MICROSOFT IS BUYING BLIZZARD! Noooooooooo! :(

[BustaMike]

The best thing about this buyout... they're making a sequel to the best arcade racing game of all time - Crash Team Racing. Crash Nitro Cart is due out sometime around November and I can't wait.

I personally think that Microsoft's buyout of Vivendi is a good thing. The Xbox is the superior system in all hardware aspects. Now maybe it'll become the superior system in terms of developers also .

[monolith94]

I will say this for Microsoft - they have great taste in game developers!
First Bungie, now Blizzard? I wonder which will be the next to go?
I don't think that this will stifle innovation, really. The best that can happen from this is that these game developers who have, at times, had to struggle with monetary resources (Bungie in particular) will have all the money they need to create their masterpeices (I'm thinking of Halo 2 here! ).
It looks like if I do ever get a console, the X-Box (as much as I hate to admit it) has the games that I am the most interested in (I've already finished GTA3: vice city & Final Fantasy X) - Fable, Halo 2, Halo, etc?

[SnowFire]

Frankychan: No such contract was signed. Sony simply bought up some of Square, and might have helped keep it from totally jumping ship, but Square is publishing for the GC now too. Or will be very soon.

MS would certainly NOT publish any games for the PS2 or Gamecube...you're smoking something if you think they will.

MS publishes stuff for the Mac, right? (Sure, they do own a good chunk of Mac too, but...) Anyway, it's possible MS will do that, but it's bad PR and bad for your relations with your newly bought liscenses. Annoy them too much, and THEY might jump ship. MS certainly wouldn't tell in-house studios (like Bungie or Gas Powered) to develop for the PS2, but other studios that MS just happens to publish the games of (even if they do technically own them now)...

At least relating to Starcraft: Ghost, Blizzard has always had a strong tradition of independence from its publisher. They've said "we sell a zillion games, you should consider it an honor that you get to publish them, not the other way around that we get to use you. So lay off us and let us miss our release dates." If that's still there, then I'm guessing MS would be smart enough to leave the ball in Blizzard's court about whether to continue porting or not.

[General Ludd]

It's not the monolithic corporations and publishers that stifle creation, it's the customer base that does it. If people didn't keep buying up all the crap they pump out these days, they wouldn't do it. If the "casual gamer" wasn't so painfully stupid, they wouldn't have to dumb-down and simplify games like they have with Civ3 and, as it seems, MOO3.

[Sava]

sigh... American capitalism is ruining the video-game industry now... no more small developing companies that make innovative, fun games... now we've got a handful of big software powerhouses cranking out the same game with updated graphics every year. Microshaft sucks...

[JCG]

...But on the good side, as has been said, if someone at M$ wants Starcraft 2 to be made, it'll probably be done (So Go! Corporate Pressure Go!).

I don't care what exclusives the X-Box gets, as long as they at least get PC ports....

[Asher]

Originally posted by Sava
sigh... American capitalism is ruining the video-game industry now... no more small developing companies that make innovative, fun games... now we've got a handful of big software powerhouses cranking out the same game with updated graphics every year. Microshaft sucks...

You obviously don't have a clue what's going on, do you.

MS is buying Vivendi's game division. Blizzard, Sierra, etc. are already owned by a megacorporation.

Vivendi being a huge French company burdened by debt and not very profitable.
Microsoft being a huge American company with billions of dollars sitting around doing nothing.

Vivendi couldn't give lots of the development houses the budgets they needed since cash is very tight around there, MS is throwing gobs of cash at any game developer under their umbrella that asks for it...

Snowfire:

MS publishes stuff for the Mac, right? (Sure, they do own a good chunk of Mac too, but...) Anyway, it's possible MS will do that, but it's bad PR and bad for your relations with your newly bought liscenses.

