Microsoft buys Activision Blizzard

[AscendedFlames]

I am not totally against unions, but usually you need to have some sort value as an employee to make the union work. The average non-technical employee in a professional gaming studio is underqualified to clean toilets at a truck stop. You have no leverage if you are completely replaceable.

Unions are usually most effective when the union members are valuable employees, but the work market lacks competition between employers. This is the case when there is only a single big employer (mining industry, lumber industry...) at the area. The tech industry does not work like this.

You are telling me checkout operators at the local supermarket are valuable employees that are irreplaceable?

My local supermarket all dealt away with 80% of the cashiers and baggers, in a bold move they implemented self-checkout for the entire store except one lane. Now, they only have one or two guys watching to make sure the random ape that happens to wander by chance into our neighborhood doesn't steal anything, they are also the ones that have the most problems when checking out as they have a bundle of coupons, EBT cards and who knows what else they have managed to get their chimp fingers on. Now that those low IQ employees which were always lazy are gone, the store has to be saving money on salary and the benefits they'd have to pay those cretins.

 

[Cael]

I am not totally against unions, but usually you need to have some sort value as an employee to make the union work. The average non-technical employee in a professional gaming studio is underqualified to clean toilets at a truck stop. You have no leverage if you are completely replaceable.

Unions are usually most effective when the union members are valuable employees, but the work market lacks competition between employers. This is the case when there is only a single big employer (mining industry, lumber industry...) at the area. The tech industry does not work like this.

You are telling me checkout operators at the local supermarket are valuable employees that are irreplaceable?

My local supermarket all dealt away with 80% of the cashiers and baggers, in a bold move they implemented self-checkout for the entire store except one lane. Now, they only have one or two guys watching to make sure the random ape that happens to wander by chance into our neighborhood doesn't steal anything, they are also the ones that have the most problems when checking out as they have a bundle of coupons, EBT cards and who knows what else they have managed to get their chimp fingers on. Now that those low IQ employees which were always lazy are gone, the store has to be saving money on salary and the benefits they'd have to pay those cretins.

Precisely. But there are checkout operator unions (they call themselves workers unions), which directly contradicts the post I quoted.

Modern unions are parasites on society, on par with the mafia, with the predatory protection racketeering, blackmail and plain daylight robbery of vulnerable workers. They are not there for the workers.

 

[kalganoat]

I'm ready for Prototype 3

 

[LabRat]

If they can't drop this communist gameplay design. I think HOTS will still die.

 

[Spectacle]

isn't the license still with Stardock (they release Star Control: Origins not too long ago)? Though from what I remember, Stardock just has the name and none of the actual content like the species, which seems to belong to the original creators.
And I though the original creators were already working on a sequel (Ghost of the Precursors or something like that).

Well, considering that MS now owns the company (although it seems Reiche et al. left TfB two years ago), maybe they can buy the name and the other missing IPs as well. Although no one probably remembers Star Control, so the chances of that are close to nil

Or MS could just buy Stardock. That way they'd also get some experienced devs who could work on fixing the atrocious Win11 UI.

 

[aweigh]

 

[IDtenT]

Some Boogie shit.

 

[Bliblablubb]

I don't get the rage about MS buying Blizzivision and Bethesda. It's not that their games are held in high regards here at the 'dex, so there is no risk of a decline in quality.
"Worst" thing to happen is they will withdraw from Steam and make new games console exclusives for their newest crapbox for a while.
It will just force PC players to look for alternatives, maybe even leading to a renaissance of true RPGs, 4X or tacticool games, games consoletards would not touch with a 3.3 meter pole.

I for one see a potential incline on the horizon.

 

[IDtenT]

Why would Microsoft make console exclusives?

 

[Zarniwoop]

Why would Microsoft make console exclusives?

O hai, welcome from the year 2022.

From your retarded question, I can only assume you are posting via a timewarp from some time before the year 2001.

You see, in that year, Microsoft will launch their own console! Hard to believe but it really happens. There's a Playstation and a Nintendo and a Sega and a fucking Microsoft console. It's actually just a PC with a hard drive and everything and will in fact cause all other consoles to become PC's going forward but lets not get ahead of ourselves.

Let's just say, In our time, Microsoft owns their own console and they release exclusive games for it, in order to make people buy more consoles.

Also in about 2011 or so there will be this thing called "bitcoin", it will look retarded and be worthless.

Buy as much of it as you possibly can. Thank me later.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Why would Microsoft make console exclusives?

"console exclusive" = "available on one console + PC"

don't ask me why, console fanboys are retarded

 

[luj1]

Ye... i will always love blizzard for Warcraft 2-3, Starcraft and Diablo 1-2 (even tho D1-2 were made by Condor), but seriously

fuck microsoft
fuck blizzard
fuck bethesda

 

[ferratilis]

Don't forget Lost Vikings and Blackthorne, very underrated games.

 

[Falksi]

I'm ready for Prototype 3

You'd think after 10 years they'd just release a finished version now.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

Ye... i will always love blizzard for Warcraft 2-3, Starcraft and Diablo 1-2 (even tho D1-2 were made by Condor)

All three of which they've kept overpriced and refused to put on Steam.

 

[Bliblablubb]

Why would Microsoft make console exclusives?

"console exclusive" = "available on one console + PC"

don't ask me why, console fanboys are retarded

MS has a history of making games like Mass Effect 1, Kotor 1 and others console exclusive first, as in "available only on the shitbox for 6 months" before even releasing it on PC.
They usually do that when a new console generation comes up, so they can force players interested in those games to boost console sales. Making the next Cock of Duty a launch title would certainly rake in the sales.

 

[Kruno]

 

[J_C]

Why would Microsoft make console exclusives?

O hai, welcome from the year 2022.

