VGW's Brian Shea: Activision is, without a doubt, one of the most profitable and well-known publishers in the video game industry. An employee who was laid-off in the infamous Activision casualties sometime in the past year agreed to speak with us, candidly, about the publisher and his time there, under the agreement that his identity be kept confidential.
A variety of new updates are available this month across the gaming platforms. Coming today, Retro Classics games are available to play for Xbox Game Pass members. Players who stream on the Xbox app on PC now have an additional streaming option with GeForce Now. Game Bar introduces quick settings, visual updates for Widgets in Compact Mode, and coming soon, Microsoft Edge Game Assist, an in-game browser that brings an immersive game-centric experience to Edge. And Xbox gift cards can now be redeemed for any amount via Xbox Rewards.
While i appreciate the gesture.... all of these retro classics have been made available everywhere else. I am hoping to see some other Activision properties make their way out of the shackles of the 5th, 6th and 7th gen. Licensing be damned... bring back the Transformers Cybertron games.
Love the Cybertron games! TF games have been shit lately. Would love to see that era revisited. I even did the multiplayer!
Metaphor on Gamepass just announced! O.o
Seriously, this is the best generation of Xbox ever!!!
We can´t catch a freaking break from awesome games arriving all the time!!!
It’s a HELL of a game. If you like JRPGs in the family of Persona, you will be in heaven… that is until you hear the various battle music…. then you’ll be somewhere BEYOND heaven!
May 7 (Reuters) - A federal appeals court on Wednesday rejected a legal challenge by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to Microsoft's (MSFT.O), opens new tab $69 billion purchase of “Call of Duty” maker Activision Blizzard.
The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower judge's order that said the FTC was not entitled to a preliminary injunction blocking the deal, which closed in 2023.
Final nail in FTC´s coffin!
It was a lost cause from the start and a waste of taxpayers money!
Indeed. When sony got exposed with some of their deals it was pretty much game over.
That's not at all how this works. Sony made deals Microsoft, the trillion dollar company couldn't? You think that's what won them this case?
This wasn't seen as a act of attempting to monopolize the industry. Plain and simple.
"Indeed. When sony got exposed with some of their deals it was pretty much game over."
And now that MS is releasing all of its Xbox games for all platforms, Phil is free to buy whatever studio or publisher he wants and FTC won´t have a case to say sh!t.
Like I said; It´s final nail in their coffin!
"exposed with some of their deals"
Says the company who said their plan was to "spend Sony out of business", you know a year before they bought Zenimax.
What deals and what "exposed"? Sony did nothing that Microsoft didn't already do during the 360 era. You seem to have a selective memory.
@Reaper22
What? Exposed? Deals? Stop talking gibberish.
On topic:
Hope MS’s xbox continues to go down the drain for this. I love how this deal was the nail in xbox’s coffin when some of the corporation worshippers here were hoping MS would deprive others from games that otherwise everyone would be able to play. Instead, MS was forced to put its own games on other platforms to pay for the billions they spent on this mergers/acquisitions. Hope they choke on it.
It was a lost cause once ms went multiplat, they cant be anti competitive if they release on everything......
No bud this is an appeal, they already failed the first go and the FTC seeked to block the deal way before MS showed any signs of making their games multiplatform. Like most of the courts rulings, it just wasn't seen as the monopoly.
Right. And they stated from the beginning that their intent was not to keep games off of plastation. Microsoft served subpoenas on Sony to produce documents and testimony related to the lawsuit, and the FTC ordered Sony to disclose information about its third-party exclusivity deals. And it exposed their dealings with other publishers to keep games off xbox and Gamepass. That is what helped them most in securing the deal.
Right, however 10 years from now (gen after next) ms could very well reverse that and get away with it. They'd already have made their money back from the purchase, any contract deal they signed would've be honored and finally expired
Let’s not rewrite history though. They only went multi platform because they were forced to. They failed to compete so badly it was that or close Xbox completely.
lol, celebrating consolidation. Good thing this is the deal that broke Microsoft’s back and made them go the 3rd party route on every platform.
No. FTC has multiple appeals since then. It was very unlikely they would win any, but they still had them. People claiming it was over with the first judge ruling don't understand how the law works and what avenues the FTC had available to them even though appeals are quite normal.
It goes like this in the USA first trial the court of appeals it can be a partial court of judges if so after you got another appeal to the full court then after goes the supreme with a non full court after it’s another appeal to the full court when the full court decide on it then it’s over till then anything can happen.
Edit I forgot to say that this is a simplified version of things it can take multiple years to get through all the appeals on both sides
This FTC case provided fascinating insight into gamers' views on economics/politics. It's very common for gamers to blame capitalism for many of the negative trends in the industry, but as soon as the U.S. government started exercising one of the most recognized limitations on capitalism (monopoly regulation), most gamers turned into libertarians and starting spouting Republican talking points (or at least pre-Trump era Republican talking points, lol) on "government staying out of the way of private businesses."
They weren't told how to think on this topic so it let them use their brains without being told what to think about a topic. They ended up being reasonable and rational.
I remember when certain people here were saying they weren't going third party, guessing to recoup that 69 billion they are doing just that.
@TriniOutsider
MLB The Show. But arguably that is a special case. The seemingly accepted story behind that is that MLB told Sony they had to start making the game multiplatform to keep the MLB license. I haven't ever read definitive proof that happened, but assuming that (or something like it) is true, that isn't really indicative of a multiplatform trend in the same way that MS's recent launches on PS5 are.
