RazputinAquato

I don't think this deal will be outright blocked, I believe the regulators will negotiate with Microsoft and eventually come to a compromise. And Microsoft seems very open for compromise.

Lots of great games, it's hard to decide. The big ones are, of course, Elden Ring, Deathloop and A Plague Tale: Requiem. Hopefully The Callisto Protocol will be a contender soon. Then there are the smaller titles that I really enjoyed: Grounded, Immortality, As Dusk Falls, Nobody Saves the World, Rogue Legacy 2... and I still haven't touched Pentiment, Persona 5, Vampire Survirors, Norco...

For a console with "no exclusives", it's keeping me pretty busy this year.

FPS Boost is great, but calling it "game of the generation" only highlights the problem of Xbox having very few exclusives. Don't get me wrong, I loved Forza Horizon 5 and I'm currently addicted to Grounded, but it's getting ridiculous Phil Spencer congratulating Sony for God of War, Horizon, Ratchet & Clank and having nothing to show on Xbox to get congratulated about...

I'd give it a very high 9. It's a fantastic game, one that deserves to be nominated for Game of the Year awards. My only issue with it is that the combat gameplay is not very good and yet the game forces you to engage in some mandatory combat set pieces.

The Switch is six years old already. By the time Microsoft takes the reigns of Call of Duty, I believe Nintendo will have a successor for its portable console.

I'm worried that both Redfall and Starfield are scheduled for the first half of 2023 and they don't have dates or even a narrower release window yet.

I played the entire game on the Xbox Series S and it still looks great in spite of the 900p resolution. I loved this game, it's up there with Deathloop and Elden Ring as my top games of the year.

Thank goodness! In it's current state, Fallout 4 is pretty much unplayable when you're exploring Boston, it crashes all the bloody time.

I just finished A Plague Tale: Requiem and, man... that game ALMOST desearves a 10/10. The only downside holding it back is the combat being bad. Which would be fine if there weren't a few mandatory combat gauntlets throughout the story. But other than that minor hiccup, it's a superb game. It's up there with Naughty Dog's narrative driven adventures on Playstation.

That smells like a load of B.S. to me. What sort of excuse is "we didn't have enough hands on deck"? Is Platinum an Indie developer working at their mom's basement? I don't buy it. They could always hire manpower to port their games to all major platforms if they want to.

Either they don't want to release games on Xbox (which could be a valid business decision if their games simply don't sell enough in the platform) or they want Xbox to pay them for porting their games.

I've played for an hour. Most of the time I was lost trying to figure out what I was supposed to do in the claw puzzle. The very first one. This game gives no guidance at all. I probably missed something, but I don't feel particularly compelled to go back and try to progress any further. Well, I guess I'll just go back to Prodeus while I wait for A Plague's Tale.

Funny tweet. But Playstation's is better.

Hopefully Halo Infinite. The gameplay is great, but it's missing content both in single-player and multiplayer.

@UltimateOtaku91 I may be wrong, but I think Scorn is more about puzzle solving than stealth.

I'm very excited for Scorn, but if it turns out to be disappointing I can go back to Prodeus, that seems very good. The only reason I stopped playing Prodeus is because I gave Immortality a try and that game completely stole my life, I can't stop thinking about it. You all should try is ASAP.

@CunningPig Brazil is the 10th economy of the world by GDP, but it's number 88 in GDP per capita (accounting for purchase power parity). Brazil is behind Botswana, for example. So, yeah, poor country is poor. And although corruption contributes to that scenario, it's mostly used as an easy scapegoat to oversimplify that matter without tackling all the major structural problems that affect our economy, such as the overdependance on exports of commodities with low aggregate value.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita

@BAMozzy I agree with most of what you wrote, except for your last point: "As more and more Governmental bodies come to the same Conclusion, the last few will follow as they won't want to fight in court against MS and the backing they have from the other Governmental bodies."

In one of his videos, Hoeg Law answered what happens if some regulators approve the deal and others do not. An it turns out that all that matters in the end are the major markets, USA and UK/Europe.

If Brazil does not approve the deal, but all the bigger markets do, Microsoft can just stop selling Xbox in Brazil, as it won't be a major blow for them (they stopped selling in Russia due to the war in Ukraine, for that matter). And Brazil, as well as other smaller markets, are well aware of that, so they are more likely to approve the deal without restrictions.

