Microsoft Is Interested In Acquiring Warner Bros. Gaming Unit (thestreet.com) 27
According to a new report from The Information, Microsoft is interested in bidding on Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, which is currently a division of AT&T. From a report: Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, or WB Games, is known for publishing the "Batman: Arkham" series, "Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor," many "Lego" and "Harry Potter" games, "Mortal Kombat," and "The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt." The unit consists of game-development studios in the U.S., Canada and the U.K. AT&T acquired the gaming business as part of the 2018 buyout of Time Warner assets. This deal and the 2014 acquisition of DirecTV increased AT&T's debt and the company has been looking to ways to cut costs and unload assets.
Indie Games (Score:4, Interesting)
This is why I mostly play indie games. They still give a shit about the fun and game play factors more often than AAA companies. Plus, they also cater to niche demographics.
AAA game companies are fundamentally disconnected from their players. They are mostly flash in the pan graphics that attract eyes and attention long before they have a chance to learn the game they are playing is as shallow as a mud puddle and occasionally a pot hole when we get lucky.
Microsoft would have never invented Halo or Minecraft, they can only buy great titles and do their best to not ruin them... whoops... too late!
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I enjoyed the whole Halo series. In fact, I enjoyed it so much that I just bought the remastered collection in the summer sale. So at least they've managed not to fuck that up too badly. On the other hand, the new Minecraft title requires a Microsoft account. Boooooo.
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The 'AAA' do not provide 'AAA' gaming, they target the non-gamer crowd, they represent the majority of the market, they have no real idea what they are doing, they just see the numbers on a spreadsheet. They see more value in spending money on advertising and real flash looking games, than on gameplay. Only the gamers really care about quality gameplay, the mass market, just needs to be sold something that can be advertised, appearance counting way more than substance. The other market they target is the pa
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Games published by Warner Bros that I've played:
- Hitman 2 : Excellent game, lots of fun (including the Hitman maps)
- Middle Earth: Shadow of War and Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor : I've played both because the first one was so much fun I bought the second
- Mad Max : Got a little repetitive after the first 30 hours or so, but lots of fun until then
- Barman Arkham whatever: I have a couple of these via bundles. Not a style of game I enjoy but they keep making sequels, so someone must be finding them worth p
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As long as there is some growth in the concept, I'm fine with "reinventing" a game. Or even just a combination of old games. Recently I bought Avorion, which is sort of Minecraft in SPAAACE, but also a lot like X3. Very fun.
And as long as some players buy the n-th iteration of FIFA, that are still honest earnings for the publisher. It's just not the sort of game I would pay money for.
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And then they will shut it down 4 years later... (Score:2)
Microsoft shows a lack of commitment to things they acquire. They're not EA, not by a long shot, but Microsoft has the same non-commitment to things that google does (see Mixer as the lastest folly), and they've closed 17, and spun off 4 studios. They only have 15 studios at present.
Compared to EA... which will take a minute to count. EA has 35 studios listed, and closed 28. So EA shuts down 55% of it's studios, vs Microsoft's 48%.
And that only includes what Wikipedia listed.
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At least they have the ending [youtube.com] worked out already.
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They ate up a bunch of indie developers, put out a LOT of cool and innovative games.
Fast forward a couple years and they were all putting out shovelware sequels to the good stuff on Xbox. *shudder*MechAssault*shudder*CrimsonSkies*shudder*...
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Yep, I sure do. I was working for a company that was contracting with Microsoft at the time, and the loss of that contract created huge problems for us.
They've done this for ages, emphasizing first party games for a few years (why should we pay all those third-parties to develop games?), then after a while realizing that the Microsoft corporate culture is poisonous for making creative products, they dissolve the studios they've run into the ground and swear off 1st party game development for another few ye
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The downside is that well... as with many other one hit wonders it seems like slapping the hit brand onto random experiments hasn't yielded another hit so far, so the entire studio still relies entirely on Minecraft not turning to shit.
Why is Microsoft so poorly managed? (Score:1, Troll)
Re-post: [slashdot.org]
Is Windows 10 the worst OS? Some of the MANY very negative articles:
Windows 10 is possibly the worst spyware ever made. [networkworld.com] "Buried in the service agreement is permission to poke through everything on your PC."
Multiple Problems Reported With New Windows 10 Updates. [forbes.com]
Windows 10 Warning: Anger At Microsoft Rises With Serious New Failure. [forbes.com]
Quote: "... such problems are ruining the company's rep
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I'm amazed at how poorly Microsoft is managed. The company managers seem to lack social ability.
That's kind of a weird conclusion to come to. For all you know they are out partying right now, socializing and getting along great with all kinds of people.
Meanwhile, they suck at running a software company.
Thrashing wildly about (Score:2)
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They have always had many gaming units, Just like Sony and others gaming evolves rapidly so they shutdown, merge, sell and startup new units all the time.
More like Microsoft buys out a company, ruins in, shuts it down, then buys another one.
It could be good (Score:4, Interesting)
Am I the only one who thinks this might actually be good?
WB Games is a great studio producing excellent games. But they need financial support. On the other hand Microsoft knows they lost last gen due to lack of good games, and they have lots of money to burn.
This could be a good combination if they manage it well. On one hand, they did great things with Bungie and actually let them free once their partnership was over. On the other hand they ran the Fable developers into ground, leaving almost nothing behind.
As an optimistic, I am hoping this will go on to be one of the good ones.
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Am I the only one who thinks this might actually be good?
WB Games is a great studio producing excellent games. But they need financial support. On the other hand Microsoft knows they lost last gen due to lack of good games, and they have lots of money to burn.
Locking shit to Microsoft platforms isn't a good thing, no.
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You mean to Xbox and Windows, right? The latter platform we normally call the "PC" (as in "PC Master Race").
All I see is benefit, especially with Sony investing in PC (aka Windows) gaming as we
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While Microsoft has far fewer exclusive titles than Playstation, they lost the last-gen before it even launched. They announced that they were going to lock game discs to the console, an action that provided no benefit to gamers and would have introduced a ton of issues with buying/selling used games, borrowing games from friends, or playing on a new console if the old one becomes defective. In addition to that, they foisted the Kinect hardware
I'm in favor of it (Score:1)
I wonder if this means that the promise that had been made for Asheron's Call to be released to the public will finally be honored. WB was the one blamed when that promise got broken.
It must be done, this is critical to the business (Score:1)
I think Microsoft should offfer $143 billion to buy the division. That sounds right and that sounds like the right amount. I say go for it!