Microsoft is nearing a deal to buy Activision Blizzard, the video game maker behind the “Call of Duty” franchise, in what would be the U.S. technology giant’s largest-ever takeover, people with knowledge of the matter said, Bloomberg News reports.
The transaction could be announced as soon as Tuesday, the people said, asking not to be identified because the information is private
On January 18 2022 22:46 digmouse wrote: I.. uh, can't wrap my head around this.
Well the biggest game franchise in the world is now going to be Xbox/pc exclusive. Sony could be dead in the water.
As for starcraft...I don't know. Microsoft seems to be wanting to put more in its PC space, but that's usually things that are cross-platform for Xbox. Starcraft seems like a prime candidate to get lost in the shuffle. Arguably it was already though. I'd wish they'd sell it to help cover that 80 billion they just shelled out, but Warcraft being a huge driver of that 80 billion and SC's ties to that, that seems highly unlikely.
On second thought, now I dont know how willing MS is to put 1mil prize money per year for SC2 tournament. From AoE2 tournament, I dont think they were spending that much for those, although constant balance patch were applied.
With the recent scandals at Activision, we’re going to see a huge change in management and ex-co. I can definitely see a prompt change in leadership and direction. Won’t be surprised if the current leadership team is let go.
On January 18 2022 22:46 digmouse wrote: I.. uh, can't wrap my head around this.
Well the biggest game franchise in the world is now going to be Xbox/pc exclusive. Sony could be dead in the water.
As for starcraft...I don't know. Microsoft seems to be wanting to put more in its PC space, but that's usually things that are cross-platform for Xbox. Starcraft seems like a prime candidate to get lost in the shuffle. Arguably it was already though. I'd wish they'd sell it to help cover that 80 billion they just shelled out, but Warcraft being a huge driver of that 80 billion and SC's ties to that, that seems highly unlikely.
How cross-platform is the new Age of Empire exactly?
I'm skeptical for any number of reasons, but this at least gives me a little hope. Blizzard is a dumpster fire at this point, and SC2 didn't seem likely to continue to receive much if any support from them in the future. That still might be the case, but under new leadership it's at least theoretically possible that something could shift for the better. The fact that Kotick is staying on as CEO of the aquired Blizzard makes me think there might not be as much shaking up as we might hope for, though.
I'm more wondering how this affects PS space. Me - personally - nope. I haven't played an Activision game in ages. OTOH it seems people are still buying every year COD. Considering the chip shortage limiting COD to only MS platforms may actually hurt MS. Anyway, for all I care burn COD down xD
On January 18 2022 22:46 digmouse wrote: I.. uh, can't wrap my head around this.
Well the biggest game franchise in the world is now going to be Xbox/pc exclusive. Sony could be dead in the water.
As for starcraft...I don't know. Microsoft seems to be wanting to put more in its PC space, but that's usually things that are cross-platform for Xbox. Starcraft seems like a prime candidate to get lost in the shuffle. Arguably it was already though. I'd wish they'd sell it to help cover that 80 billion they just shelled out, but Warcraft being a huge driver of that 80 billion and SC's ties to that, that seems highly unlikely.
Starcraft is something MS is VERY likely to reinvest in for the sake of diversity of titles on Game Pass.
On January 18 2022 22:46 digmouse wrote: I.. uh, can't wrap my head around this.
Well the biggest game franchise in the world is now going to be Xbox/pc exclusive. Sony could be dead in the water.
As for starcraft...I don't know. Microsoft seems to be wanting to put more in its PC space, but that's usually things that are cross-platform for Xbox. Starcraft seems like a prime candidate to get lost in the shuffle. Arguably it was already though. I'd wish they'd sell it to help cover that 80 billion they just shelled out, but Warcraft being a huge driver of that 80 billion and SC's ties to that, that seems highly unlikely.
Starcraft is something MS is VERY likely to reinvest in for the sake of diversity of titles on Game Pass.
Wow.... maybe it will mean better for the chance of SC3 happening lets wait and see.
I am a bit affraid for what that will mean for the short time SCR and SC2 e-sport suport thought, with a merger on this size there is bound to be many things falling through the cracks... Let's hope the Starcraft esport team is not one of them.
Also IDK if it a done deal, the US governement might want to look at something like this? We're in the mega-coorporation game now.
On January 19 2022 00:02 nojok wrote: Reminder that AoE4 is a lot of fun minus the awful balance, the terrible maps and atrocious UI, join us! Really, the core of the game is great, come!
If you send me a PC I can play it on, I promise I will play some maps :D
On January 19 2022 00:03 Nakajin wrote: Wow.... maybe it will mean better for the chance of SC3 happening lets wait and see.
I am a bit affraid for what that will mean for the short time SCR and SC2 e-sport suport thought, with a merger on this size there is bound to be many things falling through the cracks... Let's hope the Starcraft esport team is not one of them.
Also IDK if it a done deal, the US governement might want to look at something like this? We're in the mega-coorporation game now.
I also wonder who would ESL negotiate with for their next deal of SC2 esport? Or everything will be on-hold until the move is implemented, which is around middle of next year. As for the US govt intervention, if they let Disney done almost whatever the hell they wanted pretty much, I dont think they would give any friction toward this deal.
On January 19 2022 00:03 Nakajin wrote: Wow.... maybe it will mean better for the chance of SC3 happening lets wait and see.
I am a bit affraid for what that will mean for the short time SCR and SC2 e-sport suport thought, with a merger on this size there is bound to be many things falling through the cracks... Let's hope the Starcraft esport team is not one of them.
Also IDK if it a done deal, the US governement might want to look at something like this? We're in the mega-coorporation game now.
Obviously this is encouraging news for the future of the game, but I still don't understand why HoTS has a completely flat competitive and ranked scene yet gets regular balance patches AND hero reworks while the SC2 community sits here wondering why we can't even get an annual balance patch to keep the game balanced and fresh?
Hoping someone at Microsoft takes the helm and at least offers SOMETHING to the SC2 community, the game still has an active tournament base so I just don't see the reason why a small team couldn't come in and make some minor adjustments.
Obviously what I would want is for Protoss GW units to be buffed, to bring the races basic units into a bit more parity with the modern metagame, Protoss GW units have suffered tremendously due to rampant power creep, especially against Zerg.
What I think should happen is that we should get some safer, easier to implement changes.
- Removal of Adaptive Talons entirely, no need for such a powerful space control unit to be so nimble.
- Make 2 Corrosive Biles required to destroy force fields. Sentries weren't removed from the game, so why put in abilities that all but do that?
- Either transfuse needs to be looked at, or Queens need HP adjustments or changes to light or armored. There was a time when Queens weren't OP, I think that time has passed, at least a little bit.
- Probably time for either a Stalker scaling buff so that they aren't so useless past the early/mid game, or some type of stat changes to the Adept which while marketed as a core unit has become kind of a glorified Reaper. Maybe a +1 range increase or a raw damage increase, modern pro Zergs have become exceptionally efficient vs. Adepts and the unit looks comically weak when responded to correctly.
I think any of these changes would shift PvZ back to a good place, all of them definitely aren't needed. The Bile nerf alone would allow FF to make a stronger statement in the match up which would be HUGE for balance.
Interesting news. This probably does not change much this year, but beyond that this is more promising. If they treat IPs more like different entities and give them more freedom under game pass etc., this can be really good.
Nothing is promised in this cold and chaotic universe, BUT
This has potential to be a great way to clean out some crappy behavior in the industry and revitalize SC2 a bit at the same time. Lots of potential good stuff as a result of this IMO.
On January 19 2022 00:47 jpg06051992 wrote: Obviously this is encouraging news for the future of the game, but I still don't understand why HoTS has a completely flat competitive and ranked scene yet gets regular balance patches AND hero reworks while the SC2 community sits here wondering why we can't even get an annual balance patch to keep the game balanced and fresh?
Hoping someone at Microsoft takes the helm and at least offers SOMETHING to the SC2 community, the game still has an active tournament base so I just don't see the reason why a small team couldn't come in and make some minor adjustments.
Obviously what I would want is for Protoss GW units to be buffed, to bring the races basic units into a bit more parity with the modern metagame, Protoss GW units have suffered tremendously due to rampant power creep, especially against Zerg.
What I think should happen is that we should get some safer, easier to implement changes.
- Removal of Adaptive Talons entirely, no need for such a powerful space control unit to be so nimble.
- Make 2 Corrosive Biles required to destroy force fields. Sentries weren't removed from the game, so why put in abilities that all but do that?
- Either transfuse needs to be looked at, or Queens need HP adjustments or changes to light or armored. There was a time when Queens weren't OP, I think that time has passed, at least a little bit.
- Probably time for either a Stalker scaling buff so that they aren't so useless past the early/mid game, or some type of stat changes to the Adept which while marketed as a core unit has become kind of a glorified Reaper. Maybe a +1 range increase or a raw damage increase, modern pro Zergs have become exceptionally efficient vs. Adepts and the unit looks comically weak when responded to correctly.
I think any of these changes would shift PvZ back to a good place, all of them definitely aren't needed. The Bile nerf alone would allow FF to make a stronger statement in the match up which would be HUGE for balance.
This is the sc2 community in a nutshell - posting their bullshit balance suggestions under completely unrelated topics
On January 19 2022 00:47 jpg06051992 wrote: ... while the SC2 community sits here wondering why we can't even get an annual balance patch to keep the game balanced and fresh?
I think this is probably mostly because Frostgiant really took everyone interested in continuing development and management of SC2, and everyone else moved to new projects while avoiding being made the sole person responsible for maintaining Starcraft 2. Also a lot of people just left the company because everything. Thus, they really do not have anyone who actually knows about the game in any depth. I would guess it is currently responsibility that just bounces around with very little resources allocated to it.
On January 19 2022 00:03 Nakajin wrote: Wow.... maybe it will mean better for the chance of SC3 happening lets wait and see.
I am a bit affraid for what that will mean for the short time SCR and SC2 e-sport suport thought, with a merger on this size there is bound to be many things falling through the cracks... Let's hope the Starcraft esport team is not one of them.
Also IDK if it a done deal, the US governement might want to look at something like this? We're in the mega-coorporation game now.
If the Blizzard Starcraft 2 servers go down for maintenance for three months then how many $60 Age of Empires IV licenses get sold?
If GSL were told it could not longer run tournaments of Starcraft 2, but would be paid to run Age of Empires IV tournaments, how many extra licenses of AOE4 get sold?
Ponder those questions before you get too optimistic.
By the way I actually like AOE4, but I prefer Starcraft 2 mostly because the games are shorter so I can sneak a 15 minute game in rather than dedicating like 45 minutes to a game. Same reason I only play Dota 2 in turbo mode.
I hope they don't touch balance. BW didn't get balance patches and SC2 doesn't need either. Let the game settle. Yeah I wish PvZ would get fixed but I'm too scared they'd fuck up something else in the process so I'd rather have no changes at all. given how many bullshit suggestions get thrown around in the forums it'd really scare me if they'd look into that
On January 19 2022 01:12 meadbert wrote: If the Blizzard Starcraft 2 servers go down for maintenance for three months then how many $60 Age of Empires IV licenses get sold?
If GSL were told it could not longer run tournaments of Starcraft 2, but would be paid to run Age of Empires IV tournaments, how many extra licenses of AOE4 get sold?
Ponder those questions before you get too optimistic.
By the way I actually like AOE4, but I prefer Starcraft 2 mostly because the games are shorter so I can sneak a 15 minute game in rather than dedicating like 45 minutes to a game. Same reason I only play Dota 2 in turbo mode.
They prefer to have as many games as they can on the gamepass, the fact that they showed the Starcraft license in their picture is a good sign.
On January 19 2022 01:13 Charoisaur wrote: I hope they don't touch balance. BW didn't get balance patches and SC2 doesn't need either. Let the game settle. Yeah I wish PvZ would get fixed but I'm too scared they'd fuck up something else in the process so I'd rather have no changes at all. given how many bullshit suggestions get thrown around in the forums it'd really scare me if they'd look into that
You could have responded like this to my post but instead you chose to respond like a total asshole.
Calm down son, it's a video game forum. As long as I'm not posting something that's blatant idiocy or trolling what the hell is it to you anyways?
PvZ is in a bad spot, we both clearly enjoy this game, why can't we advocate ideas since a new company is taking over?
On January 19 2022 01:13 Charoisaur wrote: I hope they don't touch balance. BW didn't get balance patches and SC2 doesn't need either. Let the game settle. Yeah I wish PvZ would get fixed but I'm too scared they'd fuck up something else in the process so I'd rather have no changes at all. given how many bullshit suggestions get thrown around in the forums it'd really scare me if they'd look into that
You could have responded like this to my post but instead you chose to respond like a total asshole.
Calm down son, it's a video game forum. As long as I'm not posting something that's blatant idiocy or trolling what the hell is it to you anyways?
PvZ is in a bad spot, we both clearly enjoy this game, why can't we advocate ideas since a new company is taking over?
Yeah sorry I called your suggestions bullshit. My main point was that it's not really related to the current topic that Blizzard got acquired by Microsoft
I'm less optimistic than most folks here. This could just turn out to be a blatant diffusion of responsibility. Everyone forgets about how Blizzard and Activision shot themselves in the foot a bunch, how people got abused and driven out of their dream jobs, a few people get shifted around Microsoft's giant corporate structure, Microsoft makes a nice, polished statement about how bright the future is, and Bobby floats off on his golden parachute of sexual harassment, abuse and discrimination. GOOD STUFF.
On January 18 2022 22:46 digmouse wrote: I.. uh, can't wrap my head around this.
Well the biggest game franchise in the world is now going to be Xbox/pc exclusive. Sony could be dead in the water.
