From Jason Schreier:
BREAKING: The WSJ reports that Microsoft is buying Activision Blizzard, the troubled publisher behind Call of Duty and World of Warcraft, which has been facing crisis over the last year following numerous reports of sexual misconduct and discrimination. A seismic gaming deal
— Jason Schreier (@jasonschreier) January 18, 2022
Jaybird
Jaybird is Birdmojo on Xbox Live and Jaybirdmojo on Playstation's network. He's been playing consoles since the Atari 2600 and it was Zork that taught him how to touch-type. If you've got a song for Wednesday, a commercial for Saturday, a recommendation for Tuesday, an essay for Monday, or, heck, just a handful a questions, fire off an email to AskJaybird-at-gmail.com
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I’m guessing that this means that Call of Duty just went XBox Exclusive (and PC, of course).
I think it means that WOW will move over to XBox.
I don’t know what to think about what it means for Diablo IV.Report
Based on my initial impressions of Amazon’s New World?
We’re entering a dark age of gaming.
Don’t think of it as MSFT/AZN money making games better, think of it as MSFT/AZN publishing making the pipeline smaller so your only real options are whatever they don’t kill in development.Report
Little indy devs have been really shining in recent years.
Looks like that’s fixing to continue.Report
Perhaps; I’ve drifted away from Indies… optimistically this opens a window for break-out hits; pessimistically it mimics the current software development environment where the goal is to sell yourself to someone bigger with more of a buggy Minimally Viable Product with ‘potential’.Report
The beauty of the indies is that being small, they don’t have the management seeking relevancy overhead that larger companies do, and thus they can focus less on tentpole ‘WOW!” and “Rule of Cool” kind of features, and focus instead on gameplay.
Of course, having a small, if any, art department means your game may not look as good as a studio that can afford one, but it’s long been known that too often gameplay is sacrificed for shiny looks.
It’s a hard balance to strike, gameplay versus graphics. One crap manager can tank a whole game.Report
GGG (Path of Exile) might be an example of an Indie who hit it big … but then they got bought by Tencent.
They seem to still have control of the game and its still FTP with only cosmetics… so maybe a sign I’m too pessimistic? Then again, we haven’t seen what POE2 has in store, so maybe there’s hope (despair?) for my thesis yet.Report
Since Activision has basically become Call of Duty: The Studio, I’d actually bet far more of Activision’s IP has games made out of it due to GamePass in 2023-2033, than we saw in 2013-2023.Report
From the wiki (this smooshes Activision together with Blizzard, but that’s okay):
We are definitely going to get more Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, and Tony Hawk.
I *STILL* remember Tony Hawk’s Underground fondly. They could just do a graphical upgrade of that game changing nothing but the songs that they no longer have the rights to and I’d preorder it after giving a short speech about how you shouldn’t preorder games.
I don’t know that we’ll see another dongle-based game like Skylanders again. Like, ever.
But Guitar Hero? I could see another Guitar Hero.Report
Why shouldn’t you pre-order?
We just got the XBox with GamePass and if Tony Hawk appears on there, the kids ain’t getting near the damn thing.Report
You’re giving them your money without even knowing if the game is good.
This gives them elbow room to give you a game like Dragon Age 2.Report
I don’t have a console and never have… so if this is a console thing, then cool. I don’t have any notion of how that world functions.
Like, Guitar Hero reboot would be invisible to me. But if it means that more PC games have to be designed to be shitty so that console controllers will work? Then I think I’m trending in the right direction.Report
I’m right there with you that games that rely upon console controllers, and/or games that allow for a keyboard mouse, but do not allow you to remap the controls, suck.
And all consoles that support any kind of flight sim need to require the game support joysticks/yokes/throttles/pedals. Trying to fly a Tie Fighter with an XBox controller is an exercise in frustration.Report
Once upon a time Blizzard was where it’s at. Now it’s just an old scandal ridden cash cow being gobbled up by Microsoft via its holding company. Can’t say it’s undeserved- what have they made since, what Diablo 3 that was worth ten minutes of time?Report