Microsoft to acquire Activision Blizzard in record-setting $68.7 billion deal

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Microsoft announced today it would be acquiring Activision Blizzard, adding some of the biggest franchises in gaming to its portfolio, including World of Warcraft, Call of Duty, and Candy Crush. The deal is currently the largest in the history of the video game industry, beating the record set only last week when Take-Two acquired Zynga for $12.7 billion. Activision CEO Bobby Kotick will remain in his current role. While the announcement does not comment on whether or not Activision games will now be exclusive to Microsoft platforms, it does reference Microsoft's intention bolster Game Pass with Activision's portfolio, also announcing that Game Pass has recently reached a milestone subscriber count of 25 million. The deal is expected to close in the fiscal year 2023 and will make Microsoft the third-largest gaming company by revenue, behind Tencent and Sony.

The merger comes at a tumultuous time for Activision Blizzard, after both the State of California and the SEC began investigating reports of sexual misconduct and worker discrimination at the company last summer. This controversy drew responses from across the industry, with PlayStation boss Jim Ryan reportedly condemning the company in an internal memo to employees, and Xbox CEO Phil Spencer stating in November that he would be "evaluating" his relationship with Activision Blizzard moving forward and that he was "disturbed and deeply troubled" by the reports. In an interview with The New York Times last week, Spencer said "we have changed how we do certain things with them, and they’re aware of that. But I also — this isn’t about, for us as Xbox, virtue-shaming other companies. Xbox’s history is not spotless." In a press release accompanying the acquisition announcement, Microsoft CEO and chairman Satya Nadella said “We’re investing deeply in world-class content, community and the cloud to usher in a new era of gaming that puts players and creators first and makes gaming safe, inclusive and accessible to all.” To add to Activision's woes, the last Call of Duty release, Vanguard, reportedly performed below expectations and failed to beat the previous year's release, with some rumours circulating that the next Call of Duty may be moved up in the schedule to compensate.

This acquisition continues Microsoft's recent trend of major acquisitions across the gaming industry. Last September, they acquired publishing giant Zenimax, and have been purchasing scores of smaller studios for the past several years, including Obsidian, Double Fine and Ninja Theory.

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pedro702

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nintendo and sony still have a larger market share than MS in that case, even in the US, Nintendo is the most popular followed by Sony and then MS. Also, if you're right about that gamepass thing then they'd have the indie market which is a growing market due to a shitton of people growing disillusioned with most triple A games. (myself included)
also, do remember that nintendo's exclusives do usually pass the 10 million mark in sales. I'm pretty sure nintendo would be fine off with their internal studios. same for sony but to a far lesser extent
I really don't see the issue here, it's an irrelevant widely hated studio being bought and having their shit CEO thrown in the dumpster. it's shocking that its happening so soon after the bethesda acquisition but it certainly isn't going to birth a monopoly when those other 2 guys are far bigger titans
nintendo is not very consistent they can go from top to bottom really fast just look 5 years ago where nintendo was, on the bucket list with their wiiu, which sold less than 14 million units globally, so there is no garantees that switch 2 wont have the same fate unfortunelly.

But yeah right now sony and nintendo are still fair opponents but if Microsoft gets COD and Fifa , basicaly most of the casual players that sony has will migrate to xbox and sony will take a huge fall and if nintendo makes a wiiu2(and they like to take risks and do stupid shit with innovating what doesnt need innovation) then microsoft will just destroy the entire market.

Mark my works EA is next, there is a ridiculous amount of people who buy consoles in europe and only play COD and FIFA and nothing else, if microsoft aims for EA next they will destroy sony imo, they cant compete with that kinda of drop in the userbase.While nintendo doesnt live on fifa/cod sony sure lives on that userbase.
 

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Mark my works EA is next, there is a ridiculous amount of people who buy consoles in europe and only play COD and FIFA and nothing else, if microsoft aims for EA next they will destroy sony imo, they cant compete with that kinda of drop in the userbase.While nintendo doesnt live on fifa/cod sony sure lives on that userbase.
I kind of wonder if Fifa would force Microsoft to continue to release Fifa games on Sony, kind of like how MLB forced Sony to port MLB the Show on Xbox. I'm sure Fifa has some say in their contract with EA.
 

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I kind of wonder if Fifa would force Microsoft to continue to release Fifa games on Sony, kind of like how MLB forced Sony to port MLB the Show on Xbox. I'm sure Fifa has some say in their contract with EA.
as long as they get their's moneys worth it wouldnt count on they caring lol even if microsoft just throwed afew more % their way, they arent a very altruist company lol.
 