As for starcraft...I don't know. Microsoft seems to be wanting to put more in its PC space, but that's usually things that are cross-platform for Xbox. Starcraft seems like a prime candidate to get lost in the shuffle. Arguably it was already though. I'd wish they'd sell it to help cover that 80 billion they just shelled out, but Warcraft being a huge driver of that 80 billion and SC's ties to that, that seems highly unlikely.
More like Xbox could finally be a competitor now against PlayStation. PlayStation has significantly outperformed Xbox in nearly every generation since they began.
I am positive about this. Activision/Blizz has been all about milking their franchises for a long time, skilled developers have left and there are haven't been any ambitious new releases since ... Diablo 3? Rewrapping does not cut it for me.
They might not do exactly what the fanboys who grew up in the 90s want, but at least they should keep the games alive and I can't imagine a new direction being a worse one.
Gross. I'm curious if this will pass FTC scrutiny. Microsoft has a long history of going into business sectors and trying to create monopolies. This is yet another attempt at that. They're essentially doing what Disney did with movie/show streaming by using their sheer size to swallow up competition and become the biggest with nobody else able to stop them.
Not to mention this could allow Kotick and all those around him to get off scot-free from all of the horrible things they enabled. If anything, they'll just get golden parachutes and quietly leave a month or two after the takeover is complete.
On January 19 2022 00:03 Nakajin wrote: Wow.... maybe it will mean better for the chance of SC3 happening lets wait and see.
I am a bit affraid for what that will mean for the short time SCR and SC2 e-sport suport thought, with a merger on this size there is bound to be many things falling through the cracks... Let's hope the Starcraft esport team is not one of them.
Also IDK if it a done deal, the US governement might want to look at something like this? We're in the mega-coorporation game now.
In terms of Starcraft, I can't see this being a negative at all. Considering the support Microsoft has been given Age of Empires over the past few years, maybe Starcraft 2 will get some love. I feel like the worst case scenario is that Starcraft continues as it has been. Suppose we shall see, but I see this only as a positive considering Blizzard has all but abandoned Starcraft.
On January 19 2022 00:03 Nakajin wrote: Wow.... maybe it will mean better for the chance of SC3 happening lets wait and see.
I am a bit affraid for what that will mean for the short time SCR and SC2 e-sport suport thought, with a merger on this size there is bound to be many things falling through the cracks... Let's hope the Starcraft esport team is not one of them.
Also IDK if it a done deal, the US governement might want to look at something like this? We're in the mega-coorporation game now.
Like Fable?
What happened with Fable?
Having a triple A reboot/sequel in the works by MS's best first party studio?
On January 18 2022 22:46 digmouse wrote: I.. uh, can't wrap my head around this.
Well the biggest game franchise in the world is now going to be Xbox/pc exclusive. Sony could be dead in the water.
As for starcraft...I don't know. Microsoft seems to be wanting to put more in its PC space, but that's usually things that are cross-platform for Xbox. Starcraft seems like a prime candidate to get lost in the shuffle. Arguably it was already though. I'd wish they'd sell it to help cover that 80 billion they just shelled out, but Warcraft being a huge driver of that 80 billion and SC's ties to that, that seems highly unlikely.
Sony still makes the best first party games.
It's gunna be rough though, a lot of people buy a console for CoD.
On January 19 2022 02:14 Ben... wrote: Gross. I'm curious if this will pass FTC scrutiny. Microsoft has a long history of going into business sectors and trying to create monopolies. This is yet another attempt at that. They're essentially doing what Disney did with movie/show streaming by using their sheer size to swallow up competition and become the biggest with nobody else able to stop them.
Not to mention this could allow Kotick and all those around him to get off scot-free from all of the horrible things they enabled. If anything, they'll just get golden parachutes and quietly leave a month or two after the takeover is complete.
I think with Nintendo, TakeTwo, and Sony and others like Riot and Epic, being so large that this will go through. Of course just a guess.
On January 19 2022 02:48 Geo.Rion wrote: So they ran the company so much into the ground that they had to sell? lol Good riddance i guess EDIT: 25% stockprice rise today, Jesus
They "sold" it for 68,7 billions, for comparison wikipedia tell me that the next biggest video game acquisition was take-two buying Zynga for 12,7 billions.
So you know, more like they implemented so much shitty practices to jack profit up that they made themselves unimaginably wealthy.
First of all battle.net is dead. We will see the games in the Microsoft store.
We may see WoW in game pass.
We will see more Blizzard franchises in console.
That being said, I think this is actually bad news for StarCraft.
Microsoft already has Age of Empires as their flagship RTS. And it has a very powerful name, more than StarCraft I'd say. Even though StarCraft 2 did better than the recent AoE GAMES.
I don't think Microsoft will focus much on RTS. They will focus more on COD, World of Warcraft, Overwatch and Diablo.
StarCraft is too similar to Halo for them to work on both as a FPS like StarCraft Ghost. And like I said I doubt they will make another RTS when they have AoE, or even the possibility of Warcrafts 4.
So long StarCraft and thanks for all the memories.
All in all though, this is great for Blizzard. Wish I had bought stock.
On January 19 2022 03:12 [Phantom] wrote: This has interesting implications.
First of all battle.net is dead. We will see the games in the Microsoft store.
We may see WoW in game pass.
We will see more Blizzard franchises in console.
That being said, I think this is actually bad news for StarCraft.
Microsoft already has Age of Empires as their flagship RTS. And it has a very powerful bane, more than StarCraft. Even though StarCraft 2 did better than the recent AoE GAMES.
I don't think Microsoft will focus much on RTS. They will focus more on COD, World of Warcraft, Overwatch and Diablo.
StarCraft is too similar to Halo for them to work on both as a FPS like StarCraft Ghost. And like I said I doubt they will make another RTS when they have AoE, or even the possibility of Warcrafts 4.
So long StarCraft and thanks for all the memories.
All in all though, this is great for Blizzard. Wish I had bought stock.
To be fair, the worst outcome in regards to StarCraft would be the status quo. If Microsoft does nothing for StarCraft, they do just as much as Activision-Blizzard did before. If they do more, it's a net positive. I am not too optimistic it's gonna be better, don't get me wrong, but there's no way it's gonna be worse.
On January 19 2022 03:12 [Phantom] wrote: This has interesting implications.
First of all battle.net is dead. We will see the games in the Microsoft store.
We may see WoW in game pass.
We will see more Blizzard franchises in console.
That being said, I think this is actually bad news for StarCraft.
Microsoft already has Age of Empires as their flagship RTS. And it has a very powerful name, more than StarCraft I'd say. Even though StarCraft 2 did better than the recent AoE GAMES.
I don't think Microsoft will focus much on RTS. They will focus more on COD, World of Warcraft, Overwatch and Diablo.
StarCraft is too similar to Halo for them to work on both as a FPS like StarCraft Ghost. And like I said I doubt they will make another RTS when they have AoE, or even the possibility of Warcrafts 4.
So long StarCraft and thanks for all the memories.
All in all though, this is great for Blizzard. Wish I had bought stock.
I don't think this is quite the right way to look at it. Gears of War is (very) similar to Halo, but that didn't stop them for continuing those!
Blizz is still a huge and mostly independent studio. Sure, there will obviously be some goal changes, but a lot of the things you mentioned were already set in stone. Do you know how many people work on StarCraft at Blizzard right now? I can count them on one hand!
I am curious to see where Overwatch 2 fits in though. I'm also curious to see how they'll tie stuff into Game Pass! Good thing I've got 2.5 years of that already purchased :>
I am happy if they fix blizzard and keep the ESport scene going, but im not sure what that is like from Microsoft's end. It can't get any worse for us Blizzard fans right now anyway right....WoW is not so fun and StarCraft they abandoned so maybe we might see something different in the future.
On January 18 2022 23:03 tigera6 wrote: On second thought, now I dont know how willing MS is to put 1mil prize money per year for SC2 tournament. From AoE2 tournament, I dont think they were spending that much for those, although constant balance patch were applied.
StarCraft Brood War will most likely be ignored/left to its own devices, which is better than fucking it up somehow. As for StarCraft 2, it will be interesting to see how the game fares without being injected with life support from Blizzard every year. Still pisses me off that Afreeca is told to pay exorbitant fees for BW while the SC2 scene gets showered with money just to keep it alive. Maybe with AoE2DE and AoE4 competitive scenes being actively supported by Microsoft, they will decide that investing further in SC2 is not in their best interest. I expect it will suck for SC2 fans but it's also inevitable IMO. SC2 can live on the same way BW does.
On January 19 2022 00:47 jpg06051992 wrote: Obviously this is encouraging news for the future of the game, but I still don't understand why HoTS has a completely flat competitive and ranked scene yet gets regular balance patches AND hero reworks while the SC2 community sits here wondering why we can't even get an annual balance patch to keep the game balanced and fresh?
Hoping someone at Microsoft takes the helm and at least offers SOMETHING to the SC2 community, the game still has an active tournament base so I just don't see the reason why a small team couldn't come in and make some minor adjustments.
Obviously what I would want is for Protoss GW units to be buffed, to bring the races basic units into a bit more parity with the modern metagame, Protoss GW units have suffered tremendously due to rampant power creep, especially against Zerg.
What I think should happen is that we should get some safer, easier to implement changes.
- Removal of Adaptive Talons entirely, no need for such a powerful space control unit to be so nimble.
- Make 2 Corrosive Biles required to destroy force fields. Sentries weren't removed from the game, so why put in abilities that all but do that?
- Either transfuse needs to be looked at, or Queens need HP adjustments or changes to light or armored. There was a time when Queens weren't OP, I think that time has passed, at least a little bit.
- Probably time for either a Stalker scaling buff so that they aren't so useless past the early/mid game, or some type of stat changes to the Adept which while marketed as a core unit has become kind of a glorified Reaper. Maybe a +1 range increase or a raw damage increase, modern pro Zergs have become exceptionally efficient vs. Adepts and the unit looks comically weak when responded to correctly.
I think any of these changes would shift PvZ back to a good place, all of them definitely aren't needed. The Bile nerf alone would allow FF to make a stronger statement in the match up which would be HUGE for balance.
This is the sc2 community in a nutshell - posting their bullshit balance suggestions under completely unrelated topics
On January 19 2022 02:14 Ben... wrote: Gross. I'm curious if this will pass FTC scrutiny. Microsoft has a long history of going into business sectors and trying to create monopolies. This is yet another attempt at that. They're essentially doing what Disney did with movie/show streaming by using their sheer size to swallow up competition and become the biggest with nobody else able to stop them.
Not to mention this could allow Kotick and all those around him to get off scot-free from all of the horrible things they enabled. If anything, they'll just get golden parachutes and quietly leave a month or two after the takeover is complete.
I think with Nintendo, TakeTwo, and Sony and others like Riot and Epic, being so large that this will go through. Of course just a guess.
This deal is worth more than all of Nintendo (who are worth ~$60 billion). It dwarfs the entire value of Riot, Take Two and Epic Games (~$20 billion, ~$18 billion, and ~$30 billion respectively).
Microsoft is in an entire different league than any of the companies listed. They're worth in the trillions and can spend amounts of money nobody else can match. Their market cap is an order of magnitude (more than 10x) larger than Sony, for example. They could quite literally buy most of the games industry in cash, which is what they've slowly been doing over the last few years. None of Microsoft's competitors can come even remotely close to making a purchase like this.
On January 18 2022 23:03 tigera6 wrote: On second thought, now I dont know how willing MS is to put 1mil prize money per year for SC2 tournament. From AoE2 tournament, I dont think they were spending that much for those, although constant balance patch were applied.
StarCraft Brood War will most likely be ignored/left to its own devices, which is better than fucking it up somehow. As for StarCraft 2, it will be interesting to see how the game fares without being injected with life support from Blizzard every year. Still pisses me off that Afreeca is told to pay exorbitant fees for BW while the SC2 scene gets showered with money just to keep it alive. Maybe with AoE2DE and AoE4 competitive scenes being actively supported by Microsoft, they will decide that investing further in SC2 is not in their best interest. I expect it will suck for SC2 fans but it's also inevitable IMO. SC2 can live on the same way BW does.
Let's not forget that we are talking about one of the biggest financial transaction in history, that it will not be close until 2023 and that the integration of Activision-Blizzard into Microsoft will probably take years. It's doubtfull an actual coherent reflexion on the impact of supporting the Starcraft esport scene on the Age of Empire esport scene will ever actually take place in reality.
On January 19 2022 02:14 Ben... wrote: Gross. I'm curious if this will pass FTC scrutiny. Microsoft has a long history of going into business sectors and trying to create monopolies. This is yet another attempt at that. They're essentially doing what Disney did with movie/show streaming by using their sheer size to swallow up competition and become the biggest with nobody else able to stop them.
Not to mention this could allow Kotick and all those around him to get off scot-free from all of the horrible things they enabled. If anything, they'll just get golden parachutes and quietly leave a month or two after the takeover is complete.
I think with Nintendo, TakeTwo, and Sony and others like Riot and Epic, being so large that this will go through. Of course just a guess.
This deal is worth more than all of Nintendo (who are worth ~$60 billion). It dwarfs the entire value of Riot, Take Two and Epic Games (~$20 billion, ~$18 billion, and ~$30 billion respectively).
Microsoft is in an entire different league than any of the companies listed. They're worth in the trillions and can spend amounts of money nobody else can match. Their market cap is an order of magnitude (more than 10x) larger than Sony, for example. They could quite literally buy most of the games industry in cash, which is what they've slowly been doing over the last few years. None of Microsoft's competitors can come even remotely close to making a purchase like this.
