Probably the biggest takeover in gaming history.
Deal reported to be 70 Billion.
Let’s see how they manage to **** up another company.

I mean, it's not like A/B is going to get any worse

Yeah Microsoft is easily better than Acti/Blizz.

Gamepass is already the best deal in gaming and could get ridiculous when they add all the A/B games.

A/B is one of the most toxic companies in the country. The only downside is that it will take a year or more for the deal to become official.

Does this mean eventually Call of Duty will no longer be released on playstation?

Would be no great loss for PS owners to miss out on rehash number 94

damn

Probably but the deal isn't expected to close until next summer so PS will still get this years and probably next years iteration. And games far into development for both consoles probably still come out on both.

Similar to when MS bought Bethesda, existing games and previous deals will stay in place (Deathloop launched as a PS timed-exclusive), while new games will be released as Xbox exclusives (Starfield, next TES game).

70 billion seems wild. Then again, Candy Crush sold for 6 billion in 2016.

It makes think of when Dr. Evil demands 100 billion dollars.

This is 3x more than the LinkedIn acquisition. Just think about that. Absolutely crazy.

candy crush at 6 billion is a frickin steal. Have you guys seen what an absurd amount of money that game makes?

I like blizzard games and have played them since the age of 9 or 10. Dont care about the COD franchise at all, its been the same exact thing for 15 years, boring. All I really cared about was the impact on World of warcraft, particularly classic - but I just quit that game, so, idgaf anymore.

From the WoW angle though, it's pretty interesting to me. I read and follow quite a bit about this stuff and internal blizzard things going on with it, and have a few friends that work for the company that tell me stuff, etc. I'm extremely curious where Microsoft is going to go with the WoW franchise because it is very obviously INSANELY valuable IP, but, its current monetization is a completely outdated joke and the game is dying, even in the retail version. So what I'm curious is, are they gonna sunset that franchise and try to reboot it with something more modern or different, or are they gonna try to monetize and grow users in different ways (like putting it on gamepass) ?

I think WoW is probably towards the end of its lifecycle but who knows. Who knows if we'll ever see Overwatch 2 before 2030. Lol. I think microsoft will do good things with all the IP they got. I was most interested in seeing Bobby Kotick booted, what a ****in cartoon villain.

Perhaps. Still seems crazy that it sold for 2 billion more than both Minecraft (a “real” game) and the entirety of Lucasfilm and all Star Wars assets.

the income of candy crush was truly astronomical though, i remember when a leaked income document of theres made its way into our office and we just marveled at it and the next week launched a social gaming division

they probably made more money than any other dedicated app developer in 2012 and 2013, probably made more than most of the top 10 combined

they had a ginormous userbase that spent freely on IAP

Yea, I mean candy crush is nothing innovative, just clever marketing really. It seems like they used similar concepts from stuff like slot machines and stuff to get people addicted and then milked the hell out of their addicted/bored userbase.

Any game could follow the same pattern and eat a chunk of candy crush's revenue, but candy crush has a significant head start and brand recognition.

I've heard a lot of analysts talking about how mobile gaming may become a massive percentage of the gaming market total, which honestly really ****ing depresses me. Why would you make any investment at all, much less on the massive amount of talent required to make a masterpiece like say, God of War, when you can just spend a tiny fraction of the development cost on something stupid like candy crush and pump the rest of the money into advertising and marketing, and then probably have plenty left over?

It's gonna result in this era of cheap, shitty games that are designed to bilk you out of tiny amounts of money a bunch of times very slowly (just like slots). We have a historical example of this already, the atari/coin op era, where games were designed around exactly the same principle, and resulted in a glut of massively shitty games that nearly destroyed the industry entirely.

Good lord the future is bleak for gaming. At the end of the day, I am constantly amazed at the complete lack of respect large video game companies (of which A/B is probably the worst offender by far) have for their customers.

it's the in app purchases, had a bunch of friends who worked at zynga

zynga possibly poker made more than most real money poker sites

i think i mentioned it itt before but at least a dozen people on farmville each year were spending over 250k a year on virtual nails and that's what led to Zynga blowing up and soon an entire industry of social gaming appeared

meanwhile, angry birds which will go down in history as the first truly mobile/casual game company which didn't follow that path is pretty much gone now and last i heard of them had rebranded as an entertainment and later an educational company

My very first job offer was for a small mobile game company that targeted flip phones and elderly audiences (obviously extremely scummy). They gave me some numbers and for a ~5 person operation it was astounding. I considered the offer, wanting to get into video game development, but their lead developer pulled me aside and talked to me for a bit. The gist of the conversation was, that when it comes to video game development, unless you're a total masochist, stay the hell away. I ended up rejecting the job offer mostly because I didn't feel ok morally with what the company did, but even then, that convo struck me and mostly the dead look in his eyes as he explained it to me. I never thought about entering that industry since.

That's another issue game companies have btw, they don't offer competitive salaries or careers comparable with the non-gaming tech sector, so they are already dealing with sub-par talent. It's not a coincidence that Playstation has never (at least from my recollection) been able to deliver stable enough infrastructure to seamlessly support a good experience on their gaming platform, yet non-gaming companies like google and facebook have solved far more complex problems in content delivery at 50x the scale.

anyway I'm ranting now, sorry

Perhaps they can save my beloved wc3 that has gone into the shitter since reforged?