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nintendo is not very consistent they can go from top to bottom really fast just look 5 years ago where nintendo was, on the bucket list with their wiiu, which sold less than 14 million units globally, so there is no garantees that switch 2 wont have the same fate unfortunelly.
I highly doubt nintendo will fall down now when the switch has proved so successful for them now. they'll probably just end up making new more powerful switches and have those be their new consoles.
 

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nintendo is not very consistent they can go from top to bottom really fast just look 5 years ago where nintendo was, on the bucket list with their wiiu, which sold less than 14 million units globally, so there is no garantees that switch 2 wont have the same fate unfortunelly.

But yeah right now sony and nintendo are still fair opponents but if Microsoft gets COD and Fifa , basicaly most of the casual players that sony has will migrate to xbox and sony will take a huge fall and if nintendo makes a wiiu2(and they like to take risks and do stupid shit with innovating what doesnt need innovation) then microsoft will just destroy the entire market.

Mark my works EA is next, there is a ridiculous amount of people who buy consoles in europe and only play COD and FIFA and nothing else, if microsoft aims for EA next they will destroy sony imo, they cant compete with that kinda of drop in the userbase.While nintendo doesnt live on fifa/cod sony sure lives on that userbase.
It could be that Nintendo is gonna take much smaller risks from now on, and not try and innovate as heavily.
That would be a very Nintendo thing to do, because of how unexpected it'd be.
But who knows what the new leadership will bring. I think we're gonna see a few more changes for the worse.
 
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pedro702

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I highly doubt nintendo will fall down now when the switch has proved so successful for them now. they'll probably just end up making new more powerful switches and have those be their new consoles.
this is what people said after the wii, nintendo cant make anything bad to itself, and then they basically killed themselves lol the wiiu barely broke even from their development, marketing production costs.

for almost each sucess nintendo makes they got their asses whooped by other companys.

success
nes,snes,wii,switch

failures
n64,gc,wiiu

It could be that Nintendo is gonna take much smaller risks from now on, and not try and innovate as heavily.
That would be a very Nintendo thing to do, because of how unexpected it'd be.
But who knows what the new leadership will bring. I think we're gonna see a few more changes for the worse.
i can see nintendo going braindead and say mobile games make more money than ours so lets use that and their next switch wont have buttons it will just be a screen and all the games will be playable with only touch screen controls.

this is shit that nintendo could pull of their asses for no reason just for the sake of being different and kill a switch 2 right there and then for many people, just one of my many fears.
 
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Emperor_Norton

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Honestly, Nintendo loves their fun little console gimmicks and I don't really think that's going to change anytime soon. It's been their modus operandi for a majority of the consoles they've ever released. Some turned out well, like the Nintendo DS, Wii, and the Switch. Others didn't, such as the Virtual Boy or the aforementioned Wii-U. Some of them, we just never saw, like the Satellaview.

However, since the release of the Gameboy, they've always been running a secondary console on side, but the Switch was them merging their console and handheld markets together. It's not really surprising that happened though, they've always met their best success with the handheld market. The GCN always had that lunchbox handle on it too, for some reason...

With both markets merged like this, I think they're definitely going to start doing more experimental stuff on the side again. The next Switch may end up being mostly an upgrade, and if it is, they're going to spend money on making some gimmicky thing on the side. Whether or not they jump into known but experimental territory with VR or neuro headsets, or make some weird new control system, I think it's pretty likely.
 
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pedro702

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Honestly, Nintendo loves their fun little console gimmicks and I don't really think that's going to change anytime soon. It's been their modus operandi for a majority of the consoles they've ever released. Some turned out well, like the Nintendo DS, Wii, and the Switch. Others didn't, such as the Virtual Boy or the aforementioned Wii-U. Some of them, we just never saw, like the Satellaview.

However, since the release of the Gameboy, they've always been running a secondary console on side, but the Switch was them merging their console and handheld markets together. It's not really surprising that happened though, they've always met their best success with the handheld market. The GCN always had that lunchbox handle on it too, for some reason...

With both markets merged like this, I think they're definitely going to start doing more experimental stuff on the side again. The next Switch may end up being mostly an upgrade, and if it is, they're going to spend money on making some gimmicky thing on the side. Whether or not they jump into known but experimental territory with VR or neuro headsets, or make some weird new control system, I think it's pretty likely.
you forgot about the n64DD the disk drive we never saw either lol but yeah nintendo is kinda unpredictable with their next step so one doesnt really know what direction they are aiming, it wouldnt be out of the possibility that they might go for VR on their next endeavor or something along those lines.
 