The only PlayStation owned games on XB is Destiny 2 which was already multiplatform & MLB The Show & that's because it's licensed by the MLB & wanted the game multiplatform. XB first party legendary exclusives are going multiplatform as well as the new games that were supposed to be exclusive to the XB gaming console. It looks though the XB gaming console will have minimal timed exclusives to no exclusives at all.
@TriniOutsider
Get those gloves ready my boy. Gonna need em to move those goal posts. Think with your brain not your gamer heart. You think sony sees ms making all this money and says.. ok get that without us. Help me out here my guy! Sony charged you for psn, then they put their games on pc. What do you think is going to happen next?
Well said, hahahaha that’s so smart and intelligent and not gaslighty my man. you can now definitely play a lot of Ps games on Xbox. That’s the argument. That’s the point. Well done. PS is going third party. Wow, congratulations, no one realised it. Emphasis again on: it’s PlayStation making the moves to put games on Xbox AND PC. I can’t think of another publisher that’s actually doing that…. Mmmmmmm…. Anyway. Only Sony is doing that and not anyone else, not at all.
They also lost money on activision in the last few quarters too dont forget, ms make money hand over fist, that's not new, but I highly doubt the investment has paid off yet.
To be honest as a long time ps gamer, this deal initially made me panic.
but if I had known that it make MS u-turn on exclusive strategy, I would have happily joined xbox fans supporting the acquisition.
They never made a u-turn. Initially Microsoft offered sony a 10 year deal but they turned it down but eventually they agreed. They've always said they wouldn't keep games away from playstation. But that is something Sony was doing to them.
That's the thing. They said they did not aim to take games away from the competition with the acquisitions and that they weren't taking games away from PlayStation. But then they try to get Sony to sign a 10 year deal just to show to a court that they aren't keeping games away. Sony saw this as a tactic to make their acquisitions look like good faith but in reality they don't need to sign that 10 year contract. They just gotta keep developing games for the console. Then they still excluded games from Sony anyways which is what they wanted while saying they didn't. They are only now going third party because they couldn't monopolize the hardware side of things and they ruined their software sales by trying to make everything a service and now we see them continuously bumping the price and changing policies to stop losing money.
Yes they did. I mean I was worried about Elder Scrolls series leaving playstation those days, but now I can play Forza horizon and Gears of War on ps5… this is a crazy turn of events
@Reaper22
You are 💯 correct however we also have to consider these companies lie all the time. Or make plans and change them
According to a developer working on the title, Activision is working on a narrative-based open-world game based on a new engine through its new studio.
The truth is this happens all the time. My first job out of college was being a lead tester at a gaming company. They were always laying off artists and such once their part in the project was done. They liked me and kept me on running the company store until the next project needed testing. I was abruptly laid off a few weeks later but told I would be returning for the next testing in a couple of weeks. A few weeks later the company merged with someone else and they decided to move all testing to their facility. That lasted a year and the company then went in house again before working with a more established publisher later.
I also worked at another company where I loved going in each day and they treated us very well. Honestly one of the best places and group of people I have ever worked at. Well they got purchased by a big company who in time wanted all testing and such in house. I opted not to move to CA for the higher cost of living and so on for the small raise I was promised, and a few years later they changed up again. It is a very vagabond existence sadly as many good people are crunched in a numbers game. Many execs are under huge pressure to ship X number of units in a quarter regardless of quality. I saw games not even 60% done that the team working on would not sign off on that were pushed out the door. The only real security is to own your rights or company and even then you risk being swallowed up due to the need for funding. Look at Infinity Ward, good track record of top sellers and Activision cleaned house there.
Great read.
*“[Call of Duty] will at some point fade out as any other franchise,” he said. “You can’t put out so many games every 6 months looking all the same and charge $60 for them without getting to a point where the consumer feels like he already has enough of that type of game to fill its needs.
Only people who don't play any other type's of game would buy the same game every year sadly which is true i know some people who just play cod year in year which is kinda sad if you ask me there are better game's out there that deserve you're money not a game that has not changed anything other than a new title and a few color upgrade's that's what cod has been doing.
Edit:Does anyone know when they lawsuit is set to be against activision?
good read and i agree completely with this dude...it is only a matter of time before call of duty falls and i think this year will get the ball rolling on that once all the AAA games hit and you see new engines then look at call of duty and see call of duty 4 once again reskined and named....it really dose suck that they dont think about long term effects of just firing people, they do have families, bills, and most likely student loans to pay (if they havent covered those already) and with this economy even with they money they get its still not enough for them....this world is coming to a cold halt and its gonna be sad when that happens
Don’t take this the wrong way because I’m NOT even remotely defending Activision for the EVIL empire we all know it all is but the same can be said of about 99% of all the business today.
I’m in the telecommunications industry (not to be confused with telemarketing) and the same things this guy is saying, I could almost say verbatim.
Business today are in it for the cheap product, lack of consumer interest and the quick buck, that’s it.
If you think any differently you’re just fooling yourself.
This is what corporations do...This isn't just the video game industry doing these tactics.
Corporations will do whatever they want to survive, regardless of those who got them to where they are today.
And of course they'll say "its just business..." but its really greed.