This is part of why the Feds will be taking a close look at the details of this transaction, it has some of the superficial markings of a proper anti-trust litigation target.
On January 19 2022 02:14 Ben... wrote: Gross. I'm curious if this will pass FTC scrutiny. Microsoft has a long history of going into business sectors and trying to create monopolies. This is yet another attempt at that. They're essentially doing what Disney did with movie/show streaming by using their sheer size to swallow up competition and become the biggest with nobody else able to stop them.
Not to mention this could allow Kotick and all those around him to get off scot-free from all of the horrible things they enabled. If anything, they'll just get golden parachutes and quietly leave a month or two after the takeover is complete.
My first reaction take is that this is all about taking CoD away from Sony (Playstation has been having DLC first deal for a long time now and CoD league is on playstation), bringing more games to Game Pass(seems to be msoft's big initiative lately) and stepping into mobile space with King as Microsoft is practically non-existent there right now. In very near term it means nothing as this deal won't be closed until 2023, I'm guessing sometime July 2023 or so, so a boost to OW2/D4 or any type of reinvigoration for SC2 is not in the cards.
On January 19 2022 02:14 Ben... wrote: Gross. I'm curious if this will pass FTC scrutiny. Microsoft has a long history of going into business sectors and trying to create monopolies. This is yet another attempt at that. They're essentially doing what Disney did with movie/show streaming by using their sheer size to swallow up competition and become the biggest with nobody else able to stop them.
Not to mention this could allow Kotick and all those around him to get off scot-free from all of the horrible things they enabled. If anything, they'll just get golden parachutes and quietly leave a month or two after the takeover is complete.
I love your optimism xD
I'm not optimistic at all that this will be stopped. The only reason I think the FTC might look at this is that they've been making noise about policing these types of consolidations in light of everything that's happened with Facebook the last few years.
I mean, for us blizzard players, it can't be any worse. So anything that happens won't be harmful anyway. I do hope they get more interns for sc2 balance and maybe more for HOTS updates.
On January 19 2022 02:14 Ben... wrote: Gross. I'm curious if this will pass FTC scrutiny. Microsoft has a long history of going into business sectors and trying to create monopolies. This is yet another attempt at that. They're essentially doing what Disney did with movie/show streaming by using their sheer size to swallow up competition and become the biggest with nobody else able to stop them.
Not to mention this could allow Kotick and all those around him to get off scot-free from all of the horrible things they enabled. If anything, they'll just get golden parachutes and quietly leave a month or two after the takeover is complete.
I love your optimism xD
I'm not optimistic at all that this will be stopped. The only reason I think the FTC might look at this is that they've been making noise about policing these types of consolidations in light of everything that's happened with Facebook the last few years.
FTC allowed worse mergers than this, so I am not expecting anything from them.
All we can hope is that MS can pump a little life blood into Blizzard games. With their support of AoE2 makes me happy for SC:R, maybe there will be 2v2 match making and a clan system. For SC2 all we really need is Esports to be supported and a balance patch to end all balance patches. Hopefully this means well for Diablo Resurrected, WC3R and future titles
What rubs me the wrong way: Talking about this metaverse BS.
To me it means that Microsoft plans to fully digitize market segments. No more physical copies of games, no more consoles, no more hardware. You get a "Terminal" to consume your subscribtions on and even that might just be a rental. A person is completely reduced to a consumer, owning nothing, defined by selection of subscription.
On January 19 2022 04:46 equin0xx wrote: The acquisition itself seems really positive. I hated the idea of supporting the current Activision/Blizzard, so Microsoft buying them is great.
I think Microsoft is way more likely to want to do something in the RTS space with Starcraft IP than Activision was.
To me, the biggest problem is that all the Blizzard RTS devs have left the company, right?
Even if they want to make SC3, who will make it? They don't have RTS devs!
Blizzard may not have had any, but Microsoft sure do...
On January 19 2022 04:46 equin0xx wrote: The acquisition itself seems really positive. I hated the idea of supporting the current Activision/Blizzard, so Microsoft buying them is great.
I think Microsoft is way more likely to want to do something in the RTS space with Starcraft IP than Activision was.
To me, the biggest problem is that all the Blizzard RTS devs have left the company, right?
Even if they want to make SC3, who will make it? They don't have RTS devs!
Blizzard may not have had any, but Microsoft sure do...
I thought they didn't since they contracted Halo Wars 2 out to Creative Assembly and AOE4 to Relic?
Maybe not kill but make it part of their own system and let people pay for it. That would be worse than the status quo.
that's not how Gamepass works you can buy games in MS Store just as on Steam/Origin/Battle.net etc.
ActiBlizz games will (most likely) be integrated into MS Store - f2p will stay f2p, for things you paid and own will have their license moved to MS Store and you won't have to pay again new players will however get option to try games via gamepass without straigh up buying it
Maybe not kill but make it part of their own system and let people pay for it. That would be worse than the status quo.
that's not how Gamepass works you can buy games in MS Store just as on Steam/Origin/Battle.net etc.
ActiBlizz games will (most likely) be integrated into MS Store - f2p will stay f2p, for things you paid and own will have their license moved to MS Store and you won't have to pay again new players will however get option to try games via gamepass without straigh up buying it
Exactly, AOE4 and Halo Infinite are both on Steam too. Seems possible that Activision and even Blizzard games could end up back on there instead of only on the Battle.net app.
Game Pass isn't like the old Xbox Live Gold thing you needed to buy to get basic online features. I think a lot of people are assuming that's still a thing.
My fear is that MS will move the shit out of bnet and will enforce Windows10+. In my case, being on Win7, would that mean to stop being able to play SC2. (and I am not moving over, I rather curse this game and stop watching even the little I follow)
Maybe not kill but make it part of their own system and let people pay for it. That would be worse than the status quo.
that's not how Gamepass works you can buy games in MS Store just as on Steam/Origin/Battle.net etc.
ActiBlizz games will (most likely) be integrated into MS Store - f2p will stay f2p, for things you paid and own will have their license moved to MS Store and you won't have to pay again new players will however get option to try games via gamepass without straigh up buying it
Exactly, AOE4 and Halo Infinite are both on Steam too. Seems possible that Activision and even Blizzard games could end up back on there instead of only on the Battle.net app.
Game Pass isn't like the old Xbox Live Gold thing you needed to buy to get basic online features. I think a lot of people are assuming that's still a thing.
Maybe not kill but make it part of their own system and let people pay for it. That would be worse than the status quo.
that's not how Gamepass works you can buy games in MS Store just as on Steam/Origin/Battle.net etc.
ActiBlizz games will (most likely) be integrated into MS Store - f2p will stay f2p, for things you paid and own will have their license moved to MS Store and you won't have to pay again new players will however get option to try games via gamepass without straigh up buying it
Exactly, AOE4 and Halo Infinite are both on Steam too. Seems possible that Activision and even Blizzard games could end up back on there instead of only on the Battle.net app.
Game Pass isn't like the old Xbox Live Gold thing you needed to buy to get basic online features. I think a lot of people are assuming that's still a thing.
Isnt there a monthly fee to use gamepass?
There is, but you can still buy any of these games individually yourself from all the usual places, and they have all the same features you would expect, without Game Pass.
Game Pass is a subscription service that lets you download and play any game on Game Pass for a monthly fee, but you don't need to buy it to play any of these games. Not buying it doesn't negatively effect your gaming experience.
If all you do is play a handful of games it doesn't make sense, but if you are going to try to power through all 5 Gears of War campaigns in a month or something, it's a good deal.
It's like signing up for a streaming service to watch many different movies/shows vs. buying an individual movie/show yourself.
RE: the competition concerns, there is zero chance that this deal will be even investigated in-depth. Pulling some figures from random articles says gaming industry is around 150 billion USD, actiblizz revenue is around 8 billion or so (one here + Show Spoiler +
). That's roughly 5% share of the market which is very fragmented and CAs defining the markets at anything more restrictive than maybe PC/Mobile/Console is very very unlikely. Arguing some horizontal dominance would be struck down in courts very easily.
The interesting stuff would be the vertical aspect, but I doubt some competition authority pursuing foreclosure type of arguments would do any better. I find the distributor - developer/publisher integration problematic definitely, but again there is zero chance this type of deal is big enough to lead into some intervention when much bigger acquisitions by FB/Google/Apple/Amazon have gone through even in recent years.
I don't think there's any point in Starcraft 3 now. Nobody plays hard games anymore, everything is as dumbed down and noob friendly as possible to attract the masses. It's probably going to be an even simpler version of SC2 and end up something like AOE 4. Maybe they'll throw in MOBA/BR gameplay into it as well.
On January 19 2022 05:39 deacon.frost wrote: My fear is that MS will move the shit out of bnet and will enforce Windows10+. In my case, being on Win7, would that mean to stop being able to play SC2. (and I am not moving over, I rather curse this game and stop watching even the little I follow)
10 to 11 I guess is understandable (I'm still on 10 and have no plans to move unless I get a 12th gen CPU), but staying on an 13 year old OS with no more security updates in 2022...
On January 19 2022 05:39 deacon.frost wrote: My fear is that MS will move the shit out of bnet and will enforce Windows10+. In my case, being on Win7, would that mean to stop being able to play SC2. (and I am not moving over, I rather curse this game and stop watching even the little I follow)
On January 19 2022 05:39 deacon.frost wrote: My fear is that MS will move the shit out of bnet and will enforce Windows10+. In my case, being on Win7, would that mean to stop being able to play SC2. (and I am not moving over, I rather curse this game and stop watching even the little I follow)
d2 remastered already requires win10
I don't care about other Blizzard games, I don't like them. D2R is a new game(kinda), so I can understand new Dx and higher requirements. The rest of Blizzard IPs never got my attention. Never understood what people liked so much about Diablo, Warcraft, WoW, Overwatch, Heroes, that card game. Hey, it's fine if you like it, but I certainly don't I really care only about Starcraft.
But SC2 is an old engine and I doubt anyone will update it to facilitate the advantages of Dx12+ (like better multicore handling)
On January 19 2022 05:39 deacon.frost wrote: My fear is that MS will move the shit out of bnet and will enforce Windows10+. In my case, being on Win7, would that mean to stop being able to play SC2. (and I am not moving over, I rather curse this game and stop watching even the little I follow)
10 to 11 I guess is understandable (I'm still on 10 and have no plans to move unless I get a 12th gen CPU), but staying on an 13 year old OS with no more security updates in 2022...
SC2 is a 10-year old engine, so it's fine, isn't it? Forcing new Windows just for the sake of forcing it on an old engine is IMO bad. oh noez, no security updates from a company which requires me to provide them my mail. Fuck them.
We can go into why I hate win10+ but I wouldn't go there. (and FYI I use W10 at my workstation so I know what W10 is about)
On January 19 2022 05:39 deacon.frost wrote: My fear is that MS will move the shit out of bnet and will enforce Windows10+. In my case, being on Win7, would that mean to stop being able to play SC2. (and I am not moving over, I rather curse this game and stop watching even the little I follow)
d2 remastered already requires win10
I don't care about other Blizzard games, I don't like them. D2R is a new game(kinda), so I can understand new Dx and higher requirements. The rest of Blizzard IPs never got my attention. Never understood what people liked so much about Diablo, Warcraft, WoW, Overwatch, Heroes, that card game. Hey, it's fine if you like it, but I certainly don't I really care only about Starcraft.
But SC2 is an old engine and I doubt anyone will update it to facilitate the advantages of Dx12+ (like better multicore handling)
On January 19 2022 05:39 deacon.frost wrote: My fear is that MS will move the shit out of bnet and will enforce Windows10+. In my case, being on Win7, would that mean to stop being able to play SC2. (and I am not moving over, I rather curse this game and stop watching even the little I follow)
10 to 11 I guess is understandable (I'm still on 10 and have no plans to move unless I get a 12th gen CPU), but staying on an 13 year old OS with no more security updates in 2022...
SC2 is a 10-year old engine, so it's fine, isn't it? Forcing new Windows just for the sake of forcing it on an old engine is IMO bad. oh noez, no security updates from a company which requires me to provide them my mail. Fuck them.
We can go into why I hate win10+ but I wouldn't go there. (and FYI I use W10 at my workstation so I know what W10 is about)
MS hasn't done a single thing to their other acquired old games so I don't even know where the FUD is even about. If you want to expose your PC online I guess be my guest? On Windows 10 you can just use an offline account and don't touch any of their telemetry shit which can also be turned off nowadays.
On January 19 2022 12:22 alypse wrote: google tells me that Bob Kotick has about 0.56% of ATVI shares. Does that mean he'll get 0.56% of those 68.7 billions?
Plus the Golden parachute he'll get so they can kick him out of management.
Sadly, we dont live in a world where an incompetent scumbag like him would get what he deserves (once he reached the top), the best we can hope for is that he causes no more harm, and happily retires to a private island or some such
On January 19 2022 12:22 alypse wrote: google tells me that Bob Kotick has about 0.56% of ATVI shares. Does that mean he'll get 0.56% of those 68.7 billions?
Plus the Golden parachute he'll get so they can kick him out of management.
Sadly, we dont live in a world where an incompetent scumbag like him would get what he deserves (once he reached the top), the best we can hope for is that he causes no more harm, and happily retires to a private island or some such
His golden parachute is going to be a little under 300 million dollars too. If he was fired with cause, like he fucking deserves, he'd "only" get like 300,000 dollars.
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.
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?
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.
One can argue that M$ did some bad decisions during previous acquiring (of game studios). Now they should be more experienced, and they would not throw almost 70B if there were no plans. I highly doubt M$ sees Starcraft as a threat, more like a game completely different from AoE that still has support of fans and perspective.
