COD and elder scrolls series xbox exclusive? 💲🤑💰

https://news.microsoft.com/features/microsoft-to-acquire-activision-blizzard-to-bring-the-joy-and-community-of-gaming-to-everyone-across-every-device/

With three billion people actively playing games today and fueled by a new generation steeped in the joys of interactive entertainment, gaming is now the largest and fastest-growing form of entertainment. Today, Microsoft Corp. announced plans to acquire Activision Blizzard Inc., a leader in game development and interactive entertainment content publisher. This acquisition will accelerate the growth in Microsoft’s gaming business across mobile, PC, console and cloud and will provide building blocks for the metaverse.

When the transaction closes, Microsoft will become the world’s third-largest gaming company by revenue, behind Tencent and Sony. The planned acquisition includes iconic franchises from the Activision, Blizzard and King studios like “Warcraft,” “Diablo,” “Overwatch,” “Call of Duty” and “Candy Crush,” in addition to global eSports activities through Major League Gaming. The company has studios around the word with nearly 10,000 employees.

“Gaming is the most dynamic and exciting category in entertainment across all platforms today and will play a key role in the development of metaverse platforms,” said Satya Nadella, chairman and CEO, Microsoft. “We’re investing deeply in world-class content, community and the cloud to usher in a new era of gaming that puts players and creators first and makes gaming safe, inclusive and accessible to all.”

just damn

loved Skyrim but as a Sony loyalist i'm not too upset about missing out on a game that will come out in 2035

Starfield and ES6 are in active development.

But it's going to happen.

third largest gaming company - behind Sony and Tencent. So yeah this deal is definitely not getting stopped because of any monopoly issues.

But wow...Microsoft owning the rights to brands that were synonymous with Sony Playstation like Crash Bandicoot and Spyro is pretty crazy...

i always wondered why MS just didnt do this from the beginning. buying the business was always the only way theyd win

“Bungie’s technical expertise, coupled with their track record of building highly engaged communities, make them a natural fit for collaboration with PlayStation Studios,” said Herman Hulst, head of PlayStation Studios. “We are excited to make plans to share skills and expertise, and to unlock the potential in having the brilliant minds at Bungie under the PlayStation roof.

“I believe that Bungie joining the PlayStation family will increase the capabilities of PlayStation Studios, and of Bungie, and achieve our vision of expanding PlayStation to hundreds of millions of gamers. For game creators, that’s always our goal: to bring our vision to as many people as possible.”


Both sides have also made it clear that Bungie still can self-publish games, have full control of their existing IP and won't be favoring Sony consoles with Destiny content.

So what I'm REALLY interested in is that the primary thing they talk about is bringing Bungie's technical expertise into the Playstation Studios umbrella on Sony's end and Bungie being able to rapidly expand their workforce on their end. To me, this all sounds like a further push into the Playstation Studios branding that we've already seen little benefits from, like Guerilla and Kojima Productions collaborating on ideas and engine development for Horizon and Death Stranding, or Santa Monica Studios and Naughty Dog collaborating on the narrative and cinematic aspects of God of War, or developers on The Last of Us 2 easily transitioning from Naughty Dog to Santa Monica to work on Ragnarok.


You can see a future in which Bungie - which is gonna have over 1,000 employees after this deal goes through and just one game in its portfolio - is almost like an elite task force for Sony to deploy across their various other projects whether it's live service support, a new FPS franchise in development or just general technical wizardry. This almost seems more like an infrastructure purchase than a product purchase.

Interesting!



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