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Hells Malice

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This won't kill Sony but I kinda wish it would. They're shit for the industry, constantly forcing timed exclusives for games and even dlc. Refusing to join Microsoft and Nintendo in a crossplay paradise. Seriously when Nintendo is on board an online play thing and you're not, you're clearly fucking behind the times by a lot.

Microsoft is becoming a hallowed paradise purely because Sony just sucks so much. It's nice that Microsoft is able to seamlessly connect console and pc. Nintendo has the only real exclusives anymore so it'll always be fine. Sony pretty much just exists to keep Microsoft on their toes now.
 

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nintendo makes a wiiu2(and they like to take risks and do stupid shit with innovating what doesnt need innovation)

Better to innovate and fail than to stay stagnant (since we're talking about Microsoft, they're the perfect example: franchises that have gone stale due to lack of innovation and 2 whole generations with the same controller).

then microsoft will just destroy the entire market.

Business as usual for them: they did this on the PC software side and the US regulatory bodies did nothing to stop them.
 

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Lets hope we see some games that are actually on the disc when we buy them and it wouldn't be a bad idea if they made this studio go like RARE, and dont crap shit games out each year.
 

pedro702

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Lets hope we see some games that are actually on the disc when we buy them and it wouldn't be a bad idea if they made this studio go like RARE, and dont crap shit games out each year.
well rare did what 5 games since it was bought in 2002? and most of them were pure crap, so yeah i fear what will happen to any game that isnt a mateure fps under microsoft, they arent too keen on games that arent for their target audience imo.
 

64bitmodels

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Better to innovate and fail than to stay stagnant (since we're talking about Microsoft, they're the perfect example: franchises that have gone stale due to lack of innovation and 2 whole generations with the same controller).
I wouldn't say better to innovate when it nearly costs you your entire company. Although considering how iwata is gone, they're probably just gonna stagnate just like MS at this point
 

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well rare did what 5 games since it was bought in 2002? and most of them were pure crap, so yeah i fear what will happen to any game that isnt a mateure fps under microsoft, they arent too keen on games that arent for their target audience imo.
ehhh i wouldnt say that, they did fund 2 ori games and made super luckys tale, as well as had cuphead exclusive to PC and Xbox for the first few years of its life. they also bought double fine who is responsible for psychonauts 2
i frankly think Xbox can do amazing with platformers if they poured way more resources into them and funded them more, their platformer output these past 6 years was surprisingly good
 

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I highly doubt nintendo will fall down now when the switch has proved so successful for them now. they'll probably just end up making new more powerful switches and have those be their new consoles.
I want to believe that but there has not been so much of a hint of this being the case especially after the OLED Model dropped. Does not help either that the chipset they use is 5+ years old but also is no longer being produced with Nintendo buying out the remaining stock of those chips last year.

Combine that with the fact that there is now a shortage in Silicon and with internal management at Nintendo being in uneasy waters since the shift in heads of the company its hard to tell if they will continue to provide another hit console or if they will cling onto the Switch for as long as they need to until they have no other choice but to jump onto something new or to do something radically different. Honestly it would not surprise me if they went the way of being a distributor service for their own games like Steam or EGS as it would both give them the potential biggest marketshare of games offering a service on multiple platforms and at the same time enforce a form of security to prevent their games being leaked/pirated which they seem overly focused on.

My bet is they do not want to move on from the switch as it was the biggest success for them since the Wii, and the dark age of the Wii U and 3DS hurt them so hard that they probably thought they would never climb back out of the hole they were in. They are afraid that after the switch they will end up in another dark age again which lets be honest, they are not far from falling into again with the current outlook of things.
 

64bitmodels

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Honestly it would not surprise me if they went the way of being a distributor service for their own games like Steam or EGS as it would both give them the potential biggest marketshare of games offering a service on multiple platforms and at the same time enforce a form of security to prevent their games being leaked/pirated which they seem overly focused on.
the first problem with your prediction is the idea that nintendo would ever release on anything but the switch
 

pedro702

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I want to believe that but there has not been so much of a hint of this being the case especially after the OLED Model dropped. Does not help either that the chipset they use is 5+ years old but also is no longer being produced with Nintendo buying out the remaining stock of those chips last year.

