EPTThis is good news for people who only care about SC/SC2 but bad news for anyone who is developing an independent RTS game since they can expect MS to put more content into AOE/SC/SC2 as soon as they see another competitor around. So in fact I would expect more AOE/SC/SC2 content on the line to answer Frost Giant or whoever else.
Microsoft - Activision Blizzard acquisition - Page 6
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Poaktree
165 Posts
This is good news for people who only care about SC/SC2 but bad news for anyone who is developing an independent RTS game since they can expect MS to put more content into AOE/SC/SC2 as soon as they see another competitor around. So in fact I would expect more AOE/SC/SC2 content on the line to answer Frost Giant or whoever else. | ||
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Integra
Sweden5626 Posts
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Seeker
Where dat snitch at?37032 Posts
On January 19 2022 22:21 Integra wrote: Holy S**it Holy Shiit? Holy Shhit? | ||
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Veluvian
Bulgaria256 Posts
Out of the joke, I hope Microsoft have some plans for RTS genre and sports. | ||
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Latham
9563 Posts
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M3t4PhYzX
Poland4203 Posts
Holy Split | ||
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blunderfulguy
United States1415 Posts
On January 19 2022 23:46 Latham wrote: Microsoft did a good job remastering AoE2 & 3, maybe we can I daresay, hope for a good remaster of Warcraft 3? Not the god-forsaken abomination we actually got from Activision? This was also my first "what if..." thought. Bring in some people from their existing AoE team and possibly their new Vicarious Visions and Toys For Bob teams (even just artists) and remake Warcraft 3: Reforged as a launch pad for a bigger Warcraft 4 team alongside making "WoW: Classic+" and revamping retail WoW to make any sense whatsoever, and having WoW: Classic+ be part of Game Pass with completely revamped server systems (basically merging everything into a handful of bigger, layered/tiered realms). Maybe even Heroes of the Storm gets new tie-in events and battlegrounds, or some spin-off of HotS or even a Halo Wars MOBA gets made for console and PC? And what if they did something absolutely wild like make a digital version of WoWTCG for Xbox and PC, among other dreams plucked out of my hyperactive brainstorm? It'd sure be cool. But "hope" isn't something I'm going to continue doing after I write this post here, and after this week I'm really going to forget about all this until I see something good and fun in the news. -- Rambling about possibilities for anyone else daydreaming at the moment: + Show Spoiler + Seeing retail WoW and WoW: Classic on Xbox (with controller support) as their own services or as part of Game Pass feels like a somewhat realistic possibility to me since WoW had third-party controller support at least since TBC and has support for macros and custom UI and light mods that I used back in middle school in 2007, so it already has the potential to expand on features that helped FFXIV thrive on both PC and Playstation for a wider range of casual and mediumcore players compared to WoW, and do things that FFXIV doesn't seem to be able to do if somebody decides to explore a bit. But will anyone in charge at Microsoft Gaming, or whoever is in charge within Blizzard, or whoever will shifted into that position ever think about that? Maybe, who knows. Eventually seeing Diablo IV on Game Pass for Xbox and PC feels like another realistic possibility somewhere down the road, but only as long as that game comes out and does well and they don't first make Diablo: Immortal the featured/dedicated "Diablo on Xbox" game. Will restructuring make it so nothing fractures the Diablo, Warcraft, and StarCraft communities even further? Maybe, who knows. It seems like everything at Blizz will keep going the way it's going, with possibly a few team leadership changes here and there or changes in higher-up positions, more realisitically nothing big is going to happen with any of the IPs on the big announcement image (Diablo, Overwatch, World of Warcraft, StarCraft). The more interesting announcements for me seem like they're more likely t ocome from current Activision subsidiaries like Raven Software, Radical Entertainment, Toys For Bob, and Vicarious Visions; these other, reliable studios and subsidiaries that can be independent or support other projects (and that haven't been doing the same exact thing forever like the CoD studios, but idk who is responsible for that happening or if any of those studios or their employees want to work on anything else at this point). I feel like Microsoft/Xbox would look at revitalizing IPs like Guitar Hero and continuing Crash and Tony Hawk with Game Pass and Playstation's competition in mind. Maybe Blizzard Classic Games will get moved to PC Game Pass with a few games getting controller support added for Xbox Game Pass when possible (maybe a HotS or variant a la LoL: Wild Rift and Pokemon Unite), and they can seamlessly merge Bnet and Microsoft/Xbox accounts and purchases; just more daydreaming at this point. Anyway, even if none of the "what if's" happen, the news does still get me interested in supporting ActiBlizz games again in the future, and a little bit hopeful for the time being (not long-term hope or anything yet). I'll wait until the acquisition actually happens and another few months to a year after that to see if Phil Spencer does anything. Allowing people to unionize and removing bad actors needs to be done first, then I can wait with more genuine interest to see if and how either branch revitalizes their games or if other subsidiaries announce anything fun/exciting, what happens with any possible new StarCraft game or RTS in general, so on. Nobody knows anything at this point, it's probably "just another day in the office" (or "another day on strike") for most people at ActiBlizz and will continue to be after the acquisition. Just, maybe, the reputation of Blizz and CoD comes back a bit over time? Shoot, there goes my lunch break today. But I was going to aimlessly daydream anyway, so, oh well. P.S. I really, really want to get excited about the news. But I can't. It's interesting, and some stressful things might be fixed finally, but it also reminds me of Xbox's absolutely nonsensical naming conventions, Microsoft's push for Xbox One launch titles and exclusives to have multiplayer or massive multiplayer or cloud gaming features (development hell for Stormlands, Scalebound, whatever that Fable game was called, probably others I don't remember or know about). And, like others have mentioned, there's also a lot of competition and overlap between Microsoft/Xbox IPs and Activision Blizzard IPs (Halo with CoD, Halo Wars and AoE with SC2, potentially more things all studios and teams are working on). It's very weird. | ||
