So Blizzard is creating its own Steam/Xbox Live/PSN...kinda

[vlad321]

Ail said:

Kenryoku_Maxis said:

ph4nt said:

vlad321 said:
Maybe one day BLizzard will ditch the idiots that are Activision and join up with Valve for a super independent studio that is the bet in all major genres, FPS, RTS, RPG.

While legally Blizzard and Activision are one company. Activision has absolutely no effect on what Blizzard does / wants to do.

They said the same thing when Square and Enix merged.  And while the two companies tried to keep their IPs and the groups who worked on them seperate, the heads of the company have been making a number of risky ventures that are loosing the company money.

Even when the games development are kept seperate from the management, the mismanagement of the company can affect the sales of the games.  And, over time, can inversely affect the way the games are made.  As once again, we have seen with SquareEnix and their extreme focus on only 3 IPs (Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts, Dragon Quest) and hardly touching or plain overlooking all their past series (Mana, Chrono, etc).

So basically, companies who enter mergers or get bought out walk a fine line between creative freedom and changes from new management.

 

Blizzard hasn't actually been an independant company for a long time..( since 1996).

Except Vivendi had nothing much to do with games any of the games that any of the studios made.

 

As for Steam,Bnet, vs LIVE,, PSN. I really don't think you can comapre the services at all. LIVE and PSN are THE internet on consoles, that's it. Meanwhile Steam, Bnet are just services to make online multiplayer more manageable.

That said, LIVE and PS fail miserably as being internet gateways when compared to the PC. As for achievements, I really never gave a damn about them. They just show who wasted more time playing the game than anything else ( I won't deny, I have 7k points on WoW).