Carnifex
SasqWatch
It will bear delicious fruit if this purchase does lead to some stellar classic games finding their respective ways to great old games or steam. In that case I'd say the consumer might actually win out.
My exact thought.Arcanum 2 plz tnx.
What will happen to the Battle.net launcher?
I'm assuming they'll just keep it the way it is for now. If those games end up coming to Steam and other platforms though, I think we'll see the user-base for B.net dwindle pretty fast. It'll be interesting to see if Microsoft offers us a way to transition to another platform and keep our purchased games.
Ominously, Microsoft-Obsidian-Activision-Bethesda/Blizzard is MOAB^2. Will it be the "Mother of all Bombs"?
Call of Duty not coming to Playstation in future is big news in the console space. What will happen to the Battle.net launcher? Maybe it will be kept for now given the deal has to pass regulatory hurdles, it is forecast that the merger will take until 2023. Blizzard games coming to Steam and gamepass is cool.
I just realised that Microsoft now owns lots of Sierra titles like Space Quest and Kings Quest. Not to mention Zork games.
Likely they will offer an account migration service.
Master Chief finally removes his helmet, revealing that he is, in fact, part of the Flathead family and heir to the Great Underground Empire!I just realised that Microsoft now owns lots of Sierra titles like Space Quest and Kings Quest. Not to mention Zork games.
This is likely true. It's just that I've heard that from people more in the know that the company culture in Microsoft is supposed to be pretty decent.Not sure how much of a guarantee this is to be an improvement in culture at Acti-Blizz. If the rot is mostly with senior management, they need to be let go for this to improve. If management remains mostly the same it'll just be mostly the same thing, just under a new financial umbrella.
I was part of company purchase in one of my previous jobs, and while the culture wasn't bad, it remained pretty much the same as it was before the purchase. We were almost like a company within a company, until most of the people left and were replaced by new people. So if the rot is still there, it'll stay there. It has to be removed intentionally. But then it gets complicated to prove who's ok and who's not. My feeling is the company culture will be mostly the same, maybe with some effort put in at the start and then abandoned.
If he laughs all the way to the bank and the company gets better as well, that's win-winBobby Kotick will be laughing all the way to the bank. He will make a fortune off his stock and the severance pay from Microsoft. So I doubt he really cares about losing his job.
I don't think this is such good news. Whenever already gigantic corporations swallow another gigantic corp, it makes me wary.
Microsoft already controls the PC operating system market, so now the more big game franchises they own, the more they can sell their next Windows version to, by force. Oh, you want the newest Call of Duty, looks shiny? Well, it will require Windows 13, like it or not, and if you hate our newest, more intrusive Windows version, too bad!
That said, for me, Call of Duty is the only game series Activision/Blizzard had that I have several of them in my library.
Still, I would rather have more competition in the pc games category than less. At what point does Microsoft control too much?
Anyway…
The best thing coming out of this is probably that we will have a few launchers less.
The worst thing might be that we will be forced to use a subscription service in the future. Which in itself is not abysmal, but I fear for modding opportunities.