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Microsoft has Closed the Activision Blizzard King Deal

Gavon West

Spread's Cheeks for Intrusive Ads
We know that some games, like RE 7 and 8, can't be in gamepass because of clauses in marketing contracts with Sony.
'If' (big IF) the same clause exists in the Sony CoD marketing for the last 10 years, which is plausible because Activision itself said it doesn't like the gamepass model so it would be easy to ask them to agree with it, can those games be in gamepass?
Sony's Exclusive CoD agreement ends next year. Activision no longer has any say on what hits game pass or no. Whole new game playa. What can hit Gamepass WILL hit Gamepass. And Im sure Microsoft has plans for damn near every game aside from CoD of this year. Next year will be different though.
 

NickFire

Member
I don't understand why anybody would logically wish for Microsoft's failure at this point. Suggestion for the Sony fans...Since the deal is done, why not take the lemons and hope they can make lemonade. It means better games in the future or, the alternative, them basically destroying some very popular franchises. I mean this doesn't really threaten Playstation anyway.

That seems like a harsh reality to bear just for an opportunity to say "I told you so".
My logical brain sees very few, not really any, movies of the same quality as Top Gun Maverick developed by Netflix.
 

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
j1KqLL1.jpg




Hey, Metro ... u ok ?
 

johnjohn

Member
The list you provided is significantly less impactful than those on each other rival platform.

They can still be “good”, but in their current state they are not producing even a single GOTY candidate eligible title. Rival platform holders produce them routinely.

Not all of them need to, but your average consumer is not really looking at those studios with great anticipation (excluding CoD’s mainstream legacy appeal)

I hope they become that someday, but after Bethesda’s recent output amongst other MS studio failings, I’m not holding my breath
Pure delusion lol.
 

Ozriel

M$FT
The stable of developers they have are mediocre at best, and poor at worst. Having 30 of them doesn't make them suddenly exciting to the vast majority of the fanbase.

The uphill battle Phil will have is actually turning these poorly run mediocre/poor studios into something that can achieve top tier levels of industry quality. It's not easy. Microsoft has been trying to do just that for the last few decades to no avail.

Your obsession with downplaying anything Xbox is fascinating to see.
5 years ago, you would not have been labeling ID Software, Obsidian, InXile, Playground Games, Bethesda, Tango, Arkane, Double Fine et al as 'mediocre at best'.


I think either IGN are masterful trolls, or their social media manager is suffering from early onset dementia.

They have posted the same tweet once every couple of weeks since the year started

F78X6VGWsAE8ZHp



And like clockwork, this is today:



zD3vZwa.jpg


Maybe new documents keep showing up every week? :messenger_grinning_smiling:
 

James Sawyer Ford

Gold Member
Pure delusion lol.

If my argument were delusional, Microsoft would not need $70B acquisitions in order to be relevant/competitive.

Your obsession with downplaying anything Xbox is fascinating to see.
5 years ago, you would not have been labeling ID Software, Obsidian, InXile, Playground Games, Bethesda, Tango, Arkane, Double Fine et al as 'mediocre at best'.


Man, I just pointed out that Xbox has good studios when you made the comment that they had none. I'm not here to argue who is winning the console race or what is AAA. I've pointed out a number of studios that Xbox has that make good games, that's that.



What is with you and just going on this wild tangents? Bringing up GotY, broad appeal, AAA sales, and now Microsoft leadership.

That has got nothing to do with your original point. Does Microsoft have studios that make good games? Yes. End of, your point has been debunked, discussion over.

Going on other points you mentioned, do they have good AAA games. Yes. Do they have studios nominated for GotY at the TGA. Yes.

I don't care for who is winning what or the leadership, or sales. I just jumped in to point out MS has good studios.

You guys have a problem reading. I called their studios mediocre. That means it's average, moderate quality, not VERY good. But the average videogame studio is still PRETTY good. Most of the bad ones have already died off. Are their titles worth playing? Sure, especially on GamePass where there's no risk of being disappointed. They don't appeal to me very much, as I prefer top tier games in the AAA space, which I'll discuss in my reply to the following post.

Nowdays I usually see you complain about the GOTY games so why are you hyping them up so much? Did you even like Elden Ring? What about TOTK for this year? BG3?

Can I ask what you are playing now? Like this weekend? Yesterday?

