Microsoft buy Activision Blizzard for $70B. Officially confirmed. Bobby Kotick leaving MS on 29th Dec.

Garth wrote:Xbox is looking to bring back IPs from Activision Blizzard's vaults:

In discussing some of the intellectual properties owned by under Activision Blizzard, Spencer’s excitement may have mirrored the enthusiasm of a “Starcraft” player noticing the long-dormant franchise’s logo in Microsoft’s acquisition announcement.

“I was looking at the IP list, I mean, let’s go!” Spencer said. "‘King’s Quest,’ ‘Guitar Hero.’ ... I should know this but I think they got ‘HeXen.’”

“HeXen,” indeed an Activision Blizzard property, is a cult hit first-person game about using magic spells. Microsoft’s pending acquisition of Activision Blizzard also means owning the rights to many creations from gaming’s past, including Crash Bandicoot, the original Sony PlayStation mascot. There’s also the influential and popular Tony Hawk skateboard series, and beloved characters like Spyro the Dragon.

Toys for Bob, one of the studios working under the Activision Blizzard banner, successfully launched games like “Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time," but later get folded into supporting Call of Duty games. Spencer said the Xbox team will talk with developers about working on a variety of franchises from the Activision Blizzard vaults.

“We’re hoping that we’ll be able to work with them when the deal closes to make sure we have resources to work on franchises that I love from my childhood and that the teams really want to get,” Spencer said. “I’m looking forward to these conversations. I really think it’s about adding resources and increasing capability.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-ga ... l-spencer/

Would be great to see some of these studios escape from working on Call of Duty.

I think Jeff Gertsmann made that point on the latest bombcast, that the smaller studios could be handed back autonomy and let have an identity again. Similar to how Microsoft always big up Rare or Playground or Double Fine when talking about their games, make it clear that this isnt a Microsoft game, this is from those guys who made that other thing so if you liked that then you might like their new one. Thats actually something that always bugs me, games are advertised with the publisher name but I dont care who publishes it, I want to know who developed it, thats far more important in deciding if this is something I might be interested in.

A Singularity sequel…finally!

I'm glad at the very least that Phil has more or less said that they are going to take them away from CoD development. I reckon yearly CoD's will also stop being at thing.

I don't pay any attention to COD, and had no idea they're out every year. That's just mental, what the strawberry float does each entry do differently that warrants one a year?

Victor Mildew wrote:I don't pay any attention to COD, and had no idea they're out every year. That's just mental, what the strawberry float does each entry do differently that warrants one a year?

To my eyes, absolutely nothing changes, I know they have a new campaign but the MP looks similar (to me). They have 3 devs on it, rotating each year so each dev gets 3 years working on 'its' CoD.

Activision literally roped every dev it had into helping with CoD in the past couple of years because that's where the money is, Blizzard also dissolved it's devs into itself to help with Diablo 4 and Overwatch 2. This is a trend that's looks like it's ending and will be reversed.

Victor Mildew wrote:I don't pay any attention to COD, and had no idea they're out every year. That's just mental, what the strawberry float does each entry do differently that warrants one a year?

Eats the playerbase from the previous year's game so you buy it to keep playing where everyone else is

OrangeRKN wrote:

Victor Mildew wrote:I don't pay any attention to COD, and had no idea they're out every year. That's just mental, what the strawberry float does each entry do differently that warrants one a year?

Eats the playerbase from the previous year's game so you buy it to keep playing where everyone else is

Yeah it's like the FPS equivalent of FIFA!

I wonder how Mike Ybarra and Rod Ferguson feel as they left Xbox recently enough, it's like the mo simpsons meme.

Apparently Ybarra decided to leave after Spencer got promoted over him...

I don't think its unfair to say that the majority of people cannot see that MS would continue to allow COD and other franchises on Playstation anymore.

Looking at the history of Spencer's comments being very similar to now back when they bought Zenimax, and that ended up with "anything currently in dev/in contract is continuing, but outside of that they are now 1st party studios" with practically the same wording. Ultimately its just that, careful wording. They don't want to be seen as the bad guy, or to annoy their potential customer base that they want to move over to their brand. You dont spend 70billion to continue the status quo. Its not just armchair critiquing, its based on the evidence of what happened before. I'd be surprised if it was anything other than the general expectation.

Sony have a state of play coming soon if I recall correctly, so I'd be surprised if they didnt shuffle that about a bit to maybe show a few more games, or tidbits on their own subscription service/Back compatibility stuff that they may not have shown originally, in light of this news.

Ignoring how Sony is somehow the badguy and should just allow their direct competitor to have their games on their console, and diminish their own brand I think the best thing Sony can do is in the above.

- Revisiting their own legacy brands that have long been dormant, which seems on the cards with the Twisted Metal rumblings.
- No doubt they will end up looking at their own 1st Party FPS - though I think this is doomed to fail, personally- unless its something completely new and fresh- not their own military shooter
- Revealing more info on their own subscription service, and hopefully backwards compatibility. Jim Ryan historically thinks noone wants or plays "old" games. Which is very out of touch.

That's where I think MS are better currently, leadership. I may not agree with the methods- but at least Spencer actually seems to know gaming, has a vision, and is working towards it. Jim Ryan, to me, seems out of touch, not actually much knowledge of gaming, and is too corporate- and I don't think we will see the impact of that until a bit later, when we start to see what 1st party stuff is planned after the current batch.

I used to work with a few people who only played COD/FIFA/PES.

It destroyed my soul when I lent one of them fallout 3 after raving about it for months, and he gave it back the next day saying he didn't like it as it's not COD.

