I got into a lot of discussions with people who seemed to believe that Microsoft would “save” Activision-Blizzard. Clean up the culture, create a better work environment, shift the focus away from live-services and micro-transactions. People were expecting a lot of their older games to make their way to GamePass… Which is a whole other kind of predatory pricing.
Lo and behold- AB went ahead and laid off almost 2,000 redundant positions after the acquisition and don’t seem to have changed their business structure much.
I was never so deeply in favor of the acquisition, but I did find the focus on exclusives hypocritical. Microsoft had already made many of their games available cross platform, while Sony had not at the time.
I definitely saw people looking at the culture angle as a silver lining or sometimes as a potential net positive. I only saw fanboys celebrating Bethesda though.
Either way it seemed to me like most were looking at the potential upside. Not that they were actually glad that it happened.
I got into a lot of discussions with people who seemed to believe that Microsoft would “save” Activision-Blizzard. Clean up the culture, create a better work environment, shift the focus away from live-services and micro-transactions. People were expecting a lot of their older games to make their way to GamePass… Which is a whole other kind of predatory pricing.
Lo and behold- AB went ahead and laid off almost 2,000 redundant positions after the acquisition and don’t seem to have changed their business structure much.
This may have been my thought.
I was never so deeply in favor of the acquisition, but I did find the focus on exclusives hypocritical. Microsoft had already made many of their games available cross platform, while Sony had not at the time.
I definitely saw people looking at the culture angle as a silver lining or sometimes as a potential net positive. I only saw fanboys celebrating Bethesda though.
Either way it seemed to me like most were looking at the potential upside. Not that they were actually glad that it happened.