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So, Microsoft now owns Activision Blizzard. How will this affect the rest of the industry?
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this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2023
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It likely keeps Microsoft in the gaming business, which isn't a bad thing.
There will be a console to compete against Sony, and Microsoft will leverage cross-platfotm gaming with PC's as a way to sustain this. That Steam effectively released a Linux-based console probably means Microsoft is going to have to fight more in the PC Gaming space. This is probably why a lot of the ads in consumer grade Windows has been to promote its gaming division.
Microsoft hasn't been bad to Minecraft, so I don't think the games will get worse. If anything, I might have expected Microsoft to go for a DLC route with Overwatch to add characters instead of doing what Overwatch 2 did.
I expect more stabs at RTS, with Microsoft going to get more people to game on a computer. They did buy the company that made WarCraft and StarCraft.
Xbox Game Pass advertising is going to get annoying.
As much as I'd love to see that, they won't do an RTS. Even Blizzard has not touched RTS games since their popularity waned against the League of Legends type games. The closest we got was the StarCraft "HD remaster" from more than half a decade ago.
The era of RTS pretty much ended a decade ago with StarCraft 2.
The big video game companies pretty much only chase trends. They've always done that.
Whether it was platformer games on the NES after the success of Super Mario Brothers, fighting games in the arcades after the success of Street Fighter 2, or Grand Theft Auto 3D clones after the success of GTA3, or loot shooters or DOTA clones or whatever - the game industry at a large scale is mostly risk averse.
Only privately run companies like to pursue certain genres that aren't necessarily the most popular or profitable.
If you want to see new RTS, you're going to have to look for relatively small indie companies - probably ones with some of the grizzled old industry vets who worked on the actual games. Those guys are the only ones who will make those sorts of games now.
@JDPoZ @HobbitFoot there is definitely talk that RTS split into moba and 'grand strategy'/4x games. That most gamers fell into one of those camps and moved on from the genre.
I remember seeing some new RTS games at PAX east a number of years ago, and it always just felt like worse starcraft to me. Almost all of them feel that way to me.