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 ?
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.
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.
to me this is the most likely scenario, they have AoE4 to push on
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.
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.
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
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.
I think they will add Blizzard games to Game Pass and be happy with that, and potentially make new games with these really popular IPs to bring more people to Game Pass.
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.
Unless someone at Microsoft takes a real shine to SC2, I don't know that the company will expend the resources on something like a dedicated balance team or whatever.
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.
I don't think that Blizzard has anyone left that currently would push for SC3 or anything like that but something like warchest could return as that is much smaller commitment. Microsoft will for sure go through everything after the deal closes and determine what could be kept going as is and what should be dropped, but also what could be first projects under Microsoft. OW and Diablo have projects underway, and WoW and Hearthsstone have expansions so they are pretty sure to continue. WC3:R is mess and fixing that would be quite a statement for commitment. Also WC4 is something that is frequently asked for. However we really can't know and there is always possibility that things have gone too far already. Also there seem to be some unannounced projects in Blizzard that probably require quite much resources in future. I'm pretty sure that something will be done for sure as otherwise Blizzard IPs aren't as big thing for game pass, that Microsoft is pushing hard.
So , Phil Spencer makes sure his "concerns for ATVI work culture" are leaked. Also, Phil's comments about how MS might re assess their relationship with ATVI are also leaked. This adds to the downward pressure on ATVI's stock price. Then MS buys ATVI with cash. LOL.
im all for this but just remember Ms just love to dump money into something and turn on a dime. Mixer being the last thing they nearly got good, or at least i was tuning in more and more instead of twitch. MS will always be the best at games tho, still playing microprose gp manager when i visit my parents on a 733 Mhz . . yep Mhz pentium from 1999. oh ye, (bw as well)
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.
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.
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.
On January 20 2022 07:25 equin0xx wrote: I think they will add Blizzard games to Game Pass and be happy with that, and potentially make new games with these really popular IPs to bring more people to Game Pass.
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.
That's my take on it too. Historically the model has been to make one game that appeals to as many people as possible, but Microsoft are trying to make one service that appeals to as many people as possible so they can afford to make and support games that are more niche in their appeal because as long as we all buy Game Pass for something, Microsoft win all the same.
What a strange time to be alive. I grew up with Blizzard games, connecting my first two PCs so my friend and I could play WC1 multiplayer. I remember building two Raiders and sending them across the map while he was playing farm simulator... and that first attack won the game. That was the first multiplayer game I played across two PC's.
Blizzard games were always the best games. Not the best graphically, they didn't push boundaries, but they were well made and just made sense. I've spent more time playing Blizzard games than I have playing all other games combined.
But everything changed. Diablo III, the mess of Reforged, the pandering to China while it commits genocide, ect, ect, ect.... Blizzard is now little more than a corporation looking to sell games, instead of one looking to make good games. And the irony is, if you don't make good games, you won't sell them.
Let's hope Microsoft can fix this... but this really feels like the end.
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.
In fact, StarCraft 2 can still bring revenue. The last WCS war chest reached its revenue target in a short period of time when it was launched. However, officials believed that compared with other projects, the income of StarCraft 2 was not enough to invest these manpower to maintain, so they stopped the update and terminated the development of the cooperative commander "Selendis". And the follow-up Blizzard refused to let StarCraft 2 join the Asian Games project, and insisted on choosing Overwatch, resulting in the failure of both projects. (According to the news, StarCraft 2 is basically a certainty to be elected as the Asian Games project, only needs the consent of Blizzard)
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.
In fact, StarCraft 2 can still bring revenue. The last WCS war chest reached its revenue target in a short period of time when it was launched. However, officials believed that compared with other projects, the income of StarCraft 2 was not enough to invest these manpower to maintain, so they stopped the update and terminated the development of the cooperative commander "Selendis". And the follow-up Blizzard refused to let StarCraft 2 join the Asian Games project, and insisted on choosing Overwatch, resulting in the failure of both projects. (According to the news, StarCraft 2 is basically a certainty to be elected as the Asian Games project, only needs the consent of Blizzard)
It can bring in revenue, but does that revenue exceed the cost? The answer is likely "no," otherwise it would not have made sense for them to pull devs off of SC2:
Developers and other specialists cost a lot of money. Having them work on a project and just break even is bad business. Working at a loss is worse. Propping up a competitive scene on top of that puts yet another drain on this supposed revenue.
How much does Blizzard profit from SC2 tournaments? Maybe someone here who has access to such information can speak about this, but my impression is that the answer is either zero or very low (if not a loss). WCS prizepools in the hundreds of thousands - where do you think that money comes from?
You said it yourself:
However, officials believed that compared with other projects, the income of StarCraft 2 was not enough to invest these manpower to maintain
If this is what Blizzard believed about its own IP, why would Microsoft view it in any more favorable of a light?
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.
In fact, StarCraft 2 can still bring revenue. The last WCS war chest reached its revenue target in a short period of time when it was launched. However, officials believed that compared with other projects, the income of StarCraft 2 was not enough to invest these manpower to maintain, so they stopped the update and terminated the development of the cooperative commander "Selendis". And the follow-up Blizzard refused to let StarCraft 2 join the Asian Games project, and insisted on choosing Overwatch, resulting in the failure of both projects. (According to the news, StarCraft 2 is basically a certainty to be elected as the Asian Games project, only needs the consent of Blizzard)
It can bring in revenue, but does that revenue exceed the cost? The answer is likely "no," otherwise it would not have made sense for them to pull devs off of SC2:
Developers and other specialists cost a lot of money. Having them work on a project and just break even is bad business. Working at a loss is worse. Propping up a competitive scene on top of that puts yet another drain on this supposed revenue.
How much does Blizzard profit from SC2 tournaments? Maybe someone here who has access to such information can speak about this, but my impression is that the answer is either zero or very low (if not a loss). WCS prizepools in the hundreds of thousands - where do you think that money comes from?
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.
In fact, StarCraft 2 can still bring revenue. The last WCS war chest reached its revenue target in a short period of time when it was launched. However, officials believed that compared with other projects, the income of StarCraft 2 was not enough to invest these manpower to maintain, so they stopped the update and terminated the development of the cooperative commander "Selendis". And the follow-up Blizzard refused to let StarCraft 2 join the Asian Games project, and insisted on choosing Overwatch, resulting in the failure of both projects. (According to the news, StarCraft 2 is basically a certainty to be elected as the Asian Games project, only needs the consent of Blizzard)
It can bring in revenue, but does that revenue exceed the cost? The answer is likely "no," otherwise it would not have made sense for them to pull devs off of SC2:
Developers and other specialists cost a lot of money. Having them work on a project and just break even is bad business. Working at a loss is worse. Propping up a competitive scene on top of that puts yet another drain on this supposed revenue.
How much does Blizzard profit from SC2 tournaments? Maybe someone here who has access to such information can speak about this, but my impression is that the answer is either zero or very low (if not a loss). WCS prizepools in the hundreds of thousands - where do you think that money comes from?
You said it yourself:
However, officials believed that compared with other projects, the income of StarCraft 2 was not enough to invest these manpower to maintain
If this is what Blizzard believed about its own IP, why would Microsoft view it in any more favorable of a light?
Gamepass to reach niches, plus they want to have some kind of monopoly on gaming.
Can you elaborate further? I don't understand the connection between what you wrote and Microsoft making investments into SC2.
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.
In fact, StarCraft 2 can still bring revenue. The last WCS war chest reached its revenue target in a short period of time when it was launched. However, officials believed that compared with other projects, the income of StarCraft 2 was not enough to invest these manpower to maintain, so they stopped the update and terminated the development of the cooperative commander "Selendis". And the follow-up Blizzard refused to let StarCraft 2 join the Asian Games project, and insisted on choosing Overwatch, resulting in the failure of both projects. (According to the news, StarCraft 2 is basically a certainty to be elected as the Asian Games project, only needs the consent of Blizzard)
It can bring in revenue, but does that revenue exceed the cost? The answer is likely "no," otherwise it would not have made sense for them to pull devs off of SC2:
Developers and other specialists cost a lot of money. Having them work on a project and just break even is bad business. Working at a loss is worse. Propping up a competitive scene on top of that puts yet another drain on this supposed revenue.
How much does Blizzard profit from SC2 tournaments? Maybe someone here who has access to such information can speak about this, but my impression is that the answer is either zero or very low (if not a loss). WCS prizepools in the hundreds of thousands - where do you think that money comes from?
However, officials believed that compared with other projects, the income of StarCraft 2 was not enough to invest these manpower to maintain
If this is what Blizzard believed about its own IP, why would Microsoft view it in any more favorable of a light?
No, the actual income can exceed the cost. The war chest and the announced cooperative commanders are actually profitable, and their revenue has exceeded the cost. What I'm referring to here is that Blizzard thinks these people can generate more revenue elsewhere than the StarCraft project. As you know, due to various layoffs in operations and the departure of key members of various projects in recent years, Blizzard needs to invest in manpower for many projects. Compared with maintaining the old project, it must be all transferred to the development of the new project. After all, this is the place where the most profit can be obtained. This is why the Warcraft project team also disbanded after StarCraft 2 stopped updating. And outsource the event to the ESL team to invest more people in the development of projects such as Overwatch 2.
At the beginning of the War Chest, there was a provision that a part of the income would be put into the prize pool of the WCS event. In fact, as far as I know, after the War Chest was updated, this goal was completed very quickly, but the prize pool was fixed. It is conceivable that the remaining income is basically Blizzard's profit.
So it is completely unreasonable to say that the StarCraft project has been unable to bring profits or even losses. It's just that Blizzard doesn't think it's bringing in enough profit.
In our local community, there's a saying: Everyone wants StarCraft to live, only Blizzard wants it to die.
Of course, this situation is caused by the bad operational decisions of Blizzard's top management. So when the news that Bobby Kotick might leave after Microsoft's acquisition was completed, most of the reactions from the outside world were applause.
In Blizzard's situation, it is necessary to take a fancy to the revenue of the financial report, so there must be a choice, so it can only continue on the wrong road. For Microsoft, the situation is different, so some people feel that they see hope for the recovery of old projects.
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.
In fact, StarCraft 2 can still bring revenue. The last WCS war chest reached its revenue target in a short period of time when it was launched. However, officials believed that compared with other projects, the income of StarCraft 2 was not enough to invest these manpower to maintain, so they stopped the update and terminated the development of the cooperative commander "Selendis". And the follow-up Blizzard refused to let StarCraft 2 join the Asian Games project, and insisted on choosing Overwatch, resulting in the failure of both projects. (According to the news, StarCraft 2 is basically a certainty to be elected as the Asian Games project, only needs the consent of Blizzard)
It can bring in revenue, but does that revenue exceed the cost? The answer is likely "no," otherwise it would not have made sense for them to pull devs off of SC2:
Developers and other specialists cost a lot of money. Having them work on a project and just break even is bad business. Working at a loss is worse. Propping up a competitive scene on top of that puts yet another drain on this supposed revenue.
How much does Blizzard profit from SC2 tournaments? Maybe someone here who has access to such information can speak about this, but my impression is that the answer is either zero or very low (if not a loss). WCS prizepools in the hundreds of thousands - where do you think that money comes from?
You said it yourself:
However, officials believed that compared with other projects, the income of StarCraft 2 was not enough to invest these manpower to maintain
If this is what Blizzard believed about its own IP, why would Microsoft view it in any more favorable of a light?
No, the actual income can exceed the cost. The war chest and the announced cooperative commanders are actually profitable, and their revenue has exceeded the cost.
I'm guessing you have access to those figures? Care to share?
What I'm referring to here is that Blizzard thinks these people can generate more revenue elsewhere than the StarCraft project. As you know, due to various layoffs in operations and the departure of key members of various projects in recent years, Blizzard needs to invest in manpower for many projects. Compared with maintaining the old project, it must be all transferred to the development of the new project. After all, this is the place where the most profit can be obtained. This is why the Warcraft project team also disbanded after StarCraft 2 stopped updating. And outsource the event to the ESL team to invest more people in the development of projects such as Overwatch 2.
If SC2 is projected to be less profitable than new ventures, how does that at all make it a "bad operational decision" to invest in those new ventures, as you refer to here:
Of course, this situation is caused by the bad operational decisions of Blizzard's top management. So when the news that Bobby Kotick might leave after Microsoft's acquisition was completed, most of the reactions from the outside world were applause.
In Blizzard's situation, it is necessary to take a fancy to the revenue of the financial report, so there must be a choice, so it can only continue on the wrong road. For Microsoft, the situation is different, so some people feel that they see hope for the recovery of old projects.
Microsoft paid billions in order to... not pursue greater profits? How does the equation change at all in the hands of different profit-seeking executives and shareholders, particularly those that had to just be convinced that paying billions of dollars for this company would be "worth it"? If anything, doesn't it make more sense that Microsoft would be even more profit-oriented than Activision-Blizzard were, in order to justify the purchase cost?
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.
In fact, StarCraft 2 can still bring revenue. The last WCS war chest reached its revenue target in a short period of time when it was launched. However, officials believed that compared with other projects, the income of StarCraft 2 was not enough to invest these manpower to maintain, so they stopped the update and terminated the development of the cooperative commander "Selendis". And the follow-up Blizzard refused to let StarCraft 2 join the Asian Games project, and insisted on choosing Overwatch, resulting in the failure of both projects. (According to the news, StarCraft 2 is basically a certainty to be elected as the Asian Games project, only needs the consent of Blizzard)
It can bring in revenue, but does that revenue exceed the cost? The answer is likely "no," otherwise it would not have made sense for them to pull devs off of SC2:
Developers and other specialists cost a lot of money. Having them work on a project and just break even is bad business. Working at a loss is worse. Propping up a competitive scene on top of that puts yet another drain on this supposed revenue.
