Apple
Apple isn’t buying Sony. Apple makes money hand over fist off gaming doing absolutely nothing. They aren’t going to take over a console business that requires constant management when they can lean back in their chairs and make money.
It’s also the type of purchase that WOULD garner antitrust attention.
people forget apple is also platform/ecosystem holder in gaming market
Indeed. Also Sony’s music and movie catalog is desirable for someone like Apple. Arguably far more so than PlayStation.
Even Matty/Grubb/Warren/Tassi are on the same boat. Spencer bought Bethesda and Activision to bollster Gamepass, not to make #321 money printing machines or even making investors happy af. Same case, same wording regarding the exclusivity.
Thinking about how much of a damn steal microsoft got minecraft for. Only $2.5 Billion for what would become the most successful game in history. Hell even at the time it was wildly sucessful, it was definitely undervalued.
I dont get how yall think that xbox is gonna take developers from CoD one of the biggest IP’s in gaming history (and xbox once the deal goes through) and gut 2 of the 3 studios from it to only have 1 studio per IP. That wont happen and the best case scenario is most likely allowing those teams to do other work aside from CoD if they want at times and CoD coming out maybe every 2 years instead of 1.
Like Treyarch and IW make such different games that it doesnt make sense.
I can envision the likes of Toys for Bob being allowed to work on their previous type of games because Phil keeps saying they lack more kid friendly games. But yeah, the likes of IW, Treyarch and Sledgehammer are remaining with COD in my opinion.
It’s only @Hindle who suggested Treyarch and Sledgehammer make something else other than CoD 
IW, Treyarch, and Sledgehammer ARE CoD devs and will remain that but hopefully with more time allocated for each release.
Other non-support studios like Toys for Bob that were put on CoD support should be taken back to creating their own games and hopefully some work with IP from ActiBlizz/Xbox/Beth/or licensed hehe
lmao
For me it doesn’t make any sense for roughly 80% or more of activision’s work force to be working on one IP that has been increasingly slipping in quality from a forced annual release schedule. you can’t tell me all of the studios purchased by Activision over the years have all been super excited about being a COD support studio machine. If Infinity Ward or Treyarch want to work on something else I would hope that Microsoft doesn’t keep forcing them to make COD. Also It doesn’t need to be an annual release. With gamepass they don’t have to worry about individual sales and can make COD more of a platform with a polished developed over time Multiplayer like COD Mobile, but on a larger scale. Then have a 8-10 hour campaign release every year that should be pretty easy to manage between 2 studios or as a side project for any studio that would like to build a COD campaign if they standardize the engine and tools across the board. This means they could also release campaign expansions or continue storys much easier. Imagine if they did this and 343 or the Coalition wanted to release a COD campaign one year or something I think it could be big. The main point is, is that COD is too similar and nothing much changes to justify a new $70 release every year with 80% of your employees fully dedicated to it.
It’s just people projecting how they feel about COD lol.
You don’t make a purchase this large to shrink the COD IP.
Imagine removing COD off it’s biggest market in PlayStation and proceed to make it a 3 year cycle franchise lol. You’re basically wiping out 50-70% of its worth in earning revenue on a year by year basis.
Definitely not happening.
The smart thing is keeping it annual, staffing up the studios, while keepinh Warzone multiplat but with a big * on the home page which shows you need to be on GP to get the juicy perks aka with playing the annual COD. XD
If you release 3 DLC bundles at say £20 each, for COD 2023 each year upto 2025… they’d still make their money plus the next game can have a 3 year rest.
You’d also have all the gamepass money still coming in, plus you’re not losing 30% of your revenue to Sony.
Also Sledgehammer could go make their own games, whilst IW and Treyarch concentrate on Warzone and COD 2026 and 2029 and Sledgehammers games would bring in their own profit.
The frustrating thing about these takes is that Bungie wasn’t a subsidiary (aka owned) by Activision, they only signed exclusive rights with Activision… so no, Bungie ownership wouldn’t have been part of the deal. This is basic.
If you just choose to ignore that forcing all the studios to slave away on COD games is a large contributor to the low morale and the toxic work culture you have a point. Either they are going to fix it or they aren’t.
No one is saying they are going to “gut” those studios. They are saying that you don’t need 4000 people working on one IP if you stop releasing a new one every 12 months. You can let groups like Toys for Bob go back to doing what they do best and keep 2/3 COD studios, balance their workforce, and still release one every 1.5-2 years. It is about rebalancing and better utilizing talent. Activision moved to this model because Kotick and co were focused on bleeding it dry to get rich. MS doesnt have the impetus to follow the same path.
We don’t need to discuss will they/won’t they scenarios in the acquisition thread when we have essentially three other threads to do so.