Where do you stand on Microsoft buying Activision/Blizzard?

[Shinobi-san]

Machiavellian said:

I guess the key question would be does this deal allow MS to be more competitive or does it allow them to dominate the industry. Its hard for me to see this deal really giving MS a big advantage. Money wise COD is a win but its not like MS is hurting for money. Can MS lockout games from Sony which would case customers to choose the Series consoles over Sony. I just do not see it. Sony mainline games are incredible strong and Sony brand around the world is way stronger than MS. I believe most PS gamers would just move to another MP game because the market definitely have a lot of alternatives. The other properties from Activision like Overwatch also have a lot of competition in the free to play space. The only real property that plays on console from Activision that I can see that does not have a lot of competition is diablo. When you go to Activision page its all COD and then a bunch of games that have not seen the light of day in years.

I really do not see a competitive advantage for MS. They will need to keep COD on all platforms if this deal goes through. I doubt they will lock out Overwatch and Diablo. If they do lockout Diablo its probably not going to be Diablo 4 and going by how long it takes Blizz to get a game to market, their next effort should show up in about 5 years or better.

I believe that Activision will get purchase by someone, Tencent, Netease, some Saudi conglomerate you name it, putting my American bias on here, I rather it be an American company then anyone else, so I am in favor of the deal.

Agree with most of your post Machiavellian! However the bolded I feel is not really seen as an option for those who are invested in 1 or 2 specific MP games. For me those games have been Dota 2, Apex Legends and COD. I will for the most part follow the platforms those games appear on. So I feel there is a big distinction between gamers who are buying Sony single player games and those that are locked into a particular MP game (Overwatch and Diablo also fall into this category imo). It doesnt seem like there is much overlap either between these two sets of gamers. I think Sony knows this, and they know the number of gamers who are on PS+ purely because of COD, which is why they are fighting so hard.