I mostly played Starfield yesterday, kept building on my ship and base, raided some outposts. Closing in on 150 hours played. Played Minecraft too and did the voting map with the parkour course. Fun times! 👍

GOTY candidate or not, if people keep playing games then they aren’t failures and they don’t need to be in any GOTY talks to be great and important additions to a games library.

In Sony’s case many high profile games are story-focused games I play through once and often enjoy but rarely keep playing when the story is finished. They last a week or two and then I’m back to waiting for the next one, which might be awhile.

On PC, which is where I mostly play now, my most played games are No Man’s Sky, Elden Ring, Cyberpunk, Starfield and Skyrim. Open, non-linear, creativity, roleplaying, exploration. Key ingredients for me for a nice main course, then I jump in for a GOTY dessert on PS5 once or twice per year.

I loved Elden Ring. I enjoyed TOTK despite my problems with it, still consider it a top game this year and will likely win GOTY by the press. BG3, I have not played yet but may try when I get around to a backlog. I'm playing Cyberpunk right now and loving it, which is in stark contrast to Starfield. I enjoyed FF16 greatly despite its flaws and shortcomings. Pikmin 4 was a title I didn't think I'd like until I was impressed by the demo. Resident Evil 4 Remake was sensational, and Hogwarts was extremely captivating and well done. Hi Fi Fush was a very nice surprise and what we need more of from MGS, but it was also a pretty short affair and more like an indie game (which is fine). These are the kinds of games/experiences I want from Microsoft Games Studios, and they just don't make them with anywhere near the same frequency/regularity as rivals.

Last month I played Starfield for about 20 hours waiting for it to "get good" according to Matty Plays and that just never happened. Starfield is by far the biggest disappointment to me this year. It's a game that has cool aspects visually/aurally, but is wrapped in the absolute worst quest/story/NPC/writing/world design of any modern AAA game I've played in recent memory and feels completely antiquated and left behind. I booted up Redfall and uninstalled it pretty much immediately.
 
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Zathalus

Member
You guys have a problem reading. I called their studios mediocre. That means it's average, moderate quality, not VERY good. But the average videogame studio is still PRETTY good. Most of the bad ones have already died off. Are their titles worth playing? Sure, especially on GamePass where there's no risk of being disappointed. They don't appeal to me very much, as I prefer top tier games in the AAA space, which I'll discuss in my reply to the following post.
None of the studios (bar one) I mentioned make mediocre games, all the games they have made review quite well, matching most of the output from Sony studios in terms of review scores, obviously SSM and ND is better though.

Critic and player consensus for all the studios I mentioned are 80s-90s:

Double Fine - Psychonauts 2, OC - 89%, Steam - 96%
inXile - Wasteland 3, OC - 86%, Steam - 87%
Ninja Theory - Hellblade, OC - 84%, Steam - 91%
Obsidian Entertainment - Pentiment , OC - 86%, Steam - 95% (Not indie would be Outer Worlds - OC - 83%, Steam - 84%)
Playground Games - Forza Horizon 5, OC - 92%, Steam - 88%
Rare - Sea of Thieves, OC - 67%, Steam 90% (OC includes launch scores, but being a GaaS recent re-reviews such as IGN and Gamespot are 8/10, backed up by the Steam score)
World's Edge - Age of Empires 4, OC - 83%, Steam - 86%
id - Doom Eternal, OC - 89%, Steam - 91%
Tango Gameworks - Ghostwire: Tokyo, OC - 77%, Steam - 82%, High Fi Rush, OC - 89%, Steam - 97%
Toys for Bob - Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time, OC - 85%, Steam - 87%
Beenox - Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2 , OC -89%, Steam - 81%
Infinity Ward - Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, OC - 75%, Steam 21% (COD lol)

Now you might not personally like any of them, but calling that kind of output mediocre? Please.

With the exception of Infinity Ward (which is just going to rake in billions with COD) all of the above studios last games have been really good. All of them bar Pentiment (which you can use Outer Worlds instead) and Age of Empires 4 are AAA games. These are the same scores that almost all Sony games get. Since the PS5 launched only two Sony games have cracked 90% on OC/MC and one of them was a remake. Extending that to the past 7 years (average console lifespan) that rises to a grand total of 4 games that have scored above a 90% on OC/MC that were developed by Sony.
 