From your retarded question, I can only assume you are posting via a timewarp from some time before the year 2001.

You see, in that year, Microsoft will launch their own console! Hard to believe but it really happens. There's a Playstation and a Nintendo and a Sega and a fucking Microsoft console. It's actually just a PC with a hard drive and everything and will in fact cause all other consoles to become PC's going forward but lets not get ahead of ourselves.

Let's just say, In our time, Microsoft owns their own console and they release exclusive games for it, in order to make people buy more consoles.

Also in about 2011 or so there will be this thing called "bitcoin", it will look retarded and be worthless.

Buy as much of it as you possibly can. Thank me later.

You are so witty. Please tell us why doesn't MS make console exclusives for 5 years? Because it seems to me that with the exception of Halo, every new XBox title is also coming to PC.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Why would Microsoft make console exclusives?

"console exclusive" = "available on one console + PC"

don't ask me why, console fanboys are retarded

MS has a history of making games like Mass Effect 1, Kotor 1 and others console exclusive first, as in "available only on the shitbox for 6 months" before even releasing it on PC.
They usually do that when a new console generation comes up, so they can force players interested in those games to boost console sales. Making the next Cock of Duty a launch title would certainly rake in the sales.

I don't think they've done this for quite a while. AFAICT they realized that PC & console gaming market is kinda segregated to the point where console gamers only care about exclusives when it comes to other consoles.
Xbone itself has very few "true" exclusives, and I believe nearly all of them are actually xbox 360 compatible games.

 

[Zibniyat]

new mangement looks surely promising

nah

There is ZERO. ZERO point for the pronouns on this chart. Not a single one differs from the norm, but because some randos feelings will be hurt we need to include completely useless information. Reminds me of the dipshits that need to include every single one of their degrees in any circumstance. But instead of moving away from this shit we somehow made it worse.

Fixed that for you. There is absolutely no need to think of these pronouns-things beyond that they're a manifestation of mental retardation (or illness, same thing).

 

[Bliblablubb]

MS always had exclusives, but most them were inhouse crap, because the big ones didn't want to tie themselves to MS. But those recent aquisitions remind me of ye olde days, when MS bought Bungie, an upcoming developer of a promising little PC game called "Halo", turned it into an exlusive and milked the IP for decades. But Halo does not twitch anymore, they need a new cow.

But who knows when it comes to MS. They are giving out Windows for frees like candy, got 7 for free, 10 for free, now they urge me to go 11. I can only assume they collect data worse than Google does, otherwise they did not make a single buck off private users for a decade at least...

 

[Duraframe300]

new mangement looks surely promising

nah

There is ZERO. ZERO point for the pronouns on this chart. Not a single one differs from the norm, but because some randos feelings will be hurt we need to include completely useless information. Reminds me of the dipshits that need to include every single one of their degrees in any circumstance. But instead of moving away from this shit we somehow made it worse.

Fixed that for you. There is absolutely no need to think of these pronouns-things beyond that they're a manifestation of mental retardation (or illness, same thing).

I still maintain that point. Language wise it's the same disease that decades/century ago made wymnz freak out if you didn't address them properly (Mrs./Ms.). The signs were there. Now gender insanity and feminism has kicked that shit into overdrive and we've gone into lala land.

Easiest signs for lefty retardation: Take an already shit concept for society, rebrand it and make it worse.

 

[Ravielsk]

Microsoft is not doing exclusives because they are trying to turn "Xbox" into a sort of universal gaming brand like Nintendo was in the 80s, except bigger of course. Problem is that this is Microsoft we are talking about. A company whose only really successful console was the xbox360 and even that was more because of Sony internally sabotaging itself rather than the result of Microsoft's impeccable business sense. Their "Halo studio"(343) is so good at making Halo games that their best product to this date is praised for not being utterly shit and pretty much every other exclusive game they had lined up for the Xbone one was cancelled or flopped. If Windows did not have a literal monopoly on home computing they would have been out several times over.

They have been unable to leverage any of their advantages against any of their competitors for over a decade at this point so unless they dramatically shake up their management the only thing they effectively done with these acquisitions is that they have paid billions to reduce their value to 0.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

But who knows when it comes to MS. They are giving out Windows for frees like candy, got 7 for free, 10 for free, now they urge me to go 11. I can only assume they collect data worse than Google does, otherwise they did not make a single buck off private users for a decade at least...

Microsoft makes most of their money from the server/enterprise side, investors have long wanted them to spin the rest of the company off onto its own.
Which is why this acquisition is a bit surprising tbh.

 

[copebot]

MS belatedly realized that because of DirectX, the PC is a Microsoft console, and they shouldn't cannibalize one of their consoles for the benefit of another one of their consoles. Linux doesn't exist as a gaming platform. The only thing that sucks from Microsoft's perspective is that for legacy antitrust reasons, there is no monopoly app store for Windows. They can get around that and antitrust concerns with Gamepass, which makes their app store so cheap that any prospective antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft has a steep hill to climb because Gamepass is cheap, and the primary test of antitrust harm is that it is results in higher prices for consumers.

Steam, Epic, and GOG are just competing storefronts for the mixed PC hardware platform that runs on Microsoft software. The complexity of the PC hardware ecosystem has made it perpetually annoying for app store companies to try to create competitive offerings on (see failure of Steam Machine, the relative failure of the Nvidia boxes, Stadia, etc.).

With Gamepass, Microsoft can severely undermine the competing app stores without running into antitrust concerns. In the future, you will launch most of your stuff from Xbox, your software updates will be synced to your Bill Gates vaccine chips, and the storefronts will seriously struggle to compete. Also, none of them can afford to alienate MS too badly because most of the products developed, published, and, and sold are reliant on proprietary technology exclusively available from Microsoft.