How much does Blizzard profit from SC2 tournaments? Maybe someone here who has access to such information can speak about this, but my impression is that the answer is either zero or very low (if not a loss). WCS prizepools in the hundreds of thousands - where do you think that money comes from?
You said it yourself:
However, officials believed that compared with other projects, the income of StarCraft 2 was not enough to invest these manpower to maintain
If this is what Blizzard believed about its own IP, why would Microsoft view it in any more favorable of a light?
Gamepass to reach niches, plus they want to have some kind of monopoly on gaming.
Can you elaborate further? I don't understand the connection between what you wrote and Microsoft making investments into SC2.
Well keeping Starcraft more alive can bring people to gamepass, especially if they add the possibility to play with a gamepad (they streamed the game with xbox gamepad afaik). As for the monopoly on gaming, they already have AoE4 so if they also boost starcraft they will have a huge part of the RTS market, and can invest in the IP to do future games etc. By keeping the esports scene more alive they will keep the IP relevant until they make a new game out of it.
And if you buy something for 70 billions, you don't need to cut costs like ATVI-Blizzard did with sc2, you can have some things run at loss
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.
In fact, StarCraft 2 can still bring revenue. The last WCS war chest reached its revenue target in a short period of time when it was launched. However, officials believed that compared with other projects, the income of StarCraft 2 was not enough to invest these manpower to maintain, so they stopped the update and terminated the development of the cooperative commander "Selendis". And the follow-up Blizzard refused to let StarCraft 2 join the Asian Games project, and insisted on choosing Overwatch, resulting in the failure of both projects. (According to the news, StarCraft 2 is basically a certainty to be elected as the Asian Games project, only needs the consent of Blizzard)
It can bring in revenue, but does that revenue exceed the cost? The answer is likely "no," otherwise it would not have made sense for them to pull devs off of SC2:
Developers and other specialists cost a lot of money. Having them work on a project and just break even is bad business. Working at a loss is worse. Propping up a competitive scene on top of that puts yet another drain on this supposed revenue.
How much does Blizzard profit from SC2 tournaments? Maybe someone here who has access to such information can speak about this, but my impression is that the answer is either zero or very low (if not a loss). WCS prizepools in the hundreds of thousands - where do you think that money comes from?
You said it yourself:
However, officials believed that compared with other projects, the income of StarCraft 2 was not enough to invest these manpower to maintain
If this is what Blizzard believed about its own IP, why would Microsoft view it in any more favorable of a light?
No, the actual income can exceed the cost. The war chest and the announced cooperative commanders are actually profitable, and their revenue has exceeded the cost.
I'm guessing you have access to those figures? Care to share?
What I'm referring to here is that Blizzard thinks these people can generate more revenue elsewhere than the StarCraft project. As you know, due to various layoffs in operations and the departure of key members of various projects in recent years, Blizzard needs to invest in manpower for many projects. Compared with maintaining the old project, it must be all transferred to the development of the new project. After all, this is the place where the most profit can be obtained. This is why the Warcraft project team also disbanded after StarCraft 2 stopped updating. And outsource the event to the ESL team to invest more people in the development of projects such as Overwatch 2.
If SC2 is projected to be less profitable than new ventures, how does that at all make it a "bad operational decision" to invest in those new ventures, as you refer to here:
Of course, this situation is caused by the bad operational decisions of Blizzard's top management. So when the news that Bobby Kotick might leave after Microsoft's acquisition was completed, most of the reactions from the outside world were applause.
In Blizzard's situation, it is necessary to take a fancy to the revenue of the financial report, so there must be a choice, so it can only continue on the wrong road. For Microsoft, the situation is different, so some people feel that they see hope for the recovery of old projects.
Microsoft paid billions in order to... not pursue greater profits? How does the equation change at all in the hands of different profit-seeking executives and shareholders, particularly those that had to just be convinced that paying billions of dollars for this company would be "worth it"? If anything, doesn't it make more sense that Microsoft would be even more profit-oriented than Activision-Blizzard were, in order to justify the purchase cost?
Its call "vitality" of the business, meaning not just chasing down the short-term profit but also keep developing for the future of the company through R&D, marketability and other stuff. ActivBlizz completely ignore this approach, because they only care about the end-of-year financial report before selling the company to someone else. SC2 isnt a profitable as other title doesnt mean its NOT profitable if you can monetize it the right way. Even though it may be chump change comparing to other games, but SC2 can still bring millions of dollar into the developer as long as they dont give it up. Also, keeping the game and the scene alive long enough would give you a certain boost when the next game in the franchise coming out. One of the reason, imo, that SC2 sales has been lower than SC1 was simply because it took them too damn long to start developing it (like 10 years). By that time, some of fans of the franchise had already moved to other stuff already and they lost million of dollars just from that.
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.
In fact, StarCraft 2 can still bring revenue. The last WCS war chest reached its revenue target in a short period of time when it was launched. However, officials believed that compared with other projects, the income of StarCraft 2 was not enough to invest these manpower to maintain, so they stopped the update and terminated the development of the cooperative commander "Selendis". And the follow-up Blizzard refused to let StarCraft 2 join the Asian Games project, and insisted on choosing Overwatch, resulting in the failure of both projects. (According to the news, StarCraft 2 is basically a certainty to be elected as the Asian Games project, only needs the consent of Blizzard)
It can bring in revenue, but does that revenue exceed the cost? The answer is likely "no," otherwise it would not have made sense for them to pull devs off of SC2:
Developers and other specialists cost a lot of money. Having them work on a project and just break even is bad business. Working at a loss is worse. Propping up a competitive scene on top of that puts yet another drain on this supposed revenue.
How much does Blizzard profit from SC2 tournaments? Maybe someone here who has access to such information can speak about this, but my impression is that the answer is either zero or very low (if not a loss). WCS prizepools in the hundreds of thousands - where do you think that money comes from?
You said it yourself:
However, officials believed that compared with other projects, the income of StarCraft 2 was not enough to invest these manpower to maintain
If this is what Blizzard believed about its own IP, why would Microsoft view it in any more favorable of a light?
Gamepass to reach niches, plus they want to have some kind of monopoly on gaming.
Can you elaborate further? I don't understand the connection between what you wrote and Microsoft making investments into SC2.
Well keeping Starcraft more alive can bring people to gamepass, especially if they add the possibility to play with a gamepad (they streamed the game with xbox gamepad afaik). As for the monopoly on gaming, they already have AoE4 so if they also boost starcraft they will have a huge part of the RTS market, and can invest in the IP to do future games etc. By keeping the esports scene more alive they will keep the IP relevant until they make a new game out of it.
And if you buy something for 70 billions, you don't need to cut costs like ATVI-Blizzard did with sc2, you can have some things run at loss
Just wanna remind that when Disney bought Star Wars they had huge plans, so many movies, so many series, so many things. And then the sequels happened and suddenly the plans were... let's say smaller
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.
In fact, StarCraft 2 can still bring revenue. The last WCS war chest reached its revenue target in a short period of time when it was launched. However, officials believed that compared with other projects, the income of StarCraft 2 was not enough to invest these manpower to maintain, so they stopped the update and terminated the development of the cooperative commander "Selendis". And the follow-up Blizzard refused to let StarCraft 2 join the Asian Games project, and insisted on choosing Overwatch, resulting in the failure of both projects. (According to the news, StarCraft 2 is basically a certainty to be elected as the Asian Games project, only needs the consent of Blizzard)
It can bring in revenue, but does that revenue exceed the cost? The answer is likely "no," otherwise it would not have made sense for them to pull devs off of SC2:
Developers and other specialists cost a lot of money. Having them work on a project and just break even is bad business. Working at a loss is worse. Propping up a competitive scene on top of that puts yet another drain on this supposed revenue.
How much does Blizzard profit from SC2 tournaments? Maybe someone here who has access to such information can speak about this, but my impression is that the answer is either zero or very low (if not a loss). WCS prizepools in the hundreds of thousands - where do you think that money comes from?
You said it yourself:
However, officials believed that compared with other projects, the income of StarCraft 2 was not enough to invest these manpower to maintain
If this is what Blizzard believed about its own IP, why would Microsoft view it in any more favorable of a light?
Gamepass to reach niches, plus they want to have some kind of monopoly on gaming.
Can you elaborate further? I don't understand the connection between what you wrote and Microsoft making investments into SC2.
Well keeping Starcraft more alive can bring people to gamepass, especially if they add the possibility to play with a gamepad (they streamed the game with xbox gamepad afaik). As for the monopoly on gaming, they already have AoE4 so if they also boost starcraft they will have a huge part of the RTS market, and can invest in the IP to do future games etc. By keeping the esports scene more alive they will keep the IP relevant until they make a new game out of it.
And if you buy something for 70 billions, you don't need to cut costs like ATVI-Blizzard did with sc2, you can have some things run at loss
1. The game is already free, and playing RTS on non-keyboard is kind of silly, so I find it hard to believe but I guess it's not impossible.
2. If they already have AoE4 + AoE2HD, wouldn't not supporting SC2 achieve the same effect?
3. Investing in the IP to do future games may make sense, I can see that, though I do find it unlikely at this time.
4. I don't really get this point. Don't they have to justify the acquisition to their investors? Don't they need to make a profit on this deal? Seems like that would be common sense.
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.
In fact, StarCraft 2 can still bring revenue. The last WCS war chest reached its revenue target in a short period of time when it was launched. However, officials believed that compared with other projects, the income of StarCraft 2 was not enough to invest these manpower to maintain, so they stopped the update and terminated the development of the cooperative commander "Selendis". And the follow-up Blizzard refused to let StarCraft 2 join the Asian Games project, and insisted on choosing Overwatch, resulting in the failure of both projects. (According to the news, StarCraft 2 is basically a certainty to be elected as the Asian Games project, only needs the consent of Blizzard)
It can bring in revenue, but does that revenue exceed the cost? The answer is likely "no," otherwise it would not have made sense for them to pull devs off of SC2:
Developers and other specialists cost a lot of money. Having them work on a project and just break even is bad business. Working at a loss is worse. Propping up a competitive scene on top of that puts yet another drain on this supposed revenue.
How much does Blizzard profit from SC2 tournaments? Maybe someone here who has access to such information can speak about this, but my impression is that the answer is either zero or very low (if not a loss). WCS prizepools in the hundreds of thousands - where do you think that money comes from?
You said it yourself:
However, officials believed that compared with other projects, the income of StarCraft 2 was not enough to invest these manpower to maintain
If this is what Blizzard believed about its own IP, why would Microsoft view it in any more favorable of a light?
Gamepass to reach niches, plus they want to have some kind of monopoly on gaming.
Can you elaborate further? I don't understand the connection between what you wrote and Microsoft making investments into SC2.
Well keeping Starcraft more alive can bring people to gamepass, especially if they add the possibility to play with a gamepad (they streamed the game with xbox gamepad afaik). As for the monopoly on gaming, they already have AoE4 so if they also boost starcraft they will have a huge part of the RTS market, and can invest in the IP to do future games etc. By keeping the esports scene more alive they will keep the IP relevant until they make a new game out of it.
And if you buy something for 70 billions, you don't need to cut costs like ATVI-Blizzard did with sc2, you can have some things run at loss
1. The game is already free, and playing RTS on non-keyboard is kind of silly, so I find it hard to believe but I guess it's not impossible.
2. If they already have AoE4 + AoE2HD, wouldn't not supporting SC2 achieve the same effect?
3. Investing in the IP to do future games may make sense, I can see that, though I do find it unlikely at this time.
4. I don't really get this point. Don't they have to justify the acquisition to their investors? Don't they need to make a profit on this deal? Seems like that would be common sense.
They will make huge profit out of candy crush + CoD and if CoD becomes PC/xbox exclusive that's a huge blow to their competitor Sony. Blizzard is probably worth less than 10 or even 5% of the deal, but they will still fully utilize their IPs
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.
In fact, StarCraft 2 can still bring revenue. The last WCS war chest reached its revenue target in a short period of time when it was launched. However, officials believed that compared with other projects, the income of StarCraft 2 was not enough to invest these manpower to maintain, so they stopped the update and terminated the development of the cooperative commander "Selendis". And the follow-up Blizzard refused to let StarCraft 2 join the Asian Games project, and insisted on choosing Overwatch, resulting in the failure of both projects. (According to the news, StarCraft 2 is basically a certainty to be elected as the Asian Games project, only needs the consent of Blizzard)
It can bring in revenue, but does that revenue exceed the cost? The answer is likely "no," otherwise it would not have made sense for them to pull devs off of SC2:
Developers and other specialists cost a lot of money. Having them work on a project and just break even is bad business. Working at a loss is worse. Propping up a competitive scene on top of that puts yet another drain on this supposed revenue.
How much does Blizzard profit from SC2 tournaments? Maybe someone here who has access to such information can speak about this, but my impression is that the answer is either zero or very low (if not a loss). WCS prizepools in the hundreds of thousands - where do you think that money comes from?
You said it yourself:
However, officials believed that compared with other projects, the income of StarCraft 2 was not enough to invest these manpower to maintain
If this is what Blizzard believed about its own IP, why would Microsoft view it in any more favorable of a light?
No, the actual income can exceed the cost. The war chest and the announced cooperative commanders are actually profitable, and their revenue has exceeded the cost.
I'm guessing you have access to those figures? Care to share?