James Sawyer Ford

Gold Member
Now you might not personally like any of them, but calling that kind of output mediocre? Please.

With the exception of Infinity Ward (which is just going to rake in billions with COD) all of the above studios last games have been really good. All of them bar Pentiment (which you can use Outer Worlds instead) and Age of Empires 4 are AAA games. These are the same scores that almost all Sony games get. Since the PS5 launched only two Sony games have cracked 90% on OC/MC and one of them was a remake. Extending that to the past 7 years (average console lifespan) that rises to a grand total of 4 games that have scored above a 90% on OC/MC that were developed by Sony.

And if those games are so good, why isn't Xbox more competitive?

Because an AA that scores a mid 80s metacritic is not the same as an AAA that does the same. Those titles are fine. They're not impactful though. Psychonauts 2 being a high 80s metacritic is not the same as Spider-Man 2 or something with the same score.
 
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Zathalus

Member
And if those games are so good, why isn't Xbox more competitive?

Because an AA that scores a mid 80s metacritic is not the same as an AAA that does the same. Those titles are fine. They're not impactful though. Psychonauts 2 being a high 80s metacritic is not the same as Spider-Man 2 or something with the same score.
See? There you go again, talking about console sales. I don't care about any of that, my point (that I have repeated often enough) is that Microsoft is sitting on a number of Studios that are not mediocre by any definition.

If you want to argue that most of the games they are releasing do not have the casual appeal of Spider-Man then I can fully agree with that. But that doesn't have anything to do with the quality of a game.
 

James Sawyer Ford

Gold Member
See? There you go again, talking about console sales. I don't care about any of that, my point (that I have repeated often enough) is that Microsoft is sitting on a number of Studios that are not mediocre by any definition.

If you want to argue that most of the games they are releasing do not have the casual appeal of Spider-Man then I can fully agree with that. But that doesn't have anything to do with the quality of a game.

Okay, you don't care about it, but many people want more than just some indie title or AA game scoring pretty well. You listed a bunch of games that, while probably good based on their scores, arent setting the world on fire and don't have broad appeal.

The whole reason I bought an Xbox was for Starfield to be that AAA game, but it's nowhere close. The games I listed above and played (third parties and Sony/Nintendo first party) are what Microsoft needs to strive for. Not Pentiment.
 
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I have every platform so it won't make a practical difference to me, however I don't like the fact I won't be able to decide which platform I want to play a game on. It might be a psychological issue but I don't like the idea of having to play the next Crash on the Xbox. I tend to buy shooters on the Xbox but I prefer platformers on the Playstation. I would have always bought Starfield on the Xbox even if it was on the Playstation. I don't like the feeling of being restricted even if I can still play ever new game.
 

quest

Not Banned from OT
I have every platform so it won't make a practical difference to me, however I don't like the fact I won't be able to decide which platform I want to play a game on. It might be a psychological issue but I don't like the idea of having to play the next Crash on the Xbox. I tend to buy shooters on the Xbox but I prefer platformers on the Playstation. I would have always bought Starfield on the Xbox even if it was on the Playstation. I don't like the feeling of being restricted even if I can still play ever new game.
If Microsoft didn't buy zenimax i doubt you would of waited 1 year or more for the xbox version of Starfield. The zenimax purchase was all about stopping sony from having every zenimax game locked up to timed deals. This was on Sony for getting greedy on timed exclusives on zenimax games.
 
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adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
The games I listed above and played (third parties and Sony/Nintendo first party) are what Microsoft needs to strive for. Not Pentiment.

Why not both.gif

They have studios working on the AAA projects, which almost every major publisher agrees is a 5~ years or thereabout process, meanwhile they also have studios cranking out smaller, well regarded, games in the middle.
 

PaintTinJr

Member
See? There you go again, talking about console sales. I don't care about any of that, my point (that I have repeated often enough) is that Microsoft is sitting on a number of Studios that are not mediocre by any definition.

If you want to argue that most of the games they are releasing do not have the casual appeal of Spider-Man then I can fully agree with that. But that doesn't have anything to do with the quality of a game.
Quality games that didn't hit instant market popularity, ones that are more than just holding a meta score metric to describe them as so-so-good go on to find critical acclaim and secondary commercial success, just like films do, and even TVs shows like Breaking Bad did.

