Talking Point: How Do You Feel About Xbox's ActiBlizz Deal One Year On?

It's ridiculous that we have seen so little content hit Game Pass a year after the acquisition went through. There really is no excuse at this time. There are plenty of older titles that could have filled out the roster of games hitting Game Pass during recent months when the offerings that the Service has had has been very lean to say the least. Microsoft have raised the prices, but given us naff all in return...

It’s been a year and the total lack of content is pathetic to be honest. I get that it was going to take time, but one year later and we are not really seeing much at all. Okay, so we get another COD soon but we were promised back catalogue games and the amount we have seen is terrible.

I just feel that this is a yet another promise made by Xbox that is turning out to be a falsehood and a lie.

Maybe that will change soon - it needs to because so far, for gamers at least, it feels like it was all for profit and not for gamers benefits.

We should of seen a lot more content from Activision drop on gamepass it's a bit of a disgrace at this stage so many games held back for no reason I don't get it!🤷💩

I still think the main focus of this acquisition in MS eyes was King. That side has already brought in over a billion $ in the last year.
Easy money.

But for gamers who just care about Game Pass additions (me included), it has been pretty poor. Still no Tony Hawks?!

Not a good year for XBox and gaming market.
And especially not a good year for thousands of employees, who lost their job.
And of course, 2 price increases of subscriptions.

Xbox didn’t take over Activision, rather Activision took over Xbox. It was a Trojan horse manoeuvre all along.

It’s poor deal for gamers. (So far)

But you would assume it’s good for MS revenue

I got more entertainment out of the discussion of the ABK buyout prior to the actual buyout than I have from the games released or are due to be released from them.

To be fair I was pretty apathetic about ABK in general and that hasn't changed.

They have added 3 Activision games to Gamepass in the last year (they would argue 4, but one of them is a free to play game), and increased the price by $3 a month. So it's been a horrible deal for customers. And we've seen a noticeable drop off in Gamepass quality in the last 3 months or so.

Absolute rubbish

While I was initially supportive of the acquisition (albeit from a selfish angle hoping that a lot of Blizzard IP - especially the older Diablo games - would drop on Game Pass PC), I think it ended up being a terrible decision.

People would worry that it would completely decimate the games industry. But, in the end, it seems to be the downfall of the Xbox console market.

Xbox Division seemed to have a certain level of autonomy. Now that "Big Daddy Corporate" has its eyes on the Division, it's solely become a Corporate Machine rather than something that was more fun.

I mean...sure...all these game divisions are part of a corporation to make money...but Xbox feels hollow now.

And I am still waiting for all Blizzard IP on Game Pass PC.

Im hoping they will drop a couple of old games they now have from Activisions dusty basement but it seems like they will be drip feeding the big earner's first which I'm not falling far because it's all tied to a subscription service type tactic, I respect it as a business tactic though but on that note I'm like meh, I'll just take it for what it is.

It's amazing that so much time, effort and money went into getting the ABK acquisition through, yet over the past year you'd be forgiven for not even knowing Microsoft had bought them.

I sort of give up, I can never work Microsoft out with Xbox.
Then again I don’t think they have a definitive strategy. I really believe some of it, is see how this and goes and go from there approach.

Similar to their desperate, Xbox studio games on other consoles on a case by case basis.
It hardly helps people deciding what console to buy and future investment.

It just leaves people wondering and hung out to dry.
Definitely a business in limbo right now.

I feel like Microsoft lied to federal regulators and screwed over gamers and thousands of developers at Activision.

Fairly pathetic - hardly any GP additions and no sign of any old titles receiving FPS and/or resolution boosts.

I was hoping all along that the deal would go through - blindly/foolishly expecting a tonne of content dropping soon after on Gamepass. Instead we got 3 additions (eventually) and a price hike.

M$ seem pretty clueless with what to do with their new ‘toy’ - surely as a minimum they should have made Xbox the home of all things Call of Duty - but even the latest TV advert for BO6 fails to mention it is available on Xbox and Day One on GPU.

I feel like this deal will make a lot of sense in the future. In 4 years we can look back and see if it was worth it from an xbox player pov.

It's made a ton of money for Microsoft, and dumped a bunch of games most of us have already played into game pass. If you care about COD you're probably pretty happy, but most people haven't been affected by the merger at all.