I think Jim will go mental if future CoD's start with an Xbox Game Studios logo!


A lot can happen in 18months so it'll be very interesting if Phil changes that point of view over time.

Sales of COD declined quite a lot last year (though it was still in the top 2 or 3 biggest games of 21) so while you could probably still get away with releasing it every single year even with steadily declining sales, Microsoft may want to turn it into more of an event game again.

The Tony Hawk's, Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon franchises could go either way. They went from hot property to not worth a gooseberry fool back to hot property again. Crash Bandicoot has legs. Spyro the Dragon and Hawk's I'm not so sure. Spyro had to be changed into Skylanders (to massive success) because the only thing anyone ever cared about playing were the PS1 originals and that's now been done again. Hawk's still has 3 and 4 to remake, but after that I think it's a dead duck.

Yeah, I can't imagine Toys for Bob would rather be a support dev for COD every year than work on a new game like Crash 4.

I genuinely think the Acti-Bliz dev teams will be offered dormant IP from their publisher plus older Xbox IP's.

Back to Bethesda, apparently last summer they started another dev team focusing on remasters, man, I'd love Fallout 3/NV, Morrowind and others remastered!

Tomous wrote:Yeah, I can't imagine Toys for Bob would rather be a support dev for COD every year than work on a new game like Crash 4.

Game Pass lacks platformers so it would be good to have newer games like Banjo, Spyro, Crash, Blinx or original IP. They could even do a knock off Mario Kart now.

Super Lucky's Tale seems to do a lot of heavy lifting.

Victor Mildew wrote:I don't pay any attention to COD, and had no idea they're out every year. That's just mental, what the strawberry float does each entry do differently that warrants one a year?

Not alot.

However, I have fallen victim to the allure the past few years. Theres something about the MP that does make you return.

I'll usually buy the new release, do the SP, smash the MP for a couple of months for 100 hours or so, enjoy starting from scratch and unlocking all the weapons and stuff- then ill get bored and sell it, usually for around £10 less than I bought it for.

Then the next year, when the new one comes out ill do the same. Its like bad, sugary or greasy food. Sometimes you just want something thats bad for you, and that is familiar.

The problem is, when you get a good one, like MW2019, then you get Cold War the next year, which is a different engine, with mechanics being different, but with a great zombies mode, then the next year is back to the other engine, with a terribad multiplayer and worse Zombies mode... it rarely actually feels iterative, because every game is bloody different!

Photek wrote:I genuinely think the Acti-Bliz dev teams will be offered dormant IP from their publisher plus older Xbox IP's.

Back to Bethesda, apparently last summer they started another dev team focusing on remasters, man, I'd love Fallout 3/NV, Morrowind and others remastered!

I'd like a remastered Morrowwind although the mods do make it look a lot nicer. If they do remake it I hope they overhaul the dialogue system as it's awful.

KK wrote:Sales of COD declined quite a lot last year

Bloody French fishermen strike again!

Bertie wrote:You make a very good point. Any regulators who might be concerned about the situation will be paying attention, but once the deal goes through, there is nothing they can do. A long way to go.

Yes exactly, any messaging before the deal goes through means literally nothing factual and is just designed to ease concerns and divert criticisms to get the deal through. This includes promises of bringing back some dormant IPs to get gamers thinking great this is actually a good thing. History is extremely relevant here, how do people feel Microsoft have handled their own IP over the past decade or so?

Announcing that this deal would make them the 3rd biggest company in gaming is also a huge part of this tactical messaging. When was the last time you seen them proudly say something like that? Again it’s tactical messaging using one metric “revenue” to make it appear they are small and their rivals are bigger. I’m terms of actual size and number of studios, “Xbox” had already eclipsed “PlayStation” with the zenimax purchase.

The only really confusing thing is how some, admittedly a minority, are just completely falling for it all, as though actual very recent completely relevant history means nothing.

Good luck to MS they obviously felt what they’d been doing wasn’t working and they had to do something really big and fast, and they’ve spent close to $100bn dollars now in a short amount of time. Assuming the deal goes through of course.

rinks wrote:CoD to become free to download (all platforms), but monthly subscription required to play. Subscription included in Game Pass.

To add to this, it would also get them out of the yearly release cycle. New maps etc could be released as part of the subscription. The games still appear on PlayStation, but MS get the subscription fees. I’m honestly surprised that CoD hasn’t already gone subscription-based. I remember it being something Kotick wanted.

Saint of Killers wrote:*gives up*

I went on to say anything could still happen. So I don't need a playback of Phil's greatest hits to be replayed to me, but I guess thanks for going to the trouble all the same.

Bertie is right in that I wasn't specifically aiming my post at you, just the very specific idea that there were any lessons to be learned from Phil's obscure tweet, which is why I highlighted just that part. I mean the more I look at the tweet the more it seems disingenuous. Sony are an important part of our industry? Just not important enough for Bethesda games? Why emphasise "existing contracts"? Why say keep COD on playstation instead of saying continue to release COD on playstation? He is "keeping Elder scrolls and Fallout on playstation", Elder scrolls online is going nowhere neither is Fallout76, due to existing contracts, yet we know all future installments are exclusive. So yes the more I look at it the more I feel this tweet is very carefully worded misdirection.

It'll be years until we find out, maybe MSs recent actions with Bethesda will be in isolation to their overall plans, I just seriously doubt that. By then I think we'll be wondering similar things about other established 3rd party publishers, who'd have thought just a year ago we'd be looking back at the bethesda deal and saying oh well that one was different because it was only 1/10th as big.