• Dark Arc@social.packetloss.gg
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      1 year ago

      Honestly I’m okay with this one, but it’s mostly because Activision Blizzard has great IP with some seriously awful management … and Microsoft actually has been doing much better in that department for games.

      • demonquark@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Yeah… In practice, every time a company gets anything that even slightly resembles a captured market, they stop investing in quality and starting shafting consumers.

        Make no mistake, that is Microsoft’s end game. And that’s why they’re buying Blizzard.

        • leftzero@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          Luckily, Activision Blizzard already stopped investing in quality and started shafting customers quite a while back, so worst case scenario (in this particular case, your criticism is still valid for most others) nothing changes, best case scenario Microsoft actually cleans house and the market becomes slightly less anti-consumer with one of the worst offenders gone…

        • Dark Arc@social.packetloss.gg
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          1 year ago

          Microsoft even with Activision Blizzard would not have a captured market. Valve, Crytek, Sony (which now holds Bungie), Epic, Electronic Arts, CD Projekt Red, Take-Two, and Ubisoft are all still quite potent AAA capable studio just in the PC space … along with tons of independent studios (e.g., Ghost Ship Games, Shiro Games, Hello Games, Re-Logic).

          The Microsoft internal doc leak said they’re mostly after King Games (mobile games) anyways. I’d wager at worst Microsoft will let the traditionally Activision & Blizzard studios do their things… at best they’ll clean up the executive teams and let the devs “play” a bit more with the IPs.

          Mojang has flourished under Microsoft.

          • TheDarkKnight@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            343 sucked under MS. Bethesda’s been underwhelming. Rare, meh. Lionhead, meh. Obsidian, meh.

            Playground has been good, same with Doublefine. Ninja had Senua, which was good.

            Pretty much a coin flip I’d say, but helped by the fact Blizzard has stunk out loud in recent years…change might be good.

          • Tlaloc_Temporal@lemmy.ca
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            1 year ago

            The enshitification of Mojang has begun. Ridiculous privacy policies and bans in singleplayer. And the biggest introduction under MS was the engine rewrite, which was already underway when they were acquired.

    • Pohl@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Trust = one or more independent organizations making secret agreements to mutual benefit.

      Mergers: not a trust.

      Monopoly = a single organization that controls an overwhelming amount of the market.

      Microsoft buying a publisher that put out 2 games in 2023: not a monopoly.

      • ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        How many times do they have to buy that 2 game publisher before they reach a monopoly?

        • Pohl@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          How many games game out this year? Thousands. There is absolutely zero possibility that MS or anyone else is anywhere near holding monopoly status on the production of entertainment software. Even if they bought EVERYTHING new creators would enter the space the very next day.

    • probablyaCat@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Meh. A competitive monopoly has a better outcome than the near monopoly PS4 got when it came to exclusives. Yeah a lot of existing IP will be for one or the other. But for third party studios, they will be much less likely to make exclusive games if the console market is more balanced between the two. Nintendo is kind of in a world of its own. And with the steam deck helping push PC into a base level standard, I think we might see some opening up of high quality third party stuff.