Well we know one thing for sure it has not helped sell Xbox consoles or Gamepass really.
The only thing it has done last quarter was show a 4% up. Without ABK it would have been a minus.

If MS plan to pump at least some of the extra ABK money back into their extensive list of studios then I’m hoping we see more positive results over the next 5-10 years. As it stands though it’s looking increasingly likely that the only ones to truly benefit from this acquisition are the shareholders.

I couldn't care less about it because I don't like ActiBlizz games.
But I'm sure they're making a lot of money.

Difficult to assess as there was/is likely some Legacy stuff to sort out as well as fully 'integrate' into MS. In the first year of Zenimax, that was pretty 'lacklustre' for Xbox gamers and at least we only have to wait a year for the first 'new' game to come to Xbox and/or Game Pass.

Until we see 'new' ABK games coming 'regularly' to Xbox/Game Pass, it will likely remain underwhelming for most gamers - $70bn and all they really have to show for it is Call of Duty on Game Pass - no exclusives, no major benefits to Xbox owners.

I think it would be unfair to be 'critical' of the situation - mostly because we don't have ALL the information, inc whether or not things are better for the Developers for example under 'new' management. We are still waiting to see any games from Compulsion, Undead Labs etc after 6yrs of being under Microsoft so my expectations were not exactly high for the first 'year' or two as they gradually transition to MS 'control'. Bobby Kotick remained 'in charge' of the ABK group until end of March but I still expect it to take 'years' before we really see the Microsoft era of ABK.

Since ABK joined MS though, they have opened 2 new Studios - Infinity Ward Austin, (A new Studio opened to create 'new' innovative CoD games) and Elsewhere Studios in Poland - a new Studio created to make a Narrative driven game (not CoD). How long before we see or hear anything from those as gamers??

The only IP they have I actually care about have seen only vague acknowledgements, no releases. To me, ABK is merely the Crash Bandicoot, Spyro the Dragon and Tony Hawk publisher and nothing more.

It was the worst decision Spencer and his team could have made and has ended up destroying the Xbox brand.
They should have never purchased the studios and instead copied Sony in nailing down exclusive deals for Xbox console and PC, to drive up sales. That would have lead to the growth of Game Pass.

Instead they blew nigh on 100 billion US on acquisitions, haven't got a team anywhere near capable of managing so many large studios, and it's become a dead duck with MS CEO and Board very obviously driving the ideas to drive profit now, and not for gamers either. They are way out of their depth and I won't be surprised if in a years time Spencer is fired, and if they even release another home console. It's all about a games service now that isn't growing.

And Xbox seems to totally lack any direction or plan now. It's just desperately trying to get that 100 billion back anyway it can at the detriment to its customer base value.

ABK is the buyout that killed Xbox. Microsoft spent 70b to buy King to force their way into mobile and leveraged Xbox to get the deal, and killed anything Xbox had going for it that made it special just to facilitate the disposal of all the excess games clutter to make way for mobile.

They'll reboot the brand next gen, but just like X1 they'll be starting from behind, but with corporate looking over their shoulder this time, they won't have the advantage of being the plucky underdog again.

@S1ayeR74 It wasn't Spencer and his team, it was MS corporate (Amy Hood) that approached ABK first. This was an MS play to strongarm into mobile, and they eagerly sacrificed Xbox, a minimal profit generator, to do it. They'd been desperate for a way to get into the mobile space as they were the only one among their big data peers that were not in it.

@NEStalgia Ah didn't know that, still they'll make Spencer the scape goat that's for sure. He will take the downfall for it all. It's a disgusting way to display greed to dominate a market flexing your monopolistic power and trillions in value. And kill one of your brands in the process. I agree they wanted King all along. But what a way to do it, now they won't invest in the Xbox team to cope with all the endless teams they now have to try and manage.

I sold my Series X because of all the forced ads on the dashboard, that was the last straw for me. And from what I've heard it's got worst with full screen ads now? Sony tried to put some kind of ads on the Home Screen last week or the week before, the community outraged and they reversed it a couple days later advising it was an 'error'.
Another example of the disaster the buyouts have caused as they need those ads to drive revenue, Sony doesn't.
I can't see a single thing to entice me back, even the new Gears won't as a lot of rumours claim it'll come to PlayStation anyway.