The list you provided is made of a small number of games that were commercial successful at day 1 - in the context of their genre - and the rest are so-so-good. I don't see any critical acclaim games in there that can justify missing commercial success at release and then go on to be held as great games getting a second wind or successful remaster, say like an Ico, SotC, Journey or a Valkyria Chronicles., or a Wonderful 101
 

johnjohn

Member
Okay, you don't care about it, but many people want more than just some indie title or AA game scoring pretty well. You listed a bunch of games that, while probably good based on their scores, arent setting the world on fire and don't have broad appeal.

The whole reason I bought an Xbox was for Starfield to be that AAA game, but it's nowhere close. The games I listed above and played (third parties and Sony/Nintendo first party) are what Microsoft needs to strive for. Not Pentiment.
You couldn't have it more wrong lol. Sony are the ones that need to strive for games like Pentiment and HiFi Rush instead of relying on couple AAA games a year with long droughts in between. That just doesn't cut it anymore.
 

Gambit2483

Member
Not backed up by figures.

What we actually know is Gamepass had at least 25 million subscribers. We know it now has another 11 million moves from Gold and that doesn't include people signing up for the likes of Starfield and Forza.
We know Spencer says the division is profitable despite already funding the biggest first party line up in history and leaked figures from the court back that up.
We know some Gamepass owners will not buy COD next year when it is on Gamepass but we know that it's likely to be a big Treyarch release and that people will still be paying full price on PlayStation and PC as well as the game increasing that day one revenue by releasing on Steam and Switch 2. That sounds pretty healthy to me.
Plus of course Activision already bringing billions in profit yearly.

I'd say that's a pretty strong position myself.
Phil Spencer says a lot of things. What he said about profitability might be under the context of one title.

The subscription model only makes sense if you have a extremely high stable sub numbers for an extended period of time.

Developing multiple AAA games under this model means you either have to increase sub numbers and/or sub prices or eventually decrease game budgets. This is basic math at the end of the day...but ok everything's fine and that's why MS was considering canning the whole Xbox division a few years back and why they have to buy up every IP they can or have till 2027 to get their numbers up..bc everything's perfectly fine as is...Ok.
 
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ReBurn

Gold Member
I think either IGN are masterful trolls, or their social media manager is suffering from early onset dementia.

They have posted the same tweet once every couple of weeks since the year started

F78X6VGWsAE8ZHp



And like clockwork, this is today:



zD3vZwa.jpg
Glitch in the matrix
 

James Sawyer Ford

Gold Member
Because most of those games were multiplatform. Just like the studios were multiplatform prior to acquisition. But they're still titles made by those studios.
You're basically arguing that the guys who made Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal are suddenly mediocre now Microsoft purchased them.

You think Doom sequels are going to turn the tide in the console war, really? These games sold a few million while being multiplatform. They got nowhere close to 10+, let alone 15-20M like some of the top AAA first party titles on other platforms. And you think they'll now do better on LESS platforms?
 

James Sawyer Ford

Gold Member
Why not both.gif

They have studios working on the AAA projects, which almost every major publisher agrees is a 5~ years or thereabout process, meanwhile they also have studios cranking out smaller, well regarded, games in the middle.

Both are fine, but Microsoft's problem is that they don't have the AAA projects - they may be ATTEMPTING to create them, but the past few years have failed spectacularly in that regard even after buying a major publisher with Bethesda.
 

johnjohn

Member
Both are fine, but Microsoft's problem is that they don't have the AAA projects - they may be ATTEMPTING to create them, but the past few years have failed spectacularly in that regard even after buying a major publisher with Bethesda.
How have they failed spectacularly?
You think Doom sequels are going to turn the tide in the console war, really? These games sold a few million while being multiplatform. They got nowhere close to 10+, let alone 15-20M like some of the top AAA first party titles on other platforms. And you think they'll now do better on LESS platforms?
No one game is going to "turn the tide"... I know the script right now is that since Starfield didn't immediately make Sony go out of business it means it was a failure, but that's not how this works and you know that.

It's the consistent flow of first party games from MS' now 50+ studios while Sony is releasing two AAA games a year that will "turn the tide". And yes Doom is going to be part of that and will make an impact.
 
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