With the major markets that's a totally different matter, they have way more sway over Microsoft, since just stop selling in the European Union, for example, is not an option. So those regulating bodies are way more likely to impose restrictions on the deal or kill it altogether. And that's why Jimbo went all the way to Brussels instead of Brasília.

@Titntin I'm Brazilian and... yeah, our current political situation is really ghastly right now Hopefully we can change that in the coming elections.

But while corruption is rampant in Brazil, I don't think CADE's decision has anything to do with that, the more transparent a government decision is, the least likely it is to find shady business and this whole process was very transparent.

As @UltimateOtaku91 said, Brazil is a poor country. Few people have access to videogame consoles or PC gaming. Cloud gaming technology is a game changer that is very beneficial for Brazilian consumers and certainly that point may have swayed CADE to decide in Microsoft's favour.

The Outer Worlds is blurry as heck running on the Xbox Series S, it looks very bad. Hopefully a native port can fix that.

@Lup same. I'm playing on the Xbox Series S.

I hope that family medical issue is taken care of and all the best for her and her loved ones. But I can't help wondering if that medical issue is just a classy excuse so that Xbox doesn't have to say that they fired her. Because upper management in 343 screw up big time and the leadership clearly had to change.

I'm not a big fan of Bioshock. In my opinion it's just a corridor shooter with good story and atmosphere but boring enemies and combat.

@Techno92LFC makes sense to test in smaller markets. And Colombia and Ireland are very different countries which will provide good data points for Xbox. The behavior of customers in a developing South American country will most likely be very different from a wealthy European country.

@uptownsoul you have a valid point about PS5 alone selling more than Xbox Series + Xbox One combined. Surely both models of Xbox have a bigger install base than PS5. However, you're missing another important piece of information. PS5 is outselling PS4, that has a much bigger install base than both PS5 and Xbox Series + One.

How come Resident Evil Village sold almost three times more copies in PS5 than in PS4 when we know that there are multiple times more PS4's then PS5 consoles around?

And if those games are selling better on PS5 than on PS4, I think it would seem reasonable to think they're selling better on Xbox Series than on Xbox One as well.

Maybe people who own the newer, most powerful consoles are more hardcore gamers in general and they tend to buy more games that are not called FIFA or Call of Duty than people that are still gaming on older platforms?

Cloud gaming helps a lot with storage issues. Now I don't need MS Flight Simulator locally installed using 100+ GB of storage. That said, I have bought an external storage already and now memory is not an issue in my Series S.

I don't like it. The visuals, the music, the gameplay... I don't think that game is for me.
I don't like Sonic in realistic settings. I mean, Green Hill Zone is one of the most beautiful, iconic and recognizeable levels in gaming. Why putting Sonic in a generic environment that could exist in any videogame whatsoever instead of drawing inspiration on that classic artsyle of the Mega Drive classics?

I thought I'd never get a new Dead Space game again and here we are a few months away of getting both a remake and a spiritual successor to the classic game, so I wouldn't rule out a Banjo Kazooie reveal at long last.

@ShadowofTwilight22 which is totally cool. I think Mass Effect is garbage and don't understand the hype at all, but I'm totally aware that I am the outlier in this case. To each their own.

@ShadowofTwilight22 you're entitled to your opinion, but if you think Skyrim is a bad game, you're an outlier. It's a very well beloved videogame, which is widely played to this date.
Bethesda does not need to prove for most people that they can do great RPGs. In fact, they're widely considered one of the very best developers of Western RPGs.

@Chaudy not necessarily. Recently NVidia announced the acquisition of ARM for 40 billion dollars, but the FTC did not approve the deal and it will have to be undone.

It's not the same thing as the Microsoft - ActiBlizz deal, it's apples and oranges, but my point is that surely NVidia also had access to the best analysts and lawyers that money can buy and they were confident enough to announce that deal last year, but it did not go through, so you never know. And Biden's government seems more prone to frown upon big business consolidation than the previous one.

Hopefully Sony will follow Microsoft's steps on creating a subription service that can be played through the cloud on any device. I'd love to have the option of playing Playstation's exclusives on a Smart TV app, without the need to spend enough money to feed a Brazilian family of four for two months on yet another piece of plastic and metal.

At that day, I won't have to worry on who currently owns Capcom or FromSoftware, I'll just juggle with videogame subscriptions the same way I do with streaming platforms today.

Halo is good.
Elon is evil.