Combine that with the fact that there is now a shortage in Silicon and with internal management at Nintendo being in uneasy waters since the shift in heads of the company its hard to tell if they will continue to provide another hit console or if they will cling onto the Switch for as long as they need to until they have no other choice but to jump onto something new or to do something radically different. Honestly it would not surprise me if they went the way of being a distributor service for their own games like Steam or EGS as it would both give them the potential biggest marketshare of games offering a service on multiple platforms and at the same time enforce a form of security to prevent their games being leaked/pirated which they seem overly focused on.

My bet is they do not want to move on from the switch as it was the biggest success for them since the Wii, and the dark age of the Wii U and 3DS hurt them so hard that they probably thought they would never climb back out of the hole they were in. They are afraid that after the switch they will end up in another dark age again which lets be honest, they are not far from falling into again with the current outlook of things.
there is no 3ds dark age lol 3ds sold 80 million units, it was a success, it sold more than the gba...

nintendo will never become a service because they love doing their innovation hardware stuff, i can see them not releasing a switch pro and going straight for switch 2 in like 2 years.

ehhh i wouldnt say that, they did fund 2 ori games and made super luckys tale, as well as had cuphead exclusive to PC and Xbox for the first few years of its life. they also bought double fine who is responsible for psychonauts 2
i frankly think Xbox can do amazing with platformers if they poured way more resources into them and funded them more, their platformer output these past 6 years was surprisingly good
first both ori games are metroidvania 2d platformers which is a totally different thing compared to 3d mascot platformers like spyro/crash/banjo/conker its apple and oranges, its like saying tomb raider is also same genre because it has platforming in them, the art style and gameplay and such is not aimed towards younger crowd unlike the mascot 3d platformers.

Cuphead is basically a sidescroller shooter again nothing to do with 3d platformers at all and its definitely not aimed towards kids but aimed for older people who remember those classic animation styles.And the game is hard as hell not 5yo kid could finish that game lol.

they bought doble fine like they bought many studios in those months, psychonauts 2 was already in deep development that is why they finished and even released it on ps4, microsoft had nothing to do with development of psychonauts 2 they bought the studio when the game was like 8 months away from release day already.

Super lucky tail is not a Microsoft game, Microsoft only published it to help them out, same way nintendo published witcher 3 and its suposed publishing the physical release of gta trilogy, also incase you didnt knew the studio that made super lucky tail is basicaly bankrup, after they released the game on switch they runned out of money they got massive layoffs and it closed down, microsoft just offered to publish their physical release since they had no money and they just wanted a new game for xbone why not and them never cared for them at all.
 
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64bitmodels

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first both ori games are metroidvania 2d platformers which is a totally different thing compared to 3d mascot platformers like spyro/crash/banjo/conker its apple and oranges, its like saying tomb raider is also same genre because it has platforming in them, the art style and gameplay and such is not aimed towards younger crowd unlike the mascot 3d platformers.
you didnt specify which type of platformer so i assumed ori and cuphead would be fine.... Also supporting more mature aimed for adult platformers isnt a bad thing imo it helps push the genre forward and out of the stereotype that it's just for kids
Cuphead is basically a sidescroller shooter again nothing to do with 3d platformers at all and its definitely not aimed towards kids but aimed for older people who remember those classic animation styles.And the game is hard as hell not 5yo kid could finish that game lol.
run and gun/sidescroller shooters can count as platformers, cuphead has enough individual stages in the game for it to be considered a platformer imo
Also again you didnt specify which type of platformer so i just assumed any would be ok
As for super luckys tale, i actually didnt hear but in that case RIP the studio, hopefully they get back on their feet someday
 

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you didnt specify which type of platformer so i assumed ori and cuphead would be fine.... Also supporting more mature aimed for adult platformers isnt a bad thing imo it helps push the genre forward and out of the stereotype that it's just for kids

run and gun/sidescroller shooters can count as platformers, cuphead has enough individual stages in the game for it to be considered a platformer imo
Also again you didnt specify which type of platformer so i just assumed any would be ok
As for super luckys tale, i actually didnt hear but in that case RIP the studio, hopefully they get back on their feet someday
we were talking about banjo,crash,spyro and conker so obviously we were talking about games like those...

the only times microsoft attemped to make 3d platformers aimed for kids was on the original xbox with blinx,voodoo vince,tork,toejam and earl,remake of conker and so on(not themselves they just published some 3rd party mascot games), once xbox360 came around they just gave up and never touched them again and went with mature audience halo, gears and so on.

So yeah i have a hard time believing they will ever greenlight a game like those again, when they had mascots and since the original xbox never bothered to develop a single game in that style.And the sad thing is there was rumour that spyro would get a new game like crash next since they were bringing both ips back from the dead, now their future is very unsettling specialy looking at banjo and conker.
 
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