Again, this wouldn't make sense for MS to do. MS wants people to buy the Xbox. If they start releasing good games on other platforms, the incentive to buy the Xbox naturally decreases. This is the complete opposite of the PC/Mac world. The reason MS releases Mac software is to keep antitrust whining to a minimum, plus they aren't trying to gain marketshare there. The Xbox is about gaining marketshare -- you don't gain marketshare by publishing games on competing consoles!

If that's still there, then I'm guessing MS would be smart enough to leave the ball in Blizzard's court about whether to continue porting or not.

MS will throw a pile of cash at them, tell them they only need to worry about one platform, and go for it.

There is simply no way, no how, that MS is going to publish PS2 and GCN games -- at any time, for whatever reason. Not. Gonna. Happen.

I will say this for Microsoft - they have great taste in game developers!
First Bungie, now Blizzard? I wonder which will be the next to go?

And don't forget Rare. And Tim Schaffer's company, and Chris Taylor's company, and Brian Reynold's company...

[Buck Birdseed]

I want an XBox so I can play Psychonauts. Tim Schafer is god!

But Asher, you only need to look at other, adjacent industries to see that originality is rarely the preserve of the biggest corporations. Look at the music industry or the film industry, barely any interesting new trends or people originate from the big studios or publishers. Big corporations are big, stodgy, immobile, slow to respond to trends, uninterested in the small scale, unwilling to engage in long-term low-appeal projects and stuck in previously healthy profit patterns. The innovation is thereafter.

[Asher]

It costs many millions of dollars to make a modern game, Snapcase, you can't go and compare that to music where the costs are a fraction of that.

The film industry is also weird, and many indy films are indeed innovative, but the vast majority of them suck ass accordingly. You can also make films on shoestring budgets when possible (see Blair Witch).

Games require years of work, teams of people, and lots of testing.

You need big backers to do a big game, innovative or not. And smalltime studios are going to have a hard time finding funding unless they have a big daddy parent company who brings in the dough.

[Buck Birdseed]

I dunno, most of the really good games I've played recently have been freeware games on zero budget.

[Sharpe]

I somehow see this ending up in court - the last thing Microsoft should have done was to make such a large acquisition such a little while after being convicted of being an illegal monopoly and having "restrictions" placed on them.

If buying a $ 2 billion dollar division to gain a dominant presence in the gaming industry (this makes them more powerful than EA for sure! if they already weren't more powerful) is an example of the "restrictions" placed on Microsoft, they really are useless...

Somehow I don't see EA or Sony or the other major gaming companies letting this happen without a fight...

[Asher]

That's obviously not part of the video game industry.

And I know there's lots of free games out there. I coded and administered a text-based sci-fi game with 300 players. It was like Trade Wars meets X-Wing, all online.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Sharpe
I somehow see this ending up in court - the last thing Microsoft should have done was to make such a large acquisition such a little while after being convicted of being an illegal monopoly and having "restrictions" placed on them.

If buying a $ 2 billion dollar division to gain a dominant presence in the gaming industry (this makes them more powerful than EA for sure! if they already weren't more powerful) is an example of the "restrictions" placed on Microsoft, they really are useless...

Somehow I don't see EA or Sony or the other major gaming companies letting this happen without a fight...

This is ridiculous, MS doesn't even come close to having a monopoly in the video games industry. Vivendi offered the division to a number of companies: Sony, EA, and MS -- Sony and EA *BOTH* have higher marketshares in the video game industry than MS. If MS didn't snag them up, EA or Sony would have.

Not to mention the fact that there's nothing remotely illegal about this tactic. MS uses money from its other businesses to enter this market. That's what Nintendo did with its trading cards back in the 80s, that's what Sony did with its consumer electronics in the 90s, and that's what MS is doing with its software business in the 00s.

It's not illegal, it's business.

[Drake Tungsten]

If MS starts using predatory pricing to gain marketshare in the console market, then it will be illegal. Anyone else heard the rumors of the Xbox going to $99?

[DinoDoc]

No response from Blizzard yet.