Came here to say this. Activision has been such a poor steward of Blizzard's properties that I find them largely unplayable. It may be unlikely that Microsoft will course correct away from data-drive, engagement-focus mtx games, but I know Activision never will.

Rumor is that Bobby is stepping down once the acquisition closes, which is a good start.

He is gone on the 01.01.2024, until then he remains CEO

Maybe from an artistic perspective, but not from a financial one. It will inevitably mean gamers will spend more money for less game. They might hide it will with their game renting service and microtransactions, but if this was not the case there would be no reason for them to acquire Activision Blizzard in the first place. They see some way to profit by reducing competition.

It is _possible_ that their rental bundle results in a better deal for a reasonable segment of the market than the aggregate of one-off title purchases would be. Though the lock-in means if they jack up the price it might become a poor deal after the fact. Or if you are the kind of person that would purchase fewer games than the total subscription fees would cost, it also wouldn't be better. But sometimes bundling is indeed a better deal for consumers.

As a gamer, I'm most interested in the artistic perspective.

Which games has MS shown good stewardship of?

Halo is a shell of what it once was and has snubbed the players with false promises in recent iterations (couch co-op used to be a staple of Halo but they reneged on their promise to include it with the latest).

AFAIK they haven't had any good exclusive IP for Xbox in a while. They've had a few dynamite hits (ex. Sunset Overdrive) but haven't followed up on any that I'm aware of.

Age of Empires, for one. Thoughtful updates and remastered versions that aren’t priced like new games. Then new games that are actually worth the update. Can’t wait for that same ethos to be applied to Warcraft.

I love SC2 and think it is one of the best esport games. However it is considered a "classic game" for Blizzard and they have a skeleton crew maintaining it. Funding for professional events has been decreasing consistently and especially reduced in 2023. There was a recent controversial balance patch that highlighted problems with community interaction and communication -- and no one knows how soon until a new patch might be deployed. (While it's also true that most fears by players are overblown). Basically, the whole community just holds its breath hoping things continue as they are and the other shoe never drops on a 13 year old game.

Best case scenario is that Microsoft embraces these properties and revitalizes them without ruining the game in the process. Worst case is they kill it completely...

I’m not sure what Blizzard’s strategy with esports is (or now Microsoft’s), but they basically imploded the official Overwatch league by being extremely ambiguous about whether or not it would continue, buying out franchise contracts to leave the league, and leaving Twitch for YouTube.

Microsoft definitely takes the Halo esports scene seriously, so running an esport well is definitely in their skillset. Hopefully those people are paying attention and want to get promoted.

Exclusive IPs aren’t and shouldn’t be a marker of good stewardship.

IMO, exclusives are one of the biggest issues with game systems nowadays, especially now that consoles are basically just reskinned and optimized computers.

Forza is pretty good

Sunset Overdrive was a single game publishing contract with Insomniac Games best known for its Sony second party games and now entirely owned by Sony since 2019 (just after Sunset Overdrive). Microsoft can't follow up on Sunset Overdrive.

>Halo is a shell of what it once

I don't think this is a point against Microsoft, they owned both Halo and Bungie during the golden era. The quality dropped off sharply once Bungie decided to work on other projects and Microsoft had to put together a new team to replace them. If they're still capable of supporting game studios however they did with Bungie, it could be exactly what Blizzard needs.

I don't know if you count it as a game, but Flight Simulator? Sure there was a decade or so when nothing happened, but I think they more than made up for that.

I've argued about this deal on Twitter at length, and the prevailing sentiment of those who favor this acquisition comes down to one thing, and one thing only: getting more AAA games "for free" on Gamepass. Discovering why these people call this an "increase in competition" will be an exercise for future generations of intelligence researchers.

Can't wait for the wailing and gnashing of teeth when the free ride ends and Microsoft starts turning the screws on their (now captive) audience.

I give it a few years before GamePass is as much a month as a full price game and the only way to make it a good deal is to convince yourself they you were going to buy at least one full priced game a month anyway.

I can only speak for myself. I was pretty keen on starcraft and starcraft 2 back in the day, and I made a decision a few years back that blizzard wasn't the sort of company I wanted to support with my money anymore.

Before or after the Activision aquisition?

I never played WoW, but I think every other game up to D3 is a masterpiece.

I don't know about the other fellow, but for me it was when they banned Blitzchung and revoked his prize money for saying "Liberate Hong Kong" on a stream.

One thing I see as an ancient PC Gamer is that Activision also sits on one of the largest hoards of IPs. Not just "cool" IPs from today's games (a lot of people are mentioning Activision's odd/bad stewardship of Blizzard, of course), but Activision bought a lot of the classic publishers in its history as a massive M&A shop. The legacies of Infocom, Sierra, Knowledge Adventure, Davidson, and many more both well known and almost forgotten to history developers and publishers have all been locked into Activision's forgetful vaults. It's such a huge swath of classic PC games. Some of that catalog Activision eventually allowed onto at least GOG (with GOG allegedly doing a lot of the preservation work to make them run), if not Steam, but there's still so much of gaming history that Activision has either claimed to have lost (No One Lives Forever, as one commonly discussed franchise) or just seems disinterested in the IP they own because they can't figure out how to build mobile games from it.

I don't know if Microsoft will be a better custodian of all that gaming history, but as the company most synonymous with the PC today, maybe they will. (If so, among other possibilities PC Game Pass could get very interestingly different from Xbox Game Pass.)

Are you saying I might see Torrin's Passage 2 now?

I also kind of wish to see that. Al Lowe is beyond retired at this point, but maybe Microsoft money can buy at least outlines of his four (!) proposed sequels.

Can you imagine a Leisure Suit Larry in 2023

I regret to inform you that the most recent original Leisure Suit Larry game, "Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Dry Twice," came out in 2020 (2021 on console, 2022 on mobile).

Wow

If you're making a Larry game that's tame enough to be allowed on mobile/console stores, why even bother at that point.

I used to love their games, the past decade has been nothing but a slog for them. I'm hoping M$ might be able to turn some of that around.