Xbox chief Phil Spencer will visit new Activision, Blizzard, and King employees soon.
Well, it’s official. Microsoft bought Actiblizz.
Today is a good day to play. We have completed the acquisition of Activision Blizzard and are welcoming Activision Blizzard and its businesses to Microsoft Gaming.
Activision, Blizzard, and King publish some of the most played and most beloved franchises in gaming history, from Pitfall to Call of Duty, Warcraft to Overwatch, Candy Crush Saga to Farm Heroes Super Saga. By combining Xbox with Activision Blizzard’s skill, knowledge, and amazing legacy of games, we will bring the joy and community of gaming to even more players around the world.
We are eager to learn from their creativity, exchange insights and best practices, and empower our new colleagues to bring their visions to the widest possible audience. And today, we officially start the work of bringing more groundbreaking games to more players than ever before and across new platforms from mobile to cloud streaming. We also begin the work to make Activision, Blizzard, and King’s muchloved library of games available in Game Pass and other platforms — we’ll have more to share in the coming months.
We couldn’t be more excited that Activision Blizzard employees are our colleagues, co-workers, and teammates. Bobby Kotick has agreed to remain in his role through the end of 2023, reporting directly to me, to ensure a smooth and seamless integration. We look forward to working together as a unified team and we will share more updates on our new organizational structure in the coming months.
I‘d like to give a very special and heartfelt thanks to everyone who helped make this acquisition possible. We couldn’t have accomplished this without your dedication.
Over the coming weeks, I’ll be visiting the Activision, Blizzard, and King offices, along with members of our Gaming Leadership Team. We’ll have the opportunity to welcome our new colleagues at our next virtual all-hands for Xbox employees, and for the greater Microsoft community, we’ll discuss this and more in the November 8 session of the Company Strategy Series.
Together, we can unlock a world of possibilities for players and creators.
The idea there are zero well designed AAA games is such a narrow outlook.
Indie has its place, but there are experiences that cannot be replicated in the indie sphere at the moment. Consolidation in the AAA space will not make the medium better.
Luckily nobody said there were zero well design AAA games, only that I don’t much care if the big studios eat each other. You can always make another studio. It’s happened before, it’ll happen again. This isn’t like car manufacturing where startups face overwhelming costs and regulatory burdens to begin work. Get some capital, hire some good devs, come up with a thoughtful concept, and people will pay for it. Shit, they’ll pay for virtual goods with no expectation of seeing a finished game (coughStarCitizencough).
but there are experiences that cannot be replicated in the indie sphere at the moment
The key phrase there being “at the moment.” And frankly the reverse is a lot more true for more enduring reasons. AAA development is entirely too invested in graphical fidelity at the expense of everything else and entirely too beholden to shareholders to take meaningful risks.
I do not give one tiny, insignificant shit what corpo entertainment goons do to each other or what hats they wear and neither should you. Blizzard as you knew it has been dead for years. This acquisition means nothing. The people that made the Blizzard you knew great can make their own company and probably will if they’re still working. Stop caring about companies and start caring about the human beings that make good games. Remember their names, look at who they work for.
Game dev has to grow up just like Film did and you can expect the same market driven patterns to emerge. Indies take risks, the big boys iterate on the formulas they establish, and occasionally they stumble into something legitimately good. So it goes.
But for every big budget film that’s good, you’ll have a dozen Michael Bay style 'splosion and lens flare fests. That’s the expected pattern.
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: [email protected]
Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.
Rules
1. Submissions have to be related to games
Video games, tabletop, or otherwise. Posts not related to games will be deleted.
This community is focused on games, of all kinds. Any news item or discussion should be related to gaming in some way.
2. No bigotry or harassment, be civil
No bigotry, hardline stance. Try not to get too heated when entering into a discussion or debate.
We are here to talk and discuss about one of our passions, not fight or be exposed to hate. Posts or responses that are hateful will be deleted to keep the atmosphere good. If repeatedly violated, not only will the comment be deleted but a ban will be handed out as well. We judge each case individually.
3. No excessive self-promotion
Try to keep it to 10% self-promotion / 90% other stuff in your post history.
This is to prevent people from posting for the sole purpose of promoting their own website or social media account.
4. Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts
This community is mostly for discussion and news. Remember to search for the thing you’re submitting before posting to see if it’s already been posted.
We want to keep the quality of posts high. Therefore, memes, funny videos, low-effort posts and reposts are not allowed. We prohibit giveaways because we cannot be sure that the person holding the giveaway will actually do what they promise.
5. Mark Spoilers and NSFW
Make sure to mark your stuff or it may be removed.
No one wants to be spoiled. Therefore, always mark spoilers. Similarly mark NSFW, in case anyone is browsing in a public space or at work.
6. No linking to piracy
Don’t share it here, there are other places to find it. Discussion of piracy is fine.
We don’t want us moderators or the admins of lemmy.world to get in trouble for linking to piracy. Therefore, any link to piracy will be removed. Discussion of it is of course allowed.
Let them eat each other. I’ll be over here playing indie games with actual depth, real care, still getting updates for free years down the line.
Just hope they start to move of Unity.
The idea there are zero well designed AAA games is such a narrow outlook.
Indie has its place, but there are experiences that cannot be replicated in the indie sphere at the moment. Consolidation in the AAA space will not make the medium better.
Luckily nobody said there were zero well design AAA games, only that I don’t much care if the big studios eat each other. You can always make another studio. It’s happened before, it’ll happen again. This isn’t like car manufacturing where startups face overwhelming costs and regulatory burdens to begin work. Get some capital, hire some good devs, come up with a thoughtful concept, and people will pay for it. Shit, they’ll pay for virtual goods with no expectation of seeing a finished game (coughStarCitizencough).
The key phrase there being “at the moment.” And frankly the reverse is a lot more true for more enduring reasons. AAA development is entirely too invested in graphical fidelity at the expense of everything else and entirely too beholden to shareholders to take meaningful risks.
I do not give one tiny, insignificant shit what corpo entertainment goons do to each other or what hats they wear and neither should you. Blizzard as you knew it has been dead for years. This acquisition means nothing. The people that made the Blizzard you knew great can make their own company and probably will if they’re still working. Stop caring about companies and start caring about the human beings that make good games. Remember their names, look at who they work for.
Game dev has to grow up just like Film did and you can expect the same market driven patterns to emerge. Indies take risks, the big boys iterate on the formulas they establish, and occasionally they stumble into something legitimately good. So it goes.
But for every big budget film that’s good, you’ll have a dozen Michael Bay style 'splosion and lens flare fests. That’s the expected pattern.