@BAMozzy conveniently forgot all the lay offs too I see!

Underwhelming is an understatement at this point.

1) Maybe the expectations as gamers were too high (probably)
2) There is a need for a lot of hoops to make things done (Licenses)
3) They have a lot of surprises in the future for subscribers/future new games of those IP's
4) They don't really care (but certainly know gamers care) (don't believe that is the case)
5) Still don't have an idea how to bring it all to GPU and attract potential new customers at the same time.

Waiting what kind of impact the new COD on GP will have and move from there? ActiBlizz was such a big news cycle and now it's like it almost never happened. And not everyone has GP either. They must have a few scenario's ready ...

MS needed to focus on numbers, as in, closing entire studios, layoffs, etc. and making a lot of money being a publisher to earn back that buyout.

Xbox became more MS and I don't see this as a positive as a gamer!

@PsBoxSwitchOwner Yeah laying off thousands of staff is never a good thing. But closing studios that have just made an absolutely brilliant hit game perfect for Game Pass with a view to making a sequel that could help drive up subscriber count, just makes little business sense all round and shows some incompetence at the top.

From a business perspective getting King and its mobile games was a good purchase and will feed into MS's desire to be in mobile gaming.
For an Xbox player, I believe its been the end of the Xbox platform as I knew and enjoyed it, and has done very little to add any value to us being on the platform.

Xbox was better when MS corp let it do its thing. By spending 70 billion, xbox cannot operate independently any more and is now completely at the beck and call of head office and the shareholders.

Honestly, just knowing Playstation will eventually pay Microsoft royalties for key titles is enough for me to like the outcome.

@S1ayeR74 i wholeheartedly agree. You have people upstairs who have no clue about what consumers want, and they make these really dumb decisions.

@JaffeGaffe

lol at the royalties.

You are aware that sony own 5.5% of Epic? So Halo being developed on UE5 means Royalties indirectly going to Sony.
Funny how this business works eh?

I haven't even noticed a difference to be honest, Bethesda's one was way more impactful in every way

Literally everything changed for the worse, the Xbox brand is in disarray, only 3 titles have arrived on Game Pass, they’ve worsen the service with the tiers and priced up Ultimate substantially.

One year later the single only good thing for customers is that we’re getting Black Ops 6 on Game Pass, but it literally costed the Xbox brand, wasn’t worth it imo.

@JaffeGaffe That’s the most pathetic fanboy take I’ve ever read.

Absolutely agree, @GamingFan4Lyf. I thought the ABK acquisition would lead to resurgence for Xbox and a proper heyday for Game Pass, with loads of legacy titles hitting the Service and shouting from the rooftops that Xbox was back. Instead we've had two price rises and just a couple of games added to the Service, which is just pitiful.

What we've also seen is the Big Bosses at Microsoft taking control, and making decisions that will decimate Xbox console numbers come the next generation. We are already seeing people abandon Xbox, and it will only get worse as time gets on. Anyone that sees Team Green pastures ahead at this point in time is deluding themselves.

Yes, Microsoft probably want to move in the direction of publisher only, but the way they are going about it is exceptionally unfair on the Xbox console gamer. Likely as not, this is why we are seeing so very little of Spencer right now. I simply don't think he can stand there and give a straight answer to the questions we have. He agrees with us that this is not the way forward. Instead, he sits quietly in the background, seeing out his contract, only coming out when he absolutely has to, but not taking any questions wherein he might let his true feelings be known.

It's all pretty shameful really. The acquisition of ABK could have heralded a golden era for Xbox. Instead it has just brought about a steady decline that Microsoft seems content to sit back and watch...

Insane we haven't seen more COD on game pass. They could have had a trail of these games all year leading into BO6. All DLC free. The hype would have been wild. Not to mention the huge catalog of other titles they have. Optimistic, but still a bit disappointed. Very excited for BO6 though.

Deal is garbage and the costs got passed on to us. I will keep my Series X, I love it and I love a lot of the games I have and the library I've built but Xbox has done irreparable damage to the brand the past 20 months so I just can't back the green next Gen. I don't care about most of the Activision Blizzard games.

