cares about the million ideas MS has for 'services', Sony proves time and time again that gaming is about content. And successful gaming companies run great content, or they fail and/or get eaten. Even Windows OS, is what it is because the content it enables and 'is', is of pretty high quality. Despite all the criticism, its pretty robust and seems to survive a rapidly changing marketplace. I think their Game Ass service will meet a similar fate as all the others: it will eventually go the Netflix way where competition between services is high and you can't get customers to pay for more than 2, maybe 3 monthly. Netflix is now seeing stagnation and even a small shrink in total subs.

 

[big_glasses]

almost haven't had any issues with MS games on desktop (in newer time atleast)

exception being that their shitty store/DL service doesn't have a verify game files option, so once or twice had to re-download Sea of Thieves due to some corrupt file. Halo(though bought on steam due to the store being shit) and Gears have worked flawlessly for me. and for my mates with Xbox gamepass, I believe it's worked well.

edit: forgot I had 3months or so of gamepass due to AMD collaboration, with the Zen2. Didn't have any issues during that time