What I'm referring to here is that Blizzard thinks these people can generate more revenue elsewhere than the StarCraft project. As you know, due to various layoffs in operations and the departure of key members of various projects in recent years, Blizzard needs to invest in manpower for many projects. Compared with maintaining the old project, it must be all transferred to the development of the new project. After all, this is the place where the most profit can be obtained. This is why the Warcraft project team also disbanded after StarCraft 2 stopped updating. And outsource the event to the ESL team to invest more people in the development of projects such as Overwatch 2.
If SC2 is projected to be less profitable than new ventures, how does that at all make it a "bad operational decision" to invest in those new ventures, as you refer to here:
Of course, this situation is caused by the bad operational decisions of Blizzard's top management. So when the news that Bobby Kotick might leave after Microsoft's acquisition was completed, most of the reactions from the outside world were applause.
In Blizzard's situation, it is necessary to take a fancy to the revenue of the financial report, so there must be a choice, so it can only continue on the wrong road. For Microsoft, the situation is different, so some people feel that they see hope for the recovery of old projects.
Microsoft paid billions in order to... not pursue greater profits? How does the equation change at all in the hands of different profit-seeking executives and shareholders, particularly those that had to just be convinced that paying billions of dollars for this company would be "worth it"? If anything, doesn't it make more sense that Microsoft would be even more profit-oriented than Activision-Blizzard were, in order to justify the purchase cost?
Unfortunately, as the data I know of is internal and has not been made public, I can't give you more details. You can only judge the authenticity of the information by yourself, and I cannot give you an exact answer.
Let's talk about the following question, why it is a bad operational decision. First of all, before this, Blizzard was already in an embarrassing situation because of poor operations. You can imagine that each game has a difference in revenue and profit. If your company is operating normally and is in a hot stage, will you stop updating a certain game because of its low profit? It is obvious that Blizzard is facing a situation of insufficient staff and user expectations are declining year by year. As mentioned before, Blizzard needs to pay attention to the financial report data, and it needs to report these data to shareholders and directors, while the number of active users is decreasing year by year and the game is constantly being postponed. It's all affecting Blizzard's earnings numbers, which is why I call it "bad operations" because it's been pretty bad before that.
I believe you should have a lot of familiarity with Blizzard’s operations in recent years, including but not limited to reviews of Warcraft Remake, Overwatch’s map update and hero update frequency, and the classic accompanying boo at BlizzCon "Do you guys no have phone?" and the selection of Asian Games e-sports items I mentioned before, including the recent popular WTL league, the organizer once hoped that through in-game purchases (similar to war chests or team skins) for each team and events to generate profits, but Blizzard refused, so they had to find sponsors themselves.
Bobby Kotick is a pure businessman, so don't expect him to focus on user experience and make the right decisions, because all he cares about is economics. This point can refer to those employees who founded Blizzard, those who really want to make good game products for users.
Finally, when it comes to what Microsoft values, this is my personal understanding. I personally think it's copyright, as Microsoft's press conference mentioned before that they are planning to deploy the so-called "metaverse" project. Assuming that this project is successful in the end, then you will see "metaverse" projects of various companies, but what content can be played in this "metaverse", copyright is the most important factor. The elements of various games that can appear in the movie "Ready Player One" are the best proof of the copyright advantage. Microsoft's current net worth, are these profits important to it? I personally think that Microsoft's decision and future layout are the most important to it, including improving the competitiveness of the xbox project. Of course, for now, Activision's COD project may be Microsoft's main layout direction. For Sony, it is great threat.
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.
In fact, StarCraft 2 can still bring revenue. The last WCS war chest reached its revenue target in a short period of time when it was launched. However, officials believed that compared with other projects, the income of StarCraft 2 was not enough to invest these manpower to maintain, so they stopped the update and terminated the development of the cooperative commander "Selendis". And the follow-up Blizzard refused to let StarCraft 2 join the Asian Games project, and insisted on choosing Overwatch, resulting in the failure of both projects. (According to the news, StarCraft 2 is basically a certainty to be elected as the Asian Games project, only needs the consent of Blizzard)
It can bring in revenue, but does that revenue exceed the cost? The answer is likely "no," otherwise it would not have made sense for them to pull devs off of SC2:
Developers and other specialists cost a lot of money. Having them work on a project and just break even is bad business. Working at a loss is worse. Propping up a competitive scene on top of that puts yet another drain on this supposed revenue.
How much does Blizzard profit from SC2 tournaments? Maybe someone here who has access to such information can speak about this, but my impression is that the answer is either zero or very low (if not a loss). WCS prizepools in the hundreds of thousands - where do you think that money comes from?
You said it yourself:
However, officials believed that compared with other projects, the income of StarCraft 2 was not enough to invest these manpower to maintain
If this is what Blizzard believed about its own IP, why would Microsoft view it in any more favorable of a light?
Gamepass to reach niches, plus they want to have some kind of monopoly on gaming.
Can you elaborate further? I don't understand the connection between what you wrote and Microsoft making investments into SC2.
Well keeping Starcraft more alive can bring people to gamepass, especially if they add the possibility to play with a gamepad (they streamed the game with xbox gamepad afaik). As for the monopoly on gaming, they already have AoE4 so if they also boost starcraft they will have a huge part of the RTS market, and can invest in the IP to do future games etc. By keeping the esports scene more alive they will keep the IP relevant until they make a new game out of it.
And if you buy something for 70 billions, you don't need to cut costs like ATVI-Blizzard did with sc2, you can have some things run at loss
1. The game is already free, and playing RTS on non-keyboard is kind of silly, so I find it hard to believe but I guess it's not impossible.
2. If they already have AoE4 + AoE2HD, wouldn't not supporting SC2 achieve the same effect?
3. Investing in the IP to do future games may make sense, I can see that, though I do find it unlikely at this time.
4. I don't really get this point. Don't they have to justify the acquisition to their investors? Don't they need to make a profit on this deal? Seems like that would be common sense.
They will make huge profit out of candy crush + CoD and if CoD becomes PC/xbox exclusive that's a huge blow to their competitor Sony. Blizzard is probably worth less than 10 or even 5% of the deal, but they will still fully utilize their IPs
When Blizzard merged with Activision, it was for a price around 25 billions, in todays money roughly 33 b IIRC. While I don't know how much of the price was kept, I dare to say that it's not a fall to 7 billions(10 %). That's just simply wrong. You somehow forget WoW in the candy crush and CoD insanity.
Edit> Activision Vivendi merge into Activision Blizzard for almost 19 b USD, later some more shares of Blizzard for roughly 6 b USD.
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.
In fact, StarCraft 2 can still bring revenue. The last WCS war chest reached its revenue target in a short period of time when it was launched. However, officials believed that compared with other projects, the income of StarCraft 2 was not enough to invest these manpower to maintain, so they stopped the update and terminated the development of the cooperative commander "Selendis". And the follow-up Blizzard refused to let StarCraft 2 join the Asian Games project, and insisted on choosing Overwatch, resulting in the failure of both projects. (According to the news, StarCraft 2 is basically a certainty to be elected as the Asian Games project, only needs the consent of Blizzard)
It can bring in revenue, but does that revenue exceed the cost? The answer is likely "no," otherwise it would not have made sense for them to pull devs off of SC2:
Developers and other specialists cost a lot of money. Having them work on a project and just break even is bad business. Working at a loss is worse. Propping up a competitive scene on top of that puts yet another drain on this supposed revenue.
How much does Blizzard profit from SC2 tournaments? Maybe someone here who has access to such information can speak about this, but my impression is that the answer is either zero or very low (if not a loss). WCS prizepools in the hundreds of thousands - where do you think that money comes from?
You said it yourself:
However, officials believed that compared with other projects, the income of StarCraft 2 was not enough to invest these manpower to maintain
If this is what Blizzard believed about its own IP, why would Microsoft view it in any more favorable of a light?
Gamepass to reach niches, plus they want to have some kind of monopoly on gaming.
Can you elaborate further? I don't understand the connection between what you wrote and Microsoft making investments into SC2.
Well keeping Starcraft more alive can bring people to gamepass, especially if they add the possibility to play with a gamepad (they streamed the game with xbox gamepad afaik). As for the monopoly on gaming, they already have AoE4 so if they also boost starcraft they will have a huge part of the RTS market, and can invest in the IP to do future games etc. By keeping the esports scene more alive they will keep the IP relevant until they make a new game out of it.
And if you buy something for 70 billions, you don't need to cut costs like ATVI-Blizzard did with sc2, you can have some things run at loss
Just wanna remind that when Disney bought Star Wars they had huge plans, so many movies, so many series, so many things. And then the sequels happened and suddenly the plans were... let's say smaller
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.
In fact, StarCraft 2 can still bring revenue. The last WCS war chest reached its revenue target in a short period of time when it was launched. However, officials believed that compared with other projects, the income of StarCraft 2 was not enough to invest these manpower to maintain, so they stopped the update and terminated the development of the cooperative commander "Selendis". And the follow-up Blizzard refused to let StarCraft 2 join the Asian Games project, and insisted on choosing Overwatch, resulting in the failure of both projects. (According to the news, StarCraft 2 is basically a certainty to be elected as the Asian Games project, only needs the consent of Blizzard)
It can bring in revenue, but does that revenue exceed the cost? The answer is likely "no," otherwise it would not have made sense for them to pull devs off of SC2:
Developers and other specialists cost a lot of money. Having them work on a project and just break even is bad business. Working at a loss is worse. Propping up a competitive scene on top of that puts yet another drain on this supposed revenue.
How much does Blizzard profit from SC2 tournaments? Maybe someone here who has access to such information can speak about this, but my impression is that the answer is either zero or very low (if not a loss). WCS prizepools in the hundreds of thousands - where do you think that money comes from?
You said it yourself:
However, officials believed that compared with other projects, the income of StarCraft 2 was not enough to invest these manpower to maintain
If this is what Blizzard believed about its own IP, why would Microsoft view it in any more favorable of a light?
No, the actual income can exceed the cost. The war chest and the announced cooperative commanders are actually profitable, and their revenue has exceeded the cost.
I'm guessing you have access to those figures? Care to share?
What I'm referring to here is that Blizzard thinks these people can generate more revenue elsewhere than the StarCraft project. As you know, due to various layoffs in operations and the departure of key members of various projects in recent years, Blizzard needs to invest in manpower for many projects. Compared with maintaining the old project, it must be all transferred to the development of the new project. After all, this is the place where the most profit can be obtained. This is why the Warcraft project team also disbanded after StarCraft 2 stopped updating. And outsource the event to the ESL team to invest more people in the development of projects such as Overwatch 2.
If SC2 is projected to be less profitable than new ventures, how does that at all make it a "bad operational decision" to invest in those new ventures, as you refer to here:
Of course, this situation is caused by the bad operational decisions of Blizzard's top management. So when the news that Bobby Kotick might leave after Microsoft's acquisition was completed, most of the reactions from the outside world were applause.
In Blizzard's situation, it is necessary to take a fancy to the revenue of the financial report, so there must be a choice, so it can only continue on the wrong road. For Microsoft, the situation is different, so some people feel that they see hope for the recovery of old projects.
Microsoft paid billions in order to... not pursue greater profits? How does the equation change at all in the hands of different profit-seeking executives and shareholders, particularly those that had to just be convinced that paying billions of dollars for this company would be "worth it"? If anything, doesn't it make more sense that Microsoft would be even more profit-oriented than Activision-Blizzard were, in order to justify the purchase cost?
Unfortunately, as the data I know of is internal and has not been made public, I can't give you more details. You can only judge the authenticity of the information by yourself, and I cannot give you an exact answer.
Let's talk about the following question, why it is a bad operational decision. First of all, before this, Blizzard was already in an embarrassing situation because of poor operations. You can imagine that each game has a difference in revenue and profit. If your company is operating normally and is in a hot stage, will you stop updating a certain game because of its low profit? It is obvious that Blizzard is facing a situation of insufficient staff and user expectations are declining year by year. As mentioned before, Blizzard needs to pay attention to the financial report data, and it needs to report these data to shareholders and directors, while the number of active users is decreasing year by year and the game is constantly being postponed. It's all affecting Blizzard's earnings numbers, which is why I call it "bad operations" because it's been pretty bad before that.
I believe you should have a lot of familiarity with Blizzard’s operations in recent years, including but not limited to reviews of Warcraft Remake, Overwatch’s map update and hero update frequency, and the classic accompanying boo at BlizzCon "Do you guys no have phone?" and the selection of Asian Games e-sports items I mentioned before, including the recent popular WTL league, the organizer once hoped that through in-game purchases (similar to war chests or team skins) for each team and events to generate profits, but Blizzard refused, so they had to find sponsors themselves.
Bobby Kotick is a pure businessman, so don't expect him to focus on user experience and make the right decisions, because all he cares about is economics. This point can refer to those employees who founded Blizzard, those who really want to make good game products for users.
Finally, when it comes to what Microsoft values, this is my personal understanding. I personally think it's copyright, as Microsoft's press conference mentioned before that they are planning to deploy the so-called "metaverse" project. Assuming that this project is successful in the end, then you will see "metaverse" projects of various companies, but what content can be played in this "metaverse", copyright is the most important factor. The elements of various games that can appear in the movie "Ready Player One" are the best proof of the copyright advantage. Microsoft's current net worth, are these profits important to it? I personally think that Microsoft's decision and future layout are the most important to it, including improving the competitiveness of the xbox project. Of course, for now, Activision's COD project may be Microsoft's main layout direction. For Sony, it is great threat.
Thank you for clarifying further, I misunderstood what you meant by bad operations.
Tasteless' Opening Line For the GSL Super Tournament: "Welcome, Fellow XBOX GamePass Subscribers" ROFLMAO.