@PsBoxSwitchOwner Anyone that didn't expect layoffs is unrealistic and/or has overly high expectations. I wouldn't expect them to keep ALL the Publishing or Marketing staff when both MS and Zenimax each had their own Publishing and Marketing teams.

Each would have to organise and market their own games, organise events/trade shows like E3, Gamescom etc all separately - now they only need 1 Microsoft marketing team and Publishing division as both Zenimax and now ABK are 'merged' in to MS.

You don't need 3 Marketing teams, 3 separate publishing divisions - each with their own managers and staff teams so I really expected those '3' teams to be 'merged' into 1 overall Publishing and/or Marketing team. We've seen 'Bethesda' already added to the MS show teams.

I expected there was some 'crossovers' in the the actual running of these Publishers. The Studio's themselves that make games aren't the ONLY staff at these big companies - they each had their own 'Heads', their own Marketing and Publishing divisions etc and the likes of Bobby Kotick were always likely to lose their 'jobs' due to the fact Microsoft are now the 'heads', the Manager of those.

As I expected quite a few to lose their Jobs as the Publishing and Marketing teams were 'merged' into Microsofts already existing Publishing/Marketing teams, And ABK in particular have been mismanaged for years, so I expected them to get rid of some of the dead wood....

@Medic_alert No they were ads, a bit like when you load up a physical game and in it's screen on the home page their is always an ad to buy the game digitally on PS5...

Nothing much so far but when bo6 comes I suppose will be decent

Its been shockingly terrible year in terms of content from Activision and even worse from Xbox in terms of all the studio closures and layoffs which seem to be a consequence of the acquisition

The deal went to trial because the FTC claimed that ABK would give xbox a monopoly on the games industry.

Low and behold – That deal is exactly why Playstation will have a monopoly before long.

The deal was too large. It drilled a hole through Xbox. Now, Xbox is dying and MS is going third party to drive short-term revenue at the cost of the brand.

The end of Xbox, and the beginning of Microsoft Gaming.

So far, bad. Really bad

We have barely seen anything added to Gamepass, we haven't seen any of the "course corrections" we were hoping for (saving talented studios from the CoD mines), Xbox first-party releases haven't increased and in exchange, the act of buying Activision seems to have broken Xbox.

-They spent a year+ in courts talking about how bad Xbox is and how it can only ever compete by absorbing a large publisher. Demolishing consumer confidence and tanking sales

• They overextended on staff and then laid off developers and shuttering studios. I'd much rather keep the two lost Bethesda studios than what we've gotten so far from Activision.
  Corporate daddy Microsoft wants that 79 billion+ back and now Xbox is doing silly things like abandoning exclusives... the whole point of buying Bethesda and Activision in the first place.

The whole point was to sure up Xbox against Sony and it's done the opposite. We went from "you need Xbox or Gamepass to play this games" to "eh you can get 'em on the PS5 you already have"

From a business perspective I understand it, MS are already swimming in the money being generated by the deal.

As someone who has almost zero interest in any of the slop Activision/Blizz drop into their nappies, it’s only worsened the Xbox brand for multiple reasons, many listed above from other posters.

Say goodbye Xbox, hello Microsoft gaming. That’s where this is heading.

It definitely hasn’t done me any good. But there are a lot of really old activision properties I hope they’ll do something with. Someday.

The merger has kind of muddied the waters of game pass tho.

@S1ayeR74 Yep. It's all textbook Nadella. Fixate on one thing only and sacrifice everything else to make it happen.

PlayStation users are KICKING themselves right now looking at COD coming to GamePass! I knew going Xbox over PlayStation was the right choice! WoohoO!

@themightyant get a grip

I personally thought this was the best year in Xbox. A lot of people cried and complained that they sold tango and arcane Austin well also shutting down a team at blizzard. But those teams lost the original creative head that got Microsoft to want them in the first place. So they were already dead before Microsoft even sold them. They have also bought an open new teams this year, such as elsewhere entertainment in Poland and they opened a new team at blizzard who is working on AAs. Call duty coming to Game Pass day one. There’s a fantastic line of games coming out this year and next. I simply cannot understand why anyone would not view this as Xboxs best year

Wanted them to purchase blizzard and Ubisoft instead

i forgot about it

I was too hopeful for legacy titles to get discounted, relisted, old cods to finally drop price and hit gamepass, thps3+4. Really nothing has changed

Man, I only come to this site maybe a couple times a month now, and it is clear why; this is a misery circle jerk. The page has become some kind of complaint-porn site like some reddits. This site used to be somewhat fun. I'm out.

