So, Microsoft, through their XBox division, will be buying out Activision Blizzard (The home of titles like Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, and Candy Crush) for a reported cash price of $68.7 Billion. This makes the buyout of Zenimax (and with it, Bethesda Studios) for $10 Billion seem quite meager, when that was a huge story, less than a year ago.
While some might be concerned by this news, I find it to be a breath of fresh air, if for only one point: Bobby Kotick is going to be getting the damn boot, when this all falls out. Seriously, fuck that guy!
Anyway, this purchase isn’t final, as it has to be cleared of any potential antitrust issues with the government, but I think in the end it will get done. Of course, the immediate response to this news seems to basically come down to “but what about the other formats?!”… which means “What about Playstation?!?”
Well, what about them? Should Microsoft just buy Sony, too? I think that might be pushing things a bit too far, but if you insist…
Seriously, though, I think Playstation fans are deliberately forgetting the entire last console generation, when XBox was starving for third-party exclusives, while Playstation had all of the great exclusives all locked up. But now that the shoe isn’t so much on the other foot, as Sony still has all of those old exclusives in their corner, but is a bit more equal (with XBox having locked a bunch of cross-platform titles now exclusive to XBox and PC), Playstation Stans are losing their collective shit.
Good. Cry moar.
I don’t even have a horse in this race, but I find it funny how PS fans are bitching about losing Bethesda and Activision titles in the future, while they had no problem with Sony hoarding even more stuff onto the Playstation 4 as recently as last year. Now I know that big companies being bought up by even larger companies is bad for competition, and even worse for customers in the long run, right now I really don’t care about that too much. It’s still funny watching them bitch and moan just makes my damn day.
So, in conclusion, Microsoft beat Tencent to the punch, and “World of Warcraft” will be coming to XBox in the next few years. Book it, done.