On January 21 2022 00:26 Jealous wrote: 2. If they already have AoE4 + AoE2HD, wouldn't not supporting SC2 achieve the same effect?
3. Investing in the IP to do future games may make sense, I can see that, though I do find it unlikely at this time.
4. I don't really get this point. Don't they have to justify the acquisition to their investors? Don't they need to make a profit on this deal? Seems like that would be common sense.
M$ can build an RTS team that works on various games similar to how Team1 jumped from WC2 to SC1 to WC3 to SC2. Generally speaking, developers like a variety of projects that present a variety of different and new challenges. Thus, the Starcraft franchise would prolly be welcomed by the dev team that worked on the Halo Wars and AoE franchises.
On January 21 2022 01:22 ETisME wrote: the timing of the sexual harassment news and MS acquisition is just perfect imo.
a shit tonne of what Phil says gets "leaked" that lowers ATVI share value and then somehow not a scintilla of info about the purchase of ATVI gets leaked. All the while M$ is battling with shareholders about their own mishandling of work place sexual harassment allegations. Well Played Phil.
On January 21 2022 00:53 ReZero wrote: Bobby Kotick is a pure businessman, so don't expect him to focus on user experience and make the right decisions, because all he cares about is economics. This point can refer to those employees who founded Blizzard, those who really want to make good game products for users.
nah, the guy is a genius. When he acquired Mediagenic for $400,000 it had ZERO game development employees. He rebuilt Activision with nothing. David Crane, Bob Whitehead, and Carol Shaw were long gone by 1991. He had to attract an all new game development team.
I agree with Jim Cramer. This acquisition is a genius move by Kotick and Spencer.
Could you please look at Lurkers because actually specifities of tanks are overlaped hard by that.... In other terms, Lurkers do better than tanks in most of the cases.... sick
On January 22 2022 01:05 Vision_ wrote: Dear Microsoft,
Could you please look at Lurkers because actually specifities of tanks are overlaped hard by that.... In other terms, Lurkers do better than tanks in most of the cases.... sick
Consider this as my next gift for 2022 christmas.
Adaptive Talons imo are 100% of the reason that Lurkers are so dominant, especially vs. Protoss. There is no reason for a unit that holds space to be nimble, it defies the unit arch type for no real reason. If Lurkers did substantially less damage I think it would be interesting, but then they wouldn't hold space as well and they would just be fast which is kind of like 95 % of the units in SC2 already.
I think tanks are like the colossus, in a decent spot strength wise they just aren't the end all ground control units that they used to be. Alot of people don't remember how absurdly dominant tank play was against Zerg before the Viper was introduced. I don't care for abduct, but Blinding Cloud really is a necessity against high tank counts even to this day.
We need to temper our expectations with MS and balance changes though. I also want balance patches, but it's going to take time for MS to do anything of substance regarding SC2 even if it's on their agenda to do so. If they put the AoE4 RTS team on SC2 right this minute, I think it would be a minimum of 4 months before a hint of a patch would even be announced. The amount of games that they balance team would have to watch to get a grasp of high level balance and unit interactions will be daunting to say the least.
Lastly on this note, I think they should really listen to the pro's of all races and the community streamer leaders who DO sit down and watch SC2 all day. Trap last night said that Protoss would really benefit from even rolling back some of the prior nerfs that happened to Protoss which I believe was this
"Level 1 upgrade times increased by 15 seconds. Level 2 upgrade times increased by 18 seconds. Level 3 upgrade times increased by 22 seconds"
I think a removal of Talons combined with removing this increase might be the little boost that Protoss needs to be on more even footing against Zergs. To be fair though, what alot of Protoss players seem to forget is that the last few recent balance patches (2 years) actually had a pretty decent amount of Protoss buffs.
Patch 5.0.2 was a baneling nerf with Oracle/Void/Carrier/Tempest buffs and Patch 4.12.0 was a substantial Queen AA nerf coupled with creep tumor and baneling nerfs, with Protoss getting buffs to the Oracle, HT and Overcharge being added to the game.
So to say Blizzard wasn't giving Protoss a pretty decent amount of love is kind of disingenuous, I think Zerg nerfs might be a bit more appropriate at this point though. The current mechanics that top players have just really allow Zerg to take a lead and run away with it.
On January 22 2022 01:05 Vision_ wrote: Dear Microsoft,
Could you please look at Lurkers because actually specifities of tanks are overlaped hard by that.... In other terms, Lurkers do better than tanks in most of the cases.... sick
Consider this as my next gift for 2022 christmas.
Alot of people don't remember how absurdly dominant tank play was against Zerg before the Viper was introduced
Tanks really never were absurdly dominant vs zerg lol
On January 22 2022 01:05 Vision_ wrote: Dear Microsoft,
Could you please look at Lurkers because actually specifities of tanks are overlaped hard by that.... In other terms, Lurkers do better than tanks in most of the cases.... sick
Consider this as my next gift for 2022 christmas.
Alot of people don't remember how absurdly dominant tank play was against Zerg before the Viper was introduced
Tanks really never were absurdly dominant vs zerg lol
Tanks and mech play in general was very strong vs. Zerg, I was there bro, playing Zerg, watching all the OG pro games since 2010. To be fair, Terran was just overtuned in the beginning and bad maps absolutely contributed to tanks being strong as hell.
I could have probably not wrote "absurdly" but still, tanks and colossus were very strong vs, Zerg, so strong that Blizzard decided that a specific anti-tank/anti-colossus unit was introduced in the next expansion lol
Not really the point of my post though which is Lurker power so I'll respectfully request that you not derail the topic by taking 1 line out of 5 paragraphs.
On January 22 2022 01:05 Vision_ wrote: Dear Microsoft,
Could you please look at Lurkers because actually specifities of tanks are overlaped hard by that.... In other terms, Lurkers do better than tanks in most of the cases.... sick
Consider this as my next gift for 2022 christmas.
Alot of people don't remember how absurdly dominant tank play was against Zerg before the Viper was introduced
Tanks really never were absurdly dominant vs zerg lol
Tanks and mech play in general was very strong vs. Zerg, I was there bro, playing Zerg, watching all the OG pro games since 2010. To be fair, Terran was just overtuned in the beginning and bad maps absolutely contributed to tanks being strong as hell.
I could have probably not wrote "absurdly" but still, tanks and colossus were very strong vs, Zerg, so strong that Blizzard decided that a specific anti-tank/anti-colossus unit was introduced in the next expansion lol
Not really the point of my post though which is Lurker power so I'll respectfully request that you not derail the topic by taking 1 line out of 5 paragraphs.
You participated in derailing the entire topic of the thread though so anything goes lmao
Phil Spencer confirmed that titles like Call of Duty will remain on all possible platforms from Xbox and PlayStation to PC (and probably mobile in whatever form that takes).
It makes sense business-wise to keep it on as many platforms as possible because that's how it got and stayed so massive, and that lets it reach as many potential microtransaction buyers as possible (although he didn't talk about mtx, so who knows if him and other people at Microsoft Gaming are wanting to continue that trend for that or any other IP after the acquisition). And people at Microsoft Gaming could also see the instrinsic value of those big titles being widely available and/or some value in how it boosts their reputation among people/gamers.
This might also show that, if they have plans to bring formerly PC-exclusive Blizzard titles to console, they might also plan to make those titles available on PlayStation (albeit without Game Pass). Maybe that could also continue pushing full-on crossplay between Xbox, PlayStation, and PC if Sony is still wanting to go back on it; who knows, just speculation.
Wow that's a bit sad, after all the bullshit exclusivity forced on seemingly every PS game, I was hoping someone would kick Sony right back in the teeth for years of doing that.
On January 22 2022 07:21 blunderfulguy wrote: Phil Spencer confirmed that titles like Call of Duty will remain on all possible platforms from Xbox and PlayStation to PC (and probably mobile in whatever form that takes).
It makes sense business-wise to keep it on as many platforms as possible because that's how it got and stayed so massive, and that lets it reach as many potential microtransaction buyers as possible (although he didn't talk about mtx, so who knows if him and other people at Microsoft Gaming are wanting to continue that trend for that or any other IP after the acquisition). And people at Microsoft Gaming could also see the instrinsic value of those big titles being widely available and/or some value in how it boosts their reputation among people/gamers.
This might also show that, if they have plans to bring formerly PC-exclusive Blizzard titles to console, they might also plan to make those titles available on PlayStation (albeit without Game Pass). Maybe that could also continue pushing full-on crossplay between Xbox, PlayStation, and PC if Sony is still wanting to go back on it; who knows, just speculation.
Just a little "huh, good news" moment.
I don't believe for a second that will be the case long term
On January 22 2022 07:21 blunderfulguy wrote: Phil Spencer confirmed that titles like Call of Duty will remain on all possible platforms from Xbox and PlayStation to PC (and probably mobile in whatever form that takes).
It makes sense business-wise to keep it on as many platforms as possible because that's how it got and stayed so massive, and that lets it reach as many potential microtransaction buyers as possible (although he didn't talk about mtx, so who knows if him and other people at Microsoft Gaming are wanting to continue that trend for that or any other IP after the acquisition). And people at Microsoft Gaming could also see the instrinsic value of those big titles being widely available and/or some value in how it boosts their reputation among people/gamers.
This might also show that, if they have plans to bring formerly PC-exclusive Blizzard titles to console, they might also plan to make those titles available on PlayStation (albeit without Game Pass). Maybe that could also continue pushing full-on crossplay between Xbox, PlayStation, and PC if Sony is still wanting to go back on it; who knows, just speculation.
Just a little "huh, good news" moment.
They'll honor the agreements. I doubt Sony and Activision had any agreement about CoD in perpetuity, so it's probably just the next 1, maybe 2 installments. And then they'll squeeze Sony out of the console market.
On January 22 2022 08:16 Latham wrote: Wow that's a bit sad, after all the bullshit exclusivity forced on seemingly every PS game, I was hoping someone would kick Sony right back in the teeth for years of doing that.
Exclusivity is always bad for players, so wishing somebody will exclusive SONY for exclusivity is bad. It's like chosing if you wanna die with a bullet or by hanging. You're dead either way. I would rather prefer something else. Edit> It was the same case with the Epic Store shit. Everybody celebrated competition - it was just the worst case of it. Exclusivity competition. Not by services, better interface, better pricing, better ... byt exclusivity.
Also I would like to remind people that MS has pretty bad gaming servers(and yes, there are companies which are worse than them :D ). So funny thing is that the acquisition may bring worse services
On January 22 2022 01:05 Vision_ wrote: Dear Microsoft,
Could you please look at Lurkers because actually specifities of tanks are overlaped hard by that.... In other terms, Lurkers do better than tanks in most of the cases.... sick
Consider this as my next gift for 2022 christmas.
Adaptive Talons imo are 100% of the reason that Lurkers are so dominant, especially vs. Protoss. There is no reason for a unit that holds space to be nimble, it defies the unit arch type for no real reason. If Lurkers did substantially less damage I think it would be interesting, but then they wouldn't hold space as well and they would just be fast which is kind of like 95 % of the units in SC2 already.
(...)
edited for clean up and spelling
I fear tanks staying only usefull at the start of the game. (TvZ from last Clem matchups)
Mainly for defend Big All-ins or make a strong push.
If the game was slower and more strategic, you could use tanks oftenly on climbs.
On January 22 2022 01:05 Vision_ wrote: Dear Microsoft,
Could you please look at Lurkers because actually specifities of tanks are overlaped hard by that.... In other terms, Lurkers do better than tanks in most of the cases.... sick
Consider this as my next gift for 2022 christmas.
Adaptive Talons imo are 100% of the reason that Lurkers are so dominant, especially vs. Protoss. There is no reason for a unit that holds space to be nimble, it defies the unit arch type for no real reason. If Lurkers did substantially less damage I think it would be interesting, but then they wouldn't hold space as well and they would just be fast which is kind of like 95 % of the units in SC2 already.
(...)
edited for clean up and spelling
I fear tanks staying only usefull at the start of the game.
Can you take the balance into one of the balance threads? Or better, to reddit/bnet forums/MS equivalent? Thanks!
On January 22 2022 01:05 Vision_ wrote: Dear Microsoft,
Could you please look at Lurkers because actually specifities of tanks are overlaped hard by that.... In other terms, Lurkers do better than tanks in most of the cases.... sick
Consider this as my next gift for 2022 christmas.
Alot of people don't remember how absurdly dominant tank play was against Zerg before the Viper was introduced
Tanks really never were absurdly dominant vs zerg lol
The were when the maps were like jungle basin in early wol.
ATVI trading at 75. Microsoft wanted it at 94 a share. In other words, the masses seem to believe this deal will not happen, in the very least not in its current form.
On May 01 2022 15:38 CicadaSC wrote: didnt it already happen?
No. Corporate mergers of this type don't get approved overnight. The shareholders and the U.S. Government give the final approval.
The issue is that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and some ATVI shareholders have "concerns" about the acquisition, which could delay Microsoft's takeover.
Microsoft would be dumb to buy ATVI at that price right now tbh. All mergers and acquisitions at the previous highs of the stock market look dumb.
Even if the deal would get regulatory approval from the people who think this is somehow worsening the competitive landscape, they might want to revalue the deal and then that will open up new opportunities for people to disagree with it again. They said it could take over a year to close. Microsoft is only on the hook for a few billion if they cancel the bid versus the big decline in market values of most tech companies we have seen in past weeks and months.
If Microsoft really pays the original price I would be surprised since it seems against their shareholders' interests at this point.
Keep in mind if it weren't for the MSFT bid for ATVI, its stock would probably be trading much much lower than even the discount to the bid price it is currently at. Nothing has gotten better for ATVI, in fact, their own results have gotten much worse as the market in general is tending towards lower valuations for tech companies.