Uh what some games on Gamepass, the same stuff we always see from Activision besides whatever ok but not exciting new stuff from their existing games.

Or exciting new games at all small or big.

No Pitfall Lost Expedition on BC as BC isn't going to expand and whatever is the case with TimeShift or others will they stay dead on Xbox store as just pages to warn inform people you can't or is it disk only still or will licensing change or whatever?

Nothing else interesting from Activision in terms of current focused games really. The same handful, the same recycling, more unexciting stuff because the current company/industry isn't doing anything too interesting unless it's 1% of Indies with good ideas or the rest are just odd AA titles west or east, everything else is lazy trend following or nostalgic heavily inspired unoriginal and not exciting because they are spinning off or exciting enough.

So I don't see anything really happening whether year 1, 2, 3 or year 10 though by year 10 10 CODs have come out, the next few warzones have, more Diablo 4 stuff, King doing what they do to make money for Microsoft without even having to try because people play their games regardless, Overwatch 2 will keep going, maybe another Tony Hawk if deals happen again......

Otherwise nothing I want from Activision happens anyways so like I care what they do. I don't care for their games anymore.

Spyro 4 I never questioned anyways, I'm happy Toys for Bob can do their own thing now but at the same time it could be anything they end up making, any studios that get large funding but are independent make a new game to trend follow (Nightingale or No Man's Sky as examples) or make a successor to the IPs they were working on (Calisto, Yooka Laylee, Mighty Number 9, Bloodstained, etc.) just without that license......

@theduckofdeath Depends on the news/page, depends on the people, depends on their outlook of things, what they are really seeking right now in gaming, how often they want games or information, how much the companies spend money on other things then what we as customers would like to see.

It's been crap. They paid an unfathomable sum, and in the time they've cried poverty and so have been "forced" to close a bunch of studios and raise prices despite still making profits (even ignoring Microsoft in general). Maybe those billions they spent could have come in handy.

When the deal went through they rebuffed claims that it would lead to redundancies, price rises, reduced competition for gamers and developers, and a toxic work environment and corporate structure. Since then we've seen all of those things come to pass to some degree, and I think it'll just get worse.

I'm afraid that Microsoft as a wider company is going to be in trouble as they're in DEEP with AI, but their products (like Copilot) just aren't selling, or are actively unwanted. When that bubble bursts when they realise nobody is seeing a return on their billions MS will be forced to cut costs, and Xbox won't be spared.

I don't feel a difference. The outcry and all the articles leading up to the deal, made it feel like it is this big monumental paradigm shift. In truth it seems to be little more than a splash in the ocean. I am aware that it takes time to get stuff going but the deafening silence isn't sparking much confidence in me. It really feels liek microsoft gave up on xbox. The bark and bite from the original xbox and xbox 360 days seems to be all but gone. I don't care for console war nonsense, but good competition leads to innovation and good games. Come on microsoft make us excited about xbox again.....

Was really enjoying MW3's campaign and then it just... ended. So I looked for another one to play and... nada. Bummer.

Game Pass price hikes aside (and it's admittedly VERY hard to set them aside because they sting in today's economy), I think MS has had their hands full adapting 2 extremely large publishers into their own culture, clearing a slew of licenses (if you're waiting for Tony Hawk, for example, that's a music licensing nightmare because you're now a new owner trying to 'rent' and 'stream' a game that was had music licensed for physical and digital SALE only), and let's face it - there's something to be said for playing the Nintendo game of trickle. If they dump it all at once, they risk light months down the road. This way, at least they can say "Hey look! Spyro!" when a game gets delayed - and we all know that's inevitable.

I'm cautiously optimistic overall. MS isn't stupid. They're playing a long game with the Xbox brand, and that brand isn't centered around a console anymore. Never mind that I just had a shiny new 2TB Series X delivered this afternoon. 5 years from now I fully expect to be playing on an ethernet connected firestick.

I think MS paid too much money for little real value. MS should of made a deal to simply split of COD from the rest of Activision games and make a deal for the rest of the catalog and the mobile gaming excluding COD.