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Red_Dragon
Croatia2862 Posts
Microsoft was probably mostly motivated to limit availability of particular titles to other consoles. In any case this could take a long time to integrate (if approved), so I don't expect sudden changes. I hope M$ will help to bring Starcraft e-sport side to another level. Completely confident and believe in a positive change. Honestly can it get much worse than it already is ? | ||
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Jealous
10175 Posts
On January 20 2022 03:15 Red_Dragon wrote: Honestly can it get much worse than it already is ? Microsoft could very reasonably look at how much money is being invested into SC2 and how little is materializing as profits in return and just pull the plug on the life support that Blizzard has been giving SC2 for years now. | ||
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TheSayo182
Italy243 Posts
On January 20 2022 03:35 Jealous wrote: Microsoft could very reasonably look at how much money is being invested into SC2 and how little is materializing as profits in return and just pull the plug on the life support that Blizzard has been giving SC2 for years now. to me this is the most likely scenario, they have AoE4 to push on | ||
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SC-Shield
Bulgaria831 Posts
On January 20 2022 03:46 TheSayo182 wrote: to me this is the most likely scenario, they have AoE4 to push on It makes no sense to spend so much money to destroy a competitive game. We'll see, at this point I believe they can't do much worse than Blizzard in recent years. | ||
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ShowTheLights
Korea (South)1691 Posts
On January 19 2022 22:14 Poaktree wrote: Guys, MS bought Acti/Blizzard to make money from their games. They are not going to let any Blizzard game die if they think they can make money off it. The games will be integrated into their ecosystem and there's always the possibility of them producing more games in the series. The fact that they have AOE is completely irrelevant; huge corporations in fact love "fake" competitions where they own both sides of two rival products. This is good news for people who only care about SC/SC2 but bad news for anyone who is developing an independent RTS game since they can expect MS to put more content into AOE/SC/SC2 as soon as they see another competitor around. So in fact I would expect more AOE/SC/SC2 content on the line to answer Frost Giant or whoever else. This is wrong SC2 doesnt have the ability to make MS money THEREFORE, they will NOT put effort into SC2 to build it further | ||
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JimmyJRaynor
Canada16766 Posts
https://sc2mapster.github.io/mkdocs/setup/ imagine what M$ could do if they wanted ... On January 20 2022 06:42 ShowTheLights wrote: SC2 doesnt have the ability to make MS money THEREFORE, they will NOT put effort into SC2 to build it further The Starcraft franchise has the ability to make MS money. The IP is incredibly strong and worth a fortune. Building a new IP from scratch is VERY, VERY EXPENSIVE. On January 19 2022 22:14 Poaktree wrote: The fact that they have AOE is completely irrelevant; huge corporations in fact love "fake" competitions where they own both sides of two rival products. I predict M$ will keep SC2 going in a similar fashion to how they kept Foxpro going despite also selling SQL Server. | ||
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equin0xx
17 Posts
They want everyone to subscribe to Game Pass like people sub to Netflix for Disney+. Adding all the SC2 campaigns and SC:R campaigns to Game Pass does have a lot of value. They can, and probably will, promote SC along with AOE. You can sign up for Game Pass and play all of them! They are probably hurting AOE4 by having those other AOE/AOM remastered games getting active support, but their goal is to get people to buy Game Pass, so having many different games is really the whole point! Netflix doesn't care if one show cannibalized another show. They want to bring in as many people to their ecosystem as possible. I'm not sure they would shut down SC2. It still adds value to Game Pass. I really doubt they would update the game though, and the biggest issue with trying to do that is that there probably aren't many people left at Blizzard who could even make many changes since people who knew the code base left. | ||
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Beelzebub1
1004 Posts
Would be kind of cool if they enabled LAN play though, just kind of turn the reigns over to the community entirely. Even if they preserved SC2 in it's current form I'd be okay with it. I mean GSL, ESL, IEM all have pretty respectable prize pools. | ||
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Legan
Finland442 Posts
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JimmyJRaynor
Canada16766 Posts
Well Played Phil. | ||
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112StaminaX
37 Posts
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elKa-ThE-FeArEd
Sweden176 Posts
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Nakajin
Canada8989 Posts
On January 20 2022 05:45 SC-Shield wrote: It makes no sense to spend so much money to destroy a competitive game. We'll see, at this point I believe they can't do much worse than Blizzard in recent years. I think there's a very realistic chance that no one at any point during the negotiation of this billions dollars deal ever thought about support for Starcraft 2 esport and even less balance patches. They certainly thought about Starcraft as an IP and the way they could make money out of that, but I have doubt they considered SC2 and BW esports. At some point in the future their might be some kind of merger between the different esport teams across Microsoft and a slimming down of operation. Or a paper on contract negotiation with ESL might come across the desk of some higher ups at Microsoft and then they may look at it, but that may be years down the line when SC2 (and AoE4) esport will have shrunk anyway. Or we may fall through the crack because no one care enough to carry SC2 from the transition. Just look at how long it took for Blizzard to get integrated fully into Activision, it took almost a decade until we really saw commercial integration and we're now talking a merger 3-4 time as big. SC2 is dear to my hearth but I imagine that we are way, way down the list of priorities. Only reason I see why they could put additional support back in is if they green-light a remastered version of SC2 or announce SC3 really early on. | ||
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