ATVI just revealed that they lost a third of their monthly active users YoY. https://investor.activision.com/static-files/91e3b7bc-5d74-4be4-903c-7f25c9c1b3a1 Their EPS cratered by 75% from last quarter (less than half of the consensus estimate), and the P/E ratio of the NASDAQ has also gone down from about 30x at the time of the announcement of the bid vs 22x now. If you take that all into consideration on top of the revised lower estimates for ATVI's future earnings, that original MSFT bid looks overpriced by a large enough margin MSFT would be better off losing $3bn up front than actually closing the deal.
Given the regulatory and PR backdrop on ATVI, I'd bet that its parts are worth more than the whole at this point. They should just slice it up and sell it off. Although, given Micosoft's immense size and cash hoards, it might not even matter to them if they think Candy Crush is enough of a strategic imperative. They are doing this to compete with Meta on mobile, after all.
On May 02 2022 01:10 honorablemacroterran wrote: Microsoft would be dumb to buy ATVI at that price right now tbh. All mergers and acquisitions at the previous highs of the stock market look dumb.
Even if the deal would get regulatory approval from the people who think this is somehow worsening the competitive landscape, they might want to revalue the deal and then that will open up new opportunities for people to disagree with it again. They said it could take over a year to close. Microsoft is only on the hook for a few billion if they cancel the bid versus the big decline in market values of most tech companies we have seen in past weeks and months.
If Microsoft really pays the original price I would be surprised since it seems against their shareholders' interests at this point.
Keep in mind if it weren't for the MSFT bid for ATVI, its stock would probably be trading much much lower than even the discount to the bid price it is currently at. Nothing has gotten better for ATVI, in fact, their own results have gotten much worse as the market in general is tending towards lower valuations for tech companies.
ATVI just revealed that they lost a third of their monthly active users YoY. https://investor.activision.com/static-files/91e3b7bc-5d74-4be4-903c-7f25c9c1b3a1 Their EPS cratered by 75% from last quarter (less than half of the consensus estimate), and the P/E ratio of the NASDAQ has also gone down from about 30x at the time of the announcement of the bid vs 22x now. If you take that all into consideration on top of the revised lower estimates for ATVI's future earnings, that original MSFT bid looks overpriced by a large enough margin MSFT would be better off losing $3bn up front than actually closing the deal.
Given the regulatory and PR backdrop on ATVI, I'd bet that its parts are worth more than the whole at this point. They should just slice it up and sell it off. Although, given Micosoft's immense size and cash hoards, it might not even matter to them if they think Candy Crush is enough of a strategic imperative. They are doing this to compete with Meta on mobile, after all.
To be fair the market has been absolute shit since printers are off. Obviously I aint defending the ATVI numbers at all but you will always have to offer the premium. I am not sure it actually looks overpriced and for as much as people not buying it. The big players that would actually profit big time when they buy surely don't take that buy on the risk the deal doesn't go through and they can use the money to work somewhere else.
There are 2 conditions you need to be "sure of".
a) you think the deal goes through b) you cant make more money with your investment in the meantime
If you say yes to both, IMO you should buy it. If you have slightest doubts, I'd probably stay out.
On May 02 2022 01:10 honorablemacroterran wrote: Microsoft would be dumb to buy ATVI at that price right now tbh. All mergers and acquisitions at the previous highs of the stock market look dumb.
Even if the deal would get regulatory approval from the people who think this is somehow worsening the competitive landscape, they might want to revalue the deal and then that will open up new opportunities for people to disagree with it again. They said it could take over a year to close. Microsoft is only on the hook for a few billion if they cancel the bid versus the big decline in market values of most tech companies we have seen in past weeks and months.
If Microsoft really pays the original price I would be surprised since it seems against their shareholders' interests at this point.
Keep in mind if it weren't for the MSFT bid for ATVI, its stock would probably be trading much much lower than even the discount to the bid price it is currently at. Nothing has gotten better for ATVI, in fact, their own results have gotten much worse as the market in general is tending towards lower valuations for tech companies.
ATVI just revealed that they lost a third of their monthly active users YoY. https://investor.activision.com/static-files/91e3b7bc-5d74-4be4-903c-7f25c9c1b3a1 Their EPS cratered by 75% from last quarter (less than half of the consensus estimate), and the P/E ratio of the NASDAQ has also gone down from about 30x at the time of the announcement of the bid vs 22x now. If you take that all into consideration on top of the revised lower estimates for ATVI's future earnings, that original MSFT bid looks overpriced by a large enough margin MSFT would be better off losing $3bn up front than actually closing the deal.
Given the regulatory and PR backdrop on ATVI, I'd bet that its parts are worth more than the whole at this point. They should just slice it up and sell it off. Although, given Micosoft's immense size and cash hoards, it might not even matter to them if they think Candy Crush is enough of a strategic imperative. They are doing this to compete with Meta on mobile, after all.
To be fair the market has been absolute shit since printers are off. Obviously I aint defending the ATVI numbers at all but you will always have to offer the premium. I am not sure it actually looks overpriced and for as much as people not buying it. The big players that would actually profit big time when they buy surely don't take that buy on the risk the deal doesn't go through and they can use the money to work somewhere else.
There are 2 conditions you need to be "sure of".
a) you think the deal goes through b) you cant make more money with your investment in the meantime
If you say yes to both, IMO you should buy it. If you have slightest doubts, I'd probably stay out.
If you look at the Microsoft bid as a form of a call option, it seems likely to have moved out of the money, that's all I was saying. There may still be strategic reasons Microsoft wants to acquire even if the revenues and users are declining and they end up overpaying quite a bit. On the other hand, this is their potential largest acquisition to date.
CMA referred their investigation of the merger to phase 2 citing potential concerns in foreclosure (exclusivity of CoD games namely) and portfolio effects across cloud gaming.
I'm still reading through the decision, but I'm so far (positively) surprised by the authority's willingness to engage with a more complicated tech merger. We'll have to wait and see what comes out of it in the end, announcement of Google pulling the plug on Stadia definitely doesn't make this one easier for the merging parties.
EDIT: I did a more thorough reading now, for those curious the relevant stuff is here. Issues statement summarises the key points, full text decision can be found a bit further down the page.
Substantive amount of consideration is given to CoD franchise and how impactful it is. The entire ToH1 is about preventing Sony from accessing CoD in the future. ToH2 is about foreclosure to cloud gaming service providers, it still makes a lot of reference to CoD franchise, but there CMA considers the wider portfolio of console and PC games, too. ToH3 looks the most speculative, as the entire cloud gaming service industry is still pretty young and developing. There the argument seems to hinge more on Microsoft's existing strength across the eco-system, rather than the precise impact of the merger.
Below are a few lines of commentary and speculation:
-After reading that, it seems that CMA would require commitments related to CoD franchise in order to clear this. Very hard to imagine them turning around and going, "no foreclosure issues" in phase 2. Divestment seems unlikely, maybe some behavioural commitments even though those have been criticised over last years.
-Requiring commitments to protect Sony as a competitor seems tone deaf from a pure consumer point of view, as Sony has from a personal point of view been probably the worst offender in using vertical integration to push console sales (Nintendo is probably as bad if not worse, but it doesn't feel the same as I've gotten so used to them doing exclusive titles). However, for competition it makes sense.
-Starcraft mentioned 0 times. On the other hand it was funny to see an authority decision codifying words such as "gamer" and "console wars".
-If CMA blocks, I'd expect this to be contested in courts. If it goes there, it will form an interesting precedent either way.
-Practically nothing on mobile gaming outside of the portfolio effects in ToH3. I'd very interested to a more detailed assessment of the mobile gaming markets, but that seems unlikely here. Maybe EC or US investigation will have that.
-I was wrong about authorities' willingness to investigate, but pretty spot on about the issues already when this got announced + Show Spoiler +
On January 19 2022 06:48 Oukka wrote: RE: the competition concerns, there is zero chance that this deal will be even investigated in-depth. Pulling some figures from random articles says gaming industry is around 150 billion USD, actiblizz revenue is around 8 billion or so (one here + Show Spoiler +
). That's roughly 5% share of the market which is very fragmented and CAs defining the markets at anything more restrictive than maybe PC/Mobile/Console is very very unlikely. Arguing some horizontal dominance would be struck down in courts very easily.
The interesting stuff would be the vertical aspect, but I doubt some competition authority pursuing foreclosure type of arguments would do any better. I find the distributor - developer/publisher integration problematic definitely, but again there is zero chance this type of deal is big enough to lead into some intervention when much bigger acquisitions by FB/Google/Apple/Amazon have gone through even in recent years.
"A California judge is allowing Microsoft to close its acquisition of Activision Blizzard after five days of grueling testimony. Microsoft still faces an ongoing antitrust case by the Federal Trade Commission, but Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley has listened to arguments from both the FTC and Microsoft and decided to deny the regulator’s request for a preliminary injunction."
Since microsoft probably couldn't do much with the starcraft IP on console, they'd probably be ok giving creative rights to another dev studio... frost giant perhaps?
On July 12 2023 05:18 DekkuM wrote: Since microsoft probably couldn't do much with the starcraft IP on console, they'd probably be ok giving creative rights to another dev studio... frost giant perhaps?
Microsoft didn't become Microsoft by giving things. The Starcraft IP is definitely too expensive for FG even if Microsoft wanted to sell it.
On July 12 2023 05:05 [Phantom] wrote: Honestly I don’t know why so many people are opposed to this.
Although id say Microsoft doesn’t have a stellar record managing studios but I think they can’t fuck yo more than activision thenselves are doing
nah, ATVI is quite good and have been doing a great job for decades. The Destiny2 story was so much easier to follow and so much more fun while Bungie was under ATVI. Now, D2 is a meandering very very expensive mess.
the person in this video is very knowledgeable in this area. However, he had a stroke 7 months ago and is still not 100%. In this area ... 5% of this guy is better than 200% of me.
On July 12 2023 09:15 CicadaSC wrote: So when can Microsoft start making actual changes, now? If they wanted to they could start working on SC3?
Blizzard exited the RTS genre more than 2 years ago and Frost Giant is too small in a low revenue ceiling genre for ATVI to bother publishing their stuff. There is a better chance of a new Halo Wars game happening.
It's really hard for me to feel anything or care about this. Blizzard isn't the same as it was. The old games are just so much better than their new titles.
On July 13 2023 03:35 WombaT wrote: This is largely immaterial provided other blockers remain in other big markets.
The U.K. being just one that still hasn’t approved the takeover. The merger still isn’t going to happen if multiple big markets have an issue with it
What other big markets? As far as I know it's only the UK that's blocking the merger.
Hm maybe I’m out of the loop, or possibly getting mixed up with Meta not yet launching threads in the EU due to anti-trust proceedings there, I thought there was some European level issues too?
On July 13 2023 03:35 WombaT wrote: This is largely immaterial provided other blockers remain in other big markets.
The U.K. being just one that still hasn’t approved the takeover. The merger still isn’t going to happen if multiple big markets have an issue with it
What other big markets? As far as I know it's only the UK that's blocking the merger.
Hm maybe I’m out of the loop, or possibly getting mixed up with Meta not yet launching threads in the EU due to anti-trust proceedings there, I thought there was some European level issues too?
EU cleared the acquisition in May. It's just CMA now, and even them have halted the legal process and went back to the table with Microsoft.
On July 13 2023 03:35 WombaT wrote: This is largely immaterial provided other blockers remain in other big markets.
The U.K. being just one that still hasn’t approved the takeover. The merger still isn’t going to happen if multiple big markets have an issue with it
What other big markets? As far as I know it's only the UK that's blocking the merger.
The Great White North has not approved the merger yet. It is the 2nd biggest country in the world. Roflmao.
The 9th circuit court is the slowest moving court in the USA. They take years to do anything. So it's over. The merger is going through.
A good example of how slow the 9th circuit court is happened with ATVI indirectly involved. California's DFEH over stepped their bounds trying to punish alleged misbehaviour by the Blizzard people. That is something like 2 years ago with ZERO info on if the government will ever get cleared of their misconduct... OR if the government's lawyers are guilty of misconduct.
In closing, It is a good day for gamers and a bad day for Sony.
"Microsoft is planning to finalize its $68.7 billion proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard next week. A source familiar with Microsoft’s plans tells The Verge that the company is eyeing up Friday October 13th as the closing date where it announces to the world that the 20-month process to buy Call of Duty maker Activision Blizzard is over."
Ybarra said that on the heels of the acquisition he still intends to have big teams working on the largest franchises. But he is also open to less mainstream projects, including a possible return for StarCraft. Under Kotick, many Blizzard staff members with experience developing real-time strategy games left the company. So if the franchise does return, Ybarra hinted that the next iteration could be in a different genre altogether.
“It’s not me saying, ‘Go make a StarCraft game,’” Ybarra said. “I need to have someone who has the vision and passion that comes with the idea, and I’ll bet on that team.”
At Microsoft, the focus on a broad subscription offering can greatly influence what kinds of projects are valued. Developers can help bolster Game Pass with titles that strongly appeal to a particular demographic even if they don’t sell millions of copies to the masses — yet another potentially major change for everyone at Blizzard.
it is encouraging that the RTS team left under the most civilized circumstances. i have not heard a bad word about ATVI from any member of the Morhaime studio or the Frost Giant people. What is stopping Microsoft from paying Frost Giant to make another SC game after they've completed Watergate or whatever its called?
EPT
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/4fnrnus.jpeg)
I really care only about Starcraft.
![[image loading]](https://graphics.reuters.com/BRV-BRV/byvrjbemxve/chart.png)