I love Sekiro, I platinum'ed it on PS4 and played a fair bit on Xbox as well. But that's not an Activision franchise, the IP belongs to From Software and hence it's unlikely its sequels would become Xbox exclusives.

Since I'm old, my favorite Activision franchises that hopefully will make a comeback are Pitfall! end HeXen.

I'd rather have a racing game. A spiritual successor to Diddy Kong Racing. And now Xbox is poised to own Crash Team Racing... maybe keep the name, maybe not, but add other Xbox properties to the mix, like Banjo, Conker, Raz, Fallout's Vault Boy, cutesy versions of Master Chief (or Mister Chief) and other characters from mature franchises...

Anyway, it doesn't have to be a Racing game or a fighting game, but everybody would be down for a crossover party game regardless of the genre.

Geez, Senua, take a shower! 😃
I'd be surprised if this game isn't announced for this year.

That should have been Xbox's slogan 😆
Would have been a hit with the Sega kids who grew up on those edgy TV ads.

I think CoD should mirror Halo Infinite and release a platform for the next ten years. Just keep adding content without splitting the player base.

Or, with three studios working on CoD, give them six years each to work on the next installment, and release one game every two years.

Maybe it wouldn't be smart to take off Call of Duty from Playstation. It could devalue the franchise and leave the ground open for a competitor, like Battlefield to become the top selling game in the market. Keeping it on PS5, but with exclusive perks on Xbox would be a safer way to preserve CoD's relevance while making the Xbox more desirable. Hell, simply not having to shell 70 bucks on it is reason enough to go for Xbox.

@trev666 EA decided to drop the FIFA licensing on its own. FIFA was asking too much money. It looks like the next game will be called EA Sports FC or something.

I don't like the sound of Bobby Kotick making plans for the future of Activision other than him stepping down and disappearing.

Hopefully Xbox will break CoD's annual cycle and release it every other year, in order to liberate some studios to work on other projects.

@PhileasFragg certainly games currently on Playstation will not be delisted. Minecraft did not disappear. Old games from Bethesda are still in Playstation. Fallout 4 is even on PS Now. I'm sure every Activision game released on Playstation until the acquisition is done will stay at Playstation store forever.

@Banjo- they're not hypocrites. It's just business, it's not personal. In the end of the day both Sony and Microsoft just want to rise their bottomlines. Strategies may vary, we may prefer one company over the other, but big companies are not our friends. Nor enemies.

I'm sure Microsoft would not have dropped 70 billion dollars at Activision if there were a long term exclusivity contract between Playstation and Call of Duty.

Let's be honest: Microsoft purchased CoD. Maybe Candy Crush. The rest is just a nice little bonus.

Probably Sony's deal with Activision still has a couple more years or so.

Well, of course Sony execs have to say that. Sony already lost 20 billion dollars in market value. Now they have to play it cool, otherwise the losses might rise.

2019: 'Xbox has no games.'
2022: 'Xbox has all the games.'

I'll ask for a really, REALLY old one: 1982's Pitfall!
Bring it to Game Pass, with achievements 😆

I'm very nostalgic for the slightly less old Pitfall: A Mayan Adventure (1994), which I played on the SNES.

@UltimateOtaku91 those laws do not really apply for videogames, only strategic industries that effect their national security.

But anyway, no matter what Xbox does, Playstation will not suddenly cease to exist. They have really valuable properties. Worst case scenario for Sony is merging or selling its gaming division for a very large price. Probably larger than Activision Blizzard. And any big tech company planning to compete with Microsoft in the videogame market would be very interested on buying it.

@Banjo- I read on IGN about the likelihood of anti-trust laws hindering that acquisition and the article said that Microsoft buying Activision probably will be okay, since that's vertical integration: a distributor of content (Xbox) buying a producer of content (Activision).

Xbox buying Nintendo or Sony, however, probably would not be approved by the government. But another big tech or media company with big pockets and not currently on the console market, like Apple, Google or Disney could theoretically acquire them.

2019: "Xbox has no games."
2022: "Xbox has all the games."

@Banjo- there is this myth that Japanese companies cannot be purchased by foreign companies, but in actuality it only applies to strategic industries, like in the energy or infrastructure business, certainly not video games. Did not Bethesda acquire Tango?

And the reason why Microsoft itself failed to buy Nintendo is because they didn't want to sell, not because it would break the law.

That would be a good time for a bigger shark to buy Sony. Apple, Google, Meta, Amazon... one day one of them might own Playstation.