Ooof. 
Yeah… I just want to hear some actual rumours. Like… Rumours that are from people who have good track records
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I am curious about what Jon and Nick were alluding to in last week’s episode….
The comment Jon made about “Can I add it to the thread” and Nick going “Absolutely not” or something along those lines.
Not saying it’s acquisition related, but it’s something important enough to keep hush hush. Those beautiful bastards.
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I think if they are focusing mainly on big acquisitions we can probably kiss rumors goodbye going forward
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Probably not going to happen
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Ooooh sounds juicyyyy
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While it’s nice for them to get entire publishers, I would like to see them acquire more single studios.
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We know they are talking to single studios as well as publishers.
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Who are they talking to then? 
(I don’t actually know )
I would like a Mission Impossible game to be honest… My favourite movie of all time.
Bet: It closes at least during the COD typical launch week at november, but apparently ABK wanted to rush out MW2 to a month or two before. But it a more safe deadline would be January.
And that’s why i’ve wondered threads ago if MS wouldn’t end up considering have a jack of all trades engine from their own, the industry is in a mixed position, CDPR and seemingly EA are dropping out their in house engines, but Capcom decided to drop Unreal after MvsC Infinite and built RE Engine as their new engine for all big projects, smaller ones pick up Unity. Bamco is also developing a new engine.
In theory, they could have Forzatech for open world games while id Tech would be for FPS and smaller to linear worlds. But also to remember that studios have their own needs, but seems that management on CDPR and EA were the massive issue, Cyberpunk was such visually great game and Frostbite had great examples too.
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IMO T2 made its name with its own IP, they have stretched into NBA, PGA and WWE but they didn’t really do that until 2k over a decade later.
EA on the other hand were pumping out sports titles quite early on, I remember playing them all on my Megadrive (Genesis) 
- especially their annoying splash screen:
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These rumours never turned out true anyway, lol.
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When I was doing research to try and work out what Xbox and Xbox 360 games might be coming to Gamepass in the future via back compat, it turns out like half their stuff was licensed, especially early on. They stopped doing a lot of licenced stuff in the early PS4/XBO days.
For example:
- All of the Spider-Man games between 2000 and 2014 were Activision, including the famous Spider-Man 2 game (developed by Treyarch).
- All of the X-men games between 2000 and 2011 were Activision, including the main movie tie ins, the Legends series and the somewhat cult classic Origins Wolverine game (made by Raven)
- All of the James Bond games for the Daniel Craig era were Activision.
- They made a bunch of Star Trek games such as the Elite Force series and Armada
- A stack of miscellaneous Disney tie in games in franchises like Toy Story and The Lion King.
- Transformers tie in games for both the movies and the IP in general
- Co publisher on some Star Wars games (LucasArts published in NA, activision published worldwide for Jedi Academy for example)
- Very random movie tie in games like Blade II, Shrek, Minority Report and Men in Black (I remember liking minority report game as a kid)
- Vampire The Masquerade games x2
- NASCAR licenced games
- BMX licenced games
- Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater is a licenced game, basically the only one they still make.
- Extremely random sports stuff like Greg Hasting’s Paintball and some kind of pro fishing game??
- MTV’s Pimp My Ride [bowing extremely deeply at this one]
It’s actually very sad because solidly 3/4 of every Activision game made between 2000 and 2010 was a licensed product they likely can’t sell anymore. It’s been a real turnaround since then, that’s for sure. Everything from the Activision side as atrophied, even once successful flagship franchises like Guitar Hero and Skylanders died off. Now it’s CoD and a few efforts to revive stuff like Crash and Spyro.
The majority of Activision-Blizzard games that will hit gamepass when the deal closes will be Call of Duty titles.
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I wouldn’t put much stock in it, no-one has suggested or hinted at the acquisitions that have happened so far, except the Obisidian one so I don’t think anyone outside MS knows about potential deals.
I think the whole Era staff is teasing WB acquisition, but I don’t believe it.
I may be wrong, but I thought Playground games, Undead Labs, The Initiative, and Compulsion were all leaked before that big E3 show. I knew or expected all of them plus the studio from the ground up (The Initiative) I also had heard about Obsidian and InExile before X018 or whatever year it happened. It seems like the only Shockers we have had were Ninja Theory, Maybe Double Fine, Bethesda and Activision.
I don’t think that Compulsion or The Initiative or Ninja Theory was leaked. Even Undead Labs I believe.
Some people expected Playground Games to be acquired sooner or later though. I think only Obsidian leaked I believe.
I remember several youtubers and forums mentioning Xbox was building a studio from the ground up. I think Undead labs was all but confirmed. I knew they were getting like 5 or 6 studios just didn’t know the names of all so Ninja Theory, Compulsion, were the shockers to me.
I suspect if they still wanted WB they would instead buy all of Warner Bros Discovery and maybe try dabble in Movies/TV again, mainly because Microsoft is one of the few tech giants not to have it’s own Movie/TV division.
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