And that’s just cash-on-hand, if they took on debt (Microsoft has very little comparatively) things would be very interesting indeed. Basically:
Keep in mind, I’m advocating for Xbox acquisitions so long as they continue to offer the developers creative freedom, better benefits packages, mitigate redundancies, and provide security for the staff at said developers. There are other factors of course, but thus far we’ve seen nothing but news that those aforementioned parameters have continued to be the case with their acquisitions. Of course, I’m also an advocate because of their inherent benefit to Xbox players: the inclusion of those catalogs into Game Pass.
I look at it this way, were they on Call of Duty before or when Activision bought them? If they want to continue doing what they have been doing that is fine, but Microsoft has said so and hopefully follows through and will not force any of these studios into doing something they don’t want to do. what if Sledghammer wanted to do someting similar to Deadspace or Treyarch who has done everything from Hockey, to Spider-man, to 007 wanted to get back to something like that?
Getting EA will be neat mainly for portfolio of theirs, especially the likes of Dead Space, Dragon Age, and Mass Effect. But business move, Activision is a good one.
SH were built for CoD. Treyarch have been on CoD since 2006.
Studios consist of hundreds of people, it’s hard to say there’s something they all “want” to create. Very few decide that (the creatives / leadership). And if some creatives have an interesting pitch they could have it made with a new team and or with a collaboration with another internal team or studio, without the whole studio shifting to that project necessarily.
WB is still my preferred publisher of those still available. They cover a segment that Microsoft isn’t already saturated in and Multiversus would be perfect now that they have an even more ridiculous roster of characters.
I think people tend to gloss over that public companies like Ubisoft and Activision, who have to rely purely on their output to carry the business are under the external pressure of shareholder value and perpetual growth. Those externalities shape their path. They dont get to a point of copy pasta checklist maps by choice. Its creative people, talented people, who need to pay the bills doing what is being asked of them.
I think we all would had been happy with Ubi, Activision or EA being acquired. All of them would bring big franchises and workforces to xbox and game pass.
Lot of upside to the Activision Blizzard purchase as long as the folks at Xbox can get the ship back on track. I think more focus on the developers and creative freedom and less focus on profits is what they need to revitalize things.
So many talented studios